by Diego Morra
Going by the argument of the defense panel of Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio that she, as respondent, is not obliged to stand as witness in her own trial, something is amiss with this gaggle of lawyers. Even as they represent Sara, not one of them is competent enough to answer questions about her confidential fund (CF), or confirm that Mary Grace Piattos is alive and well and luxuriating in Davao with the hundreds of thousands of pesos in “reward money.” Lawyer Michael Poa, despite his being the chief of staff at DepEd, could not answer questions about acknowledgment receipts (ARs), the absence of sales invoices and the authority to disburse.
Only Sara empowered herself with controlling the P612.5-million in CF that has gone to pot, and the P448.2-million that the Commission on Audit (COA) has ordered her to return. Poa pointed to Sara as the sole person knowledgeable about the entire caper, like Gina Acosta, Lemuel Ortonio, Edward Fajarda and even Maj. Gen. Magtanggol Mempin, who was ordered to secure the certifications from the Philippine Army (PA) that P15.54-million from the DepEd was used to bankroll eight youth leadership summits (YLS) and 53 counterinsurgency activities. Poa said not a single centavo from the DepEd was used for all those activities, corroborating the testimonies of two Army colonels and destroying the position of the defense that four Army certifications proved the expense. Nothing in those certifications said so. As the respondent, Sara is mandated to appear and defend herself and not hide behind the legal trapeze of her lawyers, all of them incompetent to respond to questions that only Sara can answer, clarify, dissemble or rebut.
The presence at the dock is necessary inasmuch as a huge number of evidence has been generated to debunk the claims that Sara made, from insisting, against the law dictionary, that her CF is beyond accounting and auditing by lesser mortals. If it were so, then all departments, agencies, local government units (LGUs) and police and military units can treat their CFs as their own pork barrel. Sara’s argument doesn’t wash, like her insistence that doing away with the 16-vote threshold for conviction was singularly meant to convict her. Or that assassins were out to kill her at the stairs and elevators of the Quezon City Hall and that Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is the worst problem of the nation and he should resign. This self-serving call is horrendous and betrays a deeper cognitive haywire.
Yet to Sara, it is a normal, even if irrational call. Didn’t she talk about being groomed by her creator to be president of the Philippine Republic. True to her Jewish heritage, Sara is now saying the laws do not apply to her, the way Zionist fascists insist that they are the chosen people and the law of the Gentiles do not apply to them. Former Senate President Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel was not wrong in urging Sara to seek professional help. A court-appointed psychologist examined her father Rodrigo Duterte and found out he was suffering from anti-social narcissistic personality disorder (ANPD), was a womanizer and someone who could not sustain his matrimony.
Such an examination on Sara would delight the Senate, the Supreme Court (SC), the Philippine National Police (PNP), Malacanang, all elected officials and Filipinos who care about the mental health of elected leaders. After hearing about the daily tantrums of Sara and the less-than endearing legal opinions of former Supreme Court (SC Chief Justices Reynato Puno, Hilario Davide, Artemio Panganiban and retired SC Associate Justice Adolf Azcuna, with three ex-chief magistrates declaring that the threshold for conviction is based on the number of participating Senators, excluding those who are in hiding and considered a fugitive, and Senators Jinggoy Estrada and Rodante Marcoleta, who are both incarcerated and facing trial for capital crimes. In all deliberative assemblies, the count is based on those who are present.
In the current impeachment trial, which is sui generis, and a proceeding entirely separate from legislative work, only the Senate can determine the threshold for conviction. Thus, the 2/3 threshold based on participating senators would end up as 24 less three, or 21, with the 2/3 of the body being 14. With the former chief magistrates arguing that the needed 16 votes are not set in stone and may be reduced to 14, Sara’s narcissistic rage will certainly be stoked. Absentee voting is not allowed in impeachment trials and at least two of the senators are under court jurisdiction and deprived of liberty to answer for the crimes they are accused of.
Already, Dr. Nuelle Duterte, Sara’s first cousin and a professional analyst. stressed that Sara’s behavior has been nurtured by years of pampering and the false belief that she is entitled and the rules applies for thee and not for me. If the Jews believe in the apocryphal claim that they are the chosen people, the Dutertes of Davao City believe they are the chosen family. By being the country’s holy family, they are beyond reproach, they can futz around as they please, engage in idle talk in the hope of convincing everyone that they are working and guaranteeing that deadly floods would not visit Davao City. Or fly around the world 91 days in a year and report that they had succeeded in convincing the Duterte cult that Digong shall be released in two weeks. Better yet, watch a Taylor Swift concert while floods inundated Luzon in 2025 and four typhoons transformed the country into a lake the year before.
There is still one solution to the problem that Sara caused, and that is to wrest power from Marcos Jr. and declare the impeachment proceedings illegal, arrest the members of the prosecution panel as well as the private prosecutors, abolish the Senate and the House of Representatives, shut down newspapers and broadcast stations and declare martial law. Can Sara hack it? Only after being examined by latter-day Sigmund Freuds and Carl Jungs. As of now, there is no law that requires psychiatric examinations for candidates who can merely read and write but do not read and are pathetically wrong all the time.#
