Malacanang has no business ordering complainants to desist from filing the articles of impeachment against Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio after more than a year of study by citizens appalled by her outrageous misuse of public funds, her ignorance of accounting procedures, and her issuance of fabricated acknowledgment receipts (ARs) from “Kokoy Villamin,” “Mary Grace Piattos, “Nova” and a host of other snack brands.
Surely, it was not a waste of time for the Makabayan Coalition to beat the supposedly learned lawyers at the House of Representatives in readying the impeachment complaint against Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio, who had been mocking the Lower House to “bring it on”. At the same time, lawmakers assiduously worked on the documents from late 2022 to this in sewing up a mountain of evidence proving that Duterte Jr. wasted the P125 million from Malacanang as “confidential and intelligence funds” or CIF when the money was from the Contingent Fund (CF), for which Sara is accountable. Since Sara is not fond of reading or learning, she considers all funds she lay her hand on to be CIF.
Worse, Sara’s mentor, Girl Friday, and whatever else, Atty. Zuleika Lopez, took a most stupid move of urging the Commission on Audit (COA) not to share the audit reports of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd), and Sara’s nemesis exposed the letter, ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro, who promptly moved to level a contempt charge against Lopez, who could not do anything but apologize. The apology confirmed the mischief, for which Lopez could also be liable. Yet, by apologizing, Lopez showed she’s got better sense than Sara, a fellow lawyer who invented additional legal mumbo-jumbo like “conditional threats” against Marcos Jr. and his beloved wife and Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez.
Sara thinks Manila is Davao City and that she can fix records, invent 11,000 job orders, and produce missing assets out of nothing. Sara is lying through her teeth when she insisted the COA agreed with the validity of her “rewards” donated to fictitious creatures, the hundreds of millions of pesos spent for her 13 satellite offices and 3 extension offices, and declared that it was Liza Cacho Araneta Marcos who taught her to provide payoffs to DepEd officials via envelopes with wads of money. Liza may not be an angel but surely, she would not take Sara as an understudy on the finer points of graft. The proof is only as meaningless as Sara’s daily soliloquy. “Kung may patunay, iwasiwas at huwag lunurin sa pagsisinungaling,” howled one heckler from Davao City.
Now, Marcos Jr. tells Congress not to proceed with the impeachment of Sara. It is not his business to tell anyone to lay off Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio since he does not own the fact that could prove the guilt of the latter for betrayal of public trust and confidence, culpable violations of the 1986 Constitution, and for insulting common sense. Marcos Jr. may order his allies to steer clear of Sara but that doesn’t mean that Sara’s flap is a mere “storm in a teacup,” or better still, “tempest in a teapot.” Impeachment is not a trivial matter and wasting taxpayer money to line one’s pockets is as bad as stealing campaign money from unprogrammed appropriations (UAs) and getting carried interest tacked to foreign loans that enlarge the country’s debt stock.
Why is Marcos Jr. suddenly lawyering for Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio? Is it because of the digital fraud that happened in the May 2022 presidential election was a joint enterprise, with the Cambridge Analytica scam of 2016 the template for using 87 million Facebook accounts (like what Steve Bannon did for Donald Trump) to massage unwitting Filipino voters to opt for Duterte Sr. This is the same Cambridge Analytica that had to reinvent itself after the scam was discovered, to the shame of Mark Zuckerberg. Cambridge Analytica was also the messenger for Marcos Jr., proving that it is a loyal purveyor of scams, to the dismay of the University of Cambridge.
This firm also worked on transforming Marcos Jr. into a more likable politician despite his sorry record in the Philippine Senate and his achievement as the congressman who got more funds for public works and other projects for the benefit of Ilocos Norte. Yes, the Marcoses think that charity begins at home, like the Dutertes, even if they always get the bonus. And those who had been promised their bullions and millions of dollars are still waiting to be paid their share of the Marcos loot. They are the taxpayers who hallucinated about the return of the glorious, prosperous Marcos when economic growth was 1.4% on average, and when the country had to stop paying its debt all because of the bankrupted national kitty and the bogus $600-million fund added to the Central Bank.
Today, we have the double Duterte and Marcos scam, the grand larceny that happened in May 2022 that the Comelec continues to paper over, from the sudden deluge of 20 million or so votes at 8:12 pm. on May 9, 2022, long before the polling precincts have closed to a single internet address that the Comelec purportedly paid more than P1.2-billion. All the Comelec commissioners who allowed Marcos Jr. to run despite four convictions were either Duterte cohorts, romantically linked to Duterte clones, or associated with Marcos lawyers. Curiously, the current Comelec chief, George Garcia, was once a Marcos lawyer but backed Isko Moreno before returning to the Marcos fold.
