by Diego Morra
Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio may have belittled former Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV as a mere rabble rouser and loose cannon but the way the former lawmaker tagged both Sara and her beloved husband, Atty. Manases Carpio, as beneficiaries of China’s munificence should alarm even those senators believed to be firmly within the Duterte ambit. This matter surely is serious since national interest can be compromised when Sara, heaven forbid, take over the reins of political power, in the tragic event that the Senate impeachment court gives her a pass.
By whatever standard, Sara is not entitled to royal treatment, and her refusal to frontally debunk the four articles of impeachment weakens her defenses and provides the prosecution control of the narrative, buttressing the contention of the House panel that Sara is guilty as hell on all four counts and thus disqualified from occupying any elective or appointive government post. Trillanes’ fresh disclosures should give the Senate impeachment court more information to process, and revisit or grok the Trillanes allegations at the trial plods midstream.
The defense lawyers led by Sheila Sison may howl and take forever and a day to wrap their heads around the latest bombshell and make it truly hard for them to belie the claims, which appear to be directed at Sara’s jugular and nowhere else. The allegations are against Sara and her beloved hubby, not against Mary Grace Piattos and the more than 2,600 fictitious informers that materialized to provide Sara with the bogus excuse to waste ₱612.5-million in illegal confidential funds. We are not yet focusing on the ₱2.7-billion DepEd appropriation that she failed to use to improve the educational system rather than seek New People’s Army (NPA) fighters under desks and chairs in classrooms.
Trillanes had a field day on Friday at Club Filipino as he revealed that China remitted ₱319 million to Cale 88, a company owned by Mans Carpio. Since Mans happens to be married to Sara, and is still the sitting vice president at the moment, she also deserved to have more fun after trying to twist her tongue with sentences in Mandarin. Not bad for ₱150 million from Beijing that wound up in Sara’s “Tapang at Malasakit Foundation.” It can pass off as “humanitarian aid” for the suffering Filipinos, but not a single red centavo for a sailor who lost his thumb due to an assault by violent Chinese Coast Guard men. The total amount is a cool ₱469-million, with the assistance for Sara’s foundation coming out of the goodness of the Chinese Embassy’s heart.
Sara’s defense may suddenly produce documentation to show that she and foundation officer and Taguig Mayor Lani Cayetano used the money to help those in need but like in the search for the furtive informers, the warm bodies are as confidential and secret as the confessions to parish priests. On the other hand, why was Mans Carpio’s corporation the subject of the Chinese government’s generosity? Cale 88 Foods Corp., Trillanes argued, was not a huge operation inasmuch as it registered unbelievably low electricity bills while churning out banana chips (hopefully not from banana plantations exploiting prison labor) and operating with just two workers but exporting its products to China! The company reportedly had zero trade receivables and payables.
From 2021 to 2025, just ₱125,000 was invested into Cale88 but its revenues grew exponentially from 2023, when sales soared to ₱23.15-million from zero in 2021 to only ₱20,199 the following year. In 2024, revenues skyrocketed to ₱150.7 million in 2024 and ₱34.55 million in 2025, the total revenues over five years were ₱209.4 million. Financial statements filed by the company with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) showed that its total sales were ₱208,493,000 but the firm received ₱319-million from China, Trillanes said.
It appears that China was using cash as a means to support Carpio’s business, which is also Sara’s business, while taking the humanitarian high road to back up social programs that were also designed to promote the political ambition of Sara in 2028. China is an expert not only in the influence peddling racket but also in the cabbage-style, prolonged incursions into the Philippine exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and the maritime features to which China never had any historical right to claim. Indeed, the very Kuomintang oceanographer who drew up the nine-dash-line in 1947 said his calligraphy only showed the areas in the South China Sea (SCS) can lay claim to some islets. Another Chinese oceanographer has declared that nine-dash-line or 11-dash-line cannot be a valid claim to maritime features.
After mountains of evidence prove the defalcation of hundreds of millions of pesos in CFs, the wastage of precious money to buy or lease 13 satellite offices and three extension offices and the failed schoolroom projects, the dubious DepEd computerization program and the myriad activities that never improved the educational system, Sara still has the gumption to push Chinese designs against her very own country. The Trillanes episode adds another scam that worsens the already parlous future of Sara. Sadly for Sara, people have already learned a lot how Duterte political warlordism operates and how a bloody war against the people was launched as a decoy for a nationwide criminal enterprise that seeks to punish the people more. The kibosh awaits Sara’s head.#
