by Diego Morra
Can Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio still refuse to testify in her defense as the deluge of evidence requires her to take the witness and debunk what she insists are fabricated documents that prove her amassing enormous wealth even before she got married? Press releases do not win impeachment cases and not even the pompous statements of Malou Tiquia or the strained legal legerdemain of Michael Wesley Poa could dent the facticity of the evidence laid down in open court.
The brutal truth is that her 16-member defense panel cannot act as her surrogate since not one of them is competent to answer the questions posed by the prosecution. They are lawyers but not one of them can claim that signatures were forged, or that bank accounts were opened in her name but without her knowledge. Only Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio can answer the prosecution’s queries. Legal doppelgangers are prohibited.
If Sara were the only competent witness to disprove or affirm the validity of bank accounts, manager’s checks, credit memos and other records, why can’t she be woman enough to take the cudgels for her own self and declare before the whole world that she is being persecuted and slapped with manufactured charges? The fact is, Sara always enjoyed Duterte’s impunity and practiced it, and no matter how many times the Commission on Audit (COA) questioned her disbursements as Davao City mayor, she made mincemeat of all of them.
Her playbook is copycat from Donald Trump, who learned it from Roy Cohn: Deny everything, do not pay, deflect and project all the crimes to the accusers and refuse to apologize. For all his mentoring of Trump, what Cohn got was a pair of “diamond” cuff links that turned out to be worthless yags, or imitation diamond. Cohn died a lonely death, disbarred and forgotten, from the scourge of humanity called AIDS. Are we hearing that the 16 defense lawyers are not getting paid? Not yet, but with the impeachment case now down to Article II on ill-gotten wealth, maybe a discount is in order.
Sara is a businesswoman who even tried to do some catering for her own people in the course of the trial, charged to the Senate. A deadbeat VP? Not an impossibility. She can do a Trump, a confirmed grifter who never paid 3,500 contractors and forced them to file cases and get swamped with legal fees. She is indolent, which explains why she delegated the disbursements of her confidential funds to non-bonded military officers in violation of COA regulations. By doing so, she betrayed public trust and punished with double impeachment cases.
DepEd officials also confirmed that Sara was known better for being absent from the job and her rudderless leadership at the DepEd. And in the few times she ever visited schools, she had a dispute with walls decorated with educational materials, promoting the doctrine of high-tech education. Sweden just threw away gadgets from classroom, and pupils will now have to work with paper and pencils, not tablets and laptops. That’s the culture of learning giving the prophets of high tech a whack on the chin.
Sara will not testify. Not because she is faineant, or work-shy, or indolent, or even a ham of an actress. Being asked questions by people she regards as her inferiors is beneath her dignity. During the congressional investigation, she even wanted former Rep. Stella Quimbo to be sacked as panel member, accused former ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro of being a convicted criminal and slammed other for persecuting her to thwart her march to Malacanang accompanied by the Richard Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries.”
By not testifying, she, in ham-fisted fashion, will simply rely on a forensic analyst to “destroy” the contention of Atty. Alex Cabrera about Sara’s conservatively estimated P818-million ill-gotten wealth from 2022 to 2025. Some of those approached to do the job purportedly rejected the overtures. Her Jewish hubris, her firm belief that she is above the law and destined to be president of this country through her corruption, sloth and ignorance should eventually convict her. To be honest, binitbit lang siya ng tatay niya ngunit naniwalang kaya niyang maging pangulo. Mahirap mangarap nang gising kahit practitioner ka ng impunity.#
