MANILA, Philippines – Vice President Sara Duterte announced that her father, former president Rodrigo Duterte, will join her legal team that will face the string of impeachment complaints pending in the House of Representatives.
“Ang sabi niya, since hindi ko tatanggapin ‘yong pera, mag-lawyer siya para sa akin. So sinabi niya (He said, since I will not accept money from him, he will instead lawyer for me. So he said) he will collaborate, he will be a collaborating counsel for all the cases. He will be one of the lawyers for all the cases,” the vice president said during an ambush interview in Davao City on Wednesday, December 25.
“And he’s preparing his documents sa (with the) IBP (Integrated Bar of the Philippines) so that he can sign as a lawyer of good standing,” she added.
In less than a year since their fallout with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the Duterte family has faced a barrage of controversies and investigations. The Vice President is facing at least three impeachment complaints over the allegedly anomalous use of her office’s multi-million confidential funds.
A coalition of civic organizations, whose designated spokesperson is former senator and justice secretary Leila de Lima, filed the first complaint on December 2 grounded on the vice president’s alleged culpable violation of the Constitution, and graft and corruption.
Only two days after De Lima’s group, progressive groups led former lawmakers Neri Colmenares, Teddy Casiño, Sarah Elago, Liza Maza, among others, slapped Duterte with a second complaint hinged on alleged betrayal of public trust.
Numerous Catholic priests, meanwhile, took the lead for the third complaint filed on December 19, which accused the younger Duterte of allegedly betraying public trust and culpably violating the Constitution. It would be up to the country’s powerful forces to decide whether the impeachment complaints would take time or will be sped up, or if will prosper at all.
Can Duterte lawyer for daughter?
“There is no prohibition for lawyers to represent family members. So the former President can act as one of the lawyers of VP Sara provided that he is compliant with the requirements imposed on practicing lawyers like the updated Mandatory Continuing Legal Education (MCLE),” National Union of Peoples’ Lawyers president Ephraim Cortez told Rappler.
The former president is a lawyer and was accepted to the Bar in 1973. He had served as a prosecutor in Davao City before entering politics.
Rule 138 of the Rules of Court states that a person admitted to the Bar may practice law if he/she is in good standing. Under the IBP rules, a lawyer is considered in good standing if he/she “has paid all membership dues and all authorized special assessments made by the national office of the Integrated Bar and the Chapter to which the member belongs, plus surcharges owing thereon, and who is not under suspension from the practice of law or from membership privileges.”
The former president himself was at the center of the quad committee hearing of the lower House, which recently recommended that he and his close allies should be charged with crimes against humanity over his drug war that killed nearly 30,000 people.
The mega-panel inquiry has so far yielded evidence against Duterte, such as former police colonel Royina Garma’s testimony confirming the reward system in the drug war and the former president’s Davao Death Squad. Another former police colonel, Duterte-appointed National Police Commission commissioner Edilberto Leonardo, also corroborated Garma’s affidavit. – Rappler.com