Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year.
Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects.
Photo: AFP
Under the constitution, an impeachment by the House triggers a Senate trial, where a guilty verdict means expulsion from office and a lifetime ban from political service.
Duterte, daughter of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte, is widely considered a potential presidential candidate in 2028.
“It’s about time that VP Sara must be held accountable,” Philippine Representative Leila de Lima, who endorsed one of the fresh complaints, said yesterday. “The complaint basically ... raises the same grounds as the previous complaint, just much [more] condensed and streamlined.”
Key to both filings yesterday are allegations surrounding about US$10 million in unexplained spending while Sara Duterte was education secretary.
Sara Duterte was successfully impeached by the House last year on similar charges brought by a group backed by De Lima and other lawmakers.
In addition to questions over her spending, that complaint alleged that she had made an assassination threat against the president during a late-night news conference, charges she has denied.
An abortive Senate trial that followed saw it kick the case back to the House while questioning its constitutionality.
The Supreme Court subsequently ruled that the impeachment was a breach of a constitutional rule against multiple complaints being filed in the same year.
The court upheld its ruling last week.
In a statement, lawyers for the vice president said they were confident that the accusations would be proven baseless.
Marcos is separately facing impeachment complaints accusing him of systematically bilking taxpayers out of billions of dollars for bogus flood control projects.
Rage over so-called ghost infrastructure projects has been building for months, where entire towns were buried in floodwaters driven by powerful typhoons in the past year.
The House Justice Committee began hearings over the Marcos complaints yesterday.
Outside, a group of about 100 protesters gathered by the left-wing Makabayan bloc held aloft banners calling for the ouster of both Marcos and Sara Duterte.
“We are protesting ... to remind the lawmakers that their loyalty should be to the people, not to their political patron, not to their political dynasty, not to the president,” Raymond Palatino, 46, said.
VAGUE: The criteria of the amnesty remain unclear, but it would cover political violence from 1999 to today, and those convicted of murder or drug trafficking would not qualify Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday announced an amnesty bill that could lead to the release of hundreds of prisoners, including opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists detained for political reasons. The measure had long been sought by the US-backed opposition. It is the latest concession Rodriguez has made since taking the reins of the country on Jan. 3 after the brazen seizure of then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Rodriguez told a gathering of justices, magistrates, ministers, military brass and other government leaders that the ruling party-controlled Venezuelan National Assembly would take up the bill with urgency. Rodriguez also announced the shutdown
Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) purge of his most senior general is driven by his effort to both secure “total control” of his military and root out corruption, US Ambassador to China David Perdue said told Bloomberg Television yesterday. The probe into Zhang Youxia (張又俠), Xi’s second-in-command, announced over the weekend, is a “major development,” Perdue said, citing the family connections the vice chair of China’s apex military commission has with Xi. Chinese authorities said Zhang was being investigated for suspected serious discipline and law violations, without disclosing further details. “I take him at his word that there’s a corruption effort under
China executed 11 people linked to Myanmar criminal gangs, including “key members” of telecom scam operations, state media reported yesterday, as Beijing toughens its response to the sprawling, transnational industry. Fraud compounds where scammers lure Internet users into fake romantic relationships and cryptocurrency investments have flourished across Southeast Asia, including in Myanmar. Initially largely targeting Chinese speakers, the criminal groups behind the compounds have expanded operations into multiple languages to steal from victims around the world. Those conducting the scams are sometimes willing con artists, and other times trafficked foreign nationals forced to work. In the past few years, Beijing has stepped up cooperation
The dramatic US operation that deposed Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro this month might have left North Korean leader Kim Jong-un feeling he was also vulnerable to “decapitation,” a former Pyongyang envoy to Havana said. Lee Il-kyu — who served as Pyongyang’s political counselor in Cuba from 2019 until 2023 — said that Washington’s lightning extraction in Caracas was a worst-case scenario for his former boss. “Kim must have felt that a so-called decapitation operation is actually possible,” said Lee, who now works for a state-backed think tank in Seoul. North Korea’s leadership has long accused Washington of seeking to remove it from power
RSS