Court orders 3 military officials to testify in Sara Duterte impeachment trial

The Senate impeachment court has ordered one former and two incumbent military officers to testify before the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte.

Lead prosecutor Gerville Luistro said Colonel Manaros Boransing II (retired), Colonel Magtangol Panopio, and Major General Adonis Bajao are expected to testify on Wednesday, August 27, concerning the DepEd's disbursement of its 2023 confidential fund allocation.

“This is prompted by the inability of the next hostile witness, in the person of Edward Fajarda, to make himself available tomorrow and on Wednesday,” Luistro said, referring to Fajarda, who reportedly suffered a stroke.

During a House good government and public accountability inquiry on the OVP and DepEd budget back in October 2024, then DepEd spokesperson, now defense lawyer Michael Poa, told lawmakers that he asked then Undersecretary and retired Major General Nolasco Mempin to ask for certifications from a military unit for the liquidation of the P15 million confidential funds that the DepEd spent for informants in 2023.

At that time, Duterte was a concurrent Education Secretary.

But Boransing, Panopio and Bajao told the same House hearing that while it was their signatures that Mempin sought for certifications, they all insisted that they did not know that Mempin would use them to liquidate the DepEd’s P15 million confidential fund expenditures for informants.

It turned out that the certifications stated that the P15 million was spent by the DepEd for a Youth Leadership Seminar, but Boransing said such a seminar was not funded by the confidential fund of the DepEd.

“For our participants [of the YLS]...they used the local government unit funds. For the participants from the other stakeholders from DepEd, from PDEA (Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency), from the police, of course they used their own funds,” Boransing said.

“We are not aware,” Boransing added when asked if they were aware as to the purpose of the certifications where they affixed their signatures.

Boransing’s answer of “we are not aware” was repeated by others who signed the certifications, such as Bajao, Panopio, and Lieutenant Colonel Carlos Sangdaan, Jr.

But ahead of the military officials’ testimony, the prosecution will first call Office of the Vice President (OVP) Assistant Chief of Staff Lemuel Ortonio as its hostile witness on Tuesday, August 25. —LDF, GMA News