MANILA – Atty. Zuleika Lopez, the chief of staff of Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio, is planning to resign.
Lopez was cited for contempt by the House committee on good government probing the Vice President’s confidential funds and ordered transferred to the Correctional Institute for Women in Mandaluyong.
According to Duterte-Carpio, Lopez expressed her desire to leave her post after being traumatized by her detention at the House of Representatives’ custodial center.
“Sabi niya, ‘I want to resign. I want to resign from the Office of the Vice President’ and I told her okay. Sabi niya, ‘I want to go home to my mother’,” Duterte-Carpio said on Sunday.
But the Vice President said she told Lopez that “at this point, that is truly impossible.”
Duterte-Carpio said Lopez was traumatized after police officers entered her detention room at the House of Representatives around midnight on Saturday to enforce the transfer order to the women’s prison.
Lopez was then rushed to St. Luke’s Medical Center after suffering from panic attack before being transferred to the Veterans Memorial Medical Center on Saturday afternoon.
Duterte-Carpio said Lopez would still attend the House hearings into how the OVP and Department of Education, which Duterte headed until July, used confidential funds granted in 2022 and 2023.
Police Brigadier Genersl Nicolas Torre III, director of the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group, said all directives came from the House of Representatives and that the police’s role is limited to securing the detainee.
He said there were concerns that Lopez might be transferred to the Correctional Institute for Women from St. Luke’s but said higher-ups had cleared her stay at Veterans.
“We will be providing the perimeter security as requested by the HOR,” Torre said./PN
