VICE PRESIDENT Sara Duterte has asked the Supreme Court to enjoin the Senate from convening as an impeachment body and hearing the articles against her.
It is in her favor that the Senate has not held a caucus to discuss the elephant in the room, i.e., that when they were elected the senators assumed the additional albeit dormant role as judges in a possible trial against impeachable officials of high station.
Judicial relief means that the VP will be able to stop public presentation of evidence that can ruin her presidential ambitions.
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Article 4 is scary if the VP has hidden wealth in her bank accounts.
The article alleges that she betrayed public trust by amassing ill-gotten wealth contained in accounts she holds jointly with her father Rodrigo Duterte.
To recall, Chief Justice Renato Corona was convicted by the Senate when it was established that he had more than 180 million pesos in his bank accounts that he did not declare in his statement of assets liabilities and net worth (SALN).
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The bank secrecy law could not suppress details of deposits made in Corona’s accounts. Impeachment proceedings are exempt from the application of the law.
Corona’s conviction casts a terrifying shadow because his bank deposits are dwarfed by Duterte deposits, assuming article 4 to be true.
House prosecutors allege that Sara Duterte’s bank balances are grossly disproportionate to her salaries as vice mayor and mayor of Davao City. Two billion pesos were allegedly transacted from 2006 to 2015 in those joint accounts.
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It is doubted that these amounts were generated from the VP’s legitimate income as a longtime public official. In fact, she listed only less than P14 million as her net worth in the SALN she submitted in 2007.
Assuming that she did not spend a single centavo when she was vice mayor and mayor, the VP would have saved a little more than P2 million annually until she decided to run for the second highest position in the land.
Bank deposits that are manifestly out of proportion to one’s salary as a public official raises the presumption that these are ill-gotten under Section 2 of Republic Act No. 1379.
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The VP will have to show that outside of executive time she is legally engaged in a profitable business or that she has legitimately acquired properties that yield rental income to the tune of those bank entries.
What if these bank deposits are recipients of check payments whose progeny may be traced using the subpoena powers of the impeachment court?
Former Sen. Antonio Trillanes claims that Sammy Uy deposited manager’s checks in 2011, 2012, and 2013 in the BPI joint account.
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Arturo Lascañas has confessed as a Davao death squad member in an affidavit submitted to the International Criminal Court. He identified Uy as a drug lord in that same affidavit.
The VP has no cause for worry only if there are no bombshells waiting to be detonated in those bank accounts./PN
