VP Sara's answer to impeach rap falls short on facts, substance

Vice President Sara Duterte has failed to present a material and factual response to dispute the impeachment charges against her, the 11-strong House prosecution team said Monday.

“The answer raises no material factual issue that requires a responsive pleading. It does not meaningfully engage the factual allegations in the Articles of Impeachment, but instead concentrates on procedural, jurisdictional, and constitutional objections directed against the continuation of the proceedings,” the prosecutors said in a manifestation.

“This is evident across all four Articles, where respondent repeatedly asserts that she committed no impeachable offense. Yet beyond these general denials, the Answer offers no coherent factual narrative that directly refutes the charges set forth in the Articles of Impeachment,” they added.

(Photo by Tina Panganiban-Perez)

The manifestation was submitted by House Secretary General Cheloy Garafil and was received by Clerk of the Senate Impeachment Court Atty. Renato Bantug, Jr at 11:15 am on Monday.

House pead prosecutor Rep. Gerville Luistro announced that copies of the manifestation were also given to the Office of the Vice President and the Narvasa Fortun Law Office.

While the Vice President disputes the legal significance of the allegations on confidential funds, the House prosecutors noted that she failed to explain how such funds were actually utilized.

As for the unexplained wealth allegations, the House said that the Vice President did not provide a factual accounting or her own explanation of the transactions and did not state the true value or extent of her assets or wealth.

The House prosecutors went on to say that while the Vice President disputed the bribery allegations as speculative and unsupported, she did not offer her own version of the events which are the subject of the impeachment complaint.

Further, the House prosecutors said that the Vice President merely rejected the legal characterization of the threats she made against President Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. and his family and did not directly address the factual assertions underlying the charge.

“In substance, therefore, the Answer does not function as a genuine response to the charges, but as an attempt to secure the outright dismissal of the impeachment case on threshold constitutional and procedural grounds,” the House prosecutors said.

“Such summary relief is not contemplated under the Constitution or the Senate Rules of Procedure on Impeachment Trials, which require that impeachment proceed to trial and be resolved only by conviction or acquittal after a full hearing. By seeking a disposition outside this framework, the Answer attempts to ventilate matters that properly belong to the trial proper,” they added.

The House said that the Vice President’s objections as to how the House initiated the impeachment proceeding go against the chamber's constitutional and exclusive authority to initiate impeachment proceedings, if not already the subject of a pending Petition for Certiorari and Prohibition before the Supreme Court.

“This power cannot be subjected to review, revision, or nullification by the Senate acting as an Impeachment Court, without effectively disturbing the constitutional allocation of powers between the two Houses of Congress,” they said.

“The Senate as an Impeachment Court, cannot be placed in the position of reviewing or pre-empting issues currently pending before the Supreme Court. In view of the foregoing, the prosecution shall dispense with the filing of a reply. No useful purpose will be served by any further exchange of pleadings. At this stage, further paper submissions serve only to delay what the Constitution already requires: the immediate commencement of the trial,” they added. —With Tina Panganiban-Perez/LDF, GMA News