37 articles
The Davao City mayor told senator-judges he would have blocked the food-service contracts had he known, but the court found his interests adverse to prosecutors — and even the contract count and peso total depend on whose tally you believe.
A state audit of the Office of the Vice President's 2025 relief operations found missing beneficiary lists, undocumented changes to aid missions, and one batch of records the office says a typhoon simply took — with the largest single category, ₱84.12 million, tied to mission orders that never named who the aid was actually for.
Impeachment prosecutors say the bribery count against Vice President Sara Duterte could be abandoned not for lack of evidence, but because the Senate needs to pivot to the ₱7.2-trillion 2027 budget by mid-October — leaving the underlying allegation neither proven nor disproven.
The impeachment court ruled Sept. 23 that only participating senator-judges count toward the two-thirds needed to convict Vice President Sara Duterte, dropping the number from 16 to 14 — and reversing its own fixed-16 position from July.
The Senate impeachment court recalled the subpoena that would have put Davao City Mayor Sebastian "Baste" Duterte on the stand this Wednesday, resetting it a week out so the court can first hear oral arguments on the disputed conviction-vote threshold.
A Securities and Exchange Commission official testified at the impeachment trial that Duterte's name still appears as a sitting director of Metro City Chow Foods Corp. in the company's 2025 filings — more than two years into a term during which the 1987 Constitution bars her from holding outside business interests.
Prosecutors say Gencorp Industries, which Vice President Sara Duterte lists as a personal asset, collected food and catering deals from the Davao City government between 2022 and 2025 — while her brother ran the city. He's ordered to explain it under oath on Sept. 22, a day before the court rules on the conviction threshold.
Her spokesman says Vice President Sara Duterte is "ready to replace" the president, as Malacañang denies orchestrating the impeachment trial, the cases against her allies, and police operations — days before the Senate court rules on the vote threshold needed to convict her.
As retired Chief Justice Reynato Puno warns against the unconstitutional disenfranchisement of senator-judges, the sudden surge of cases against sitting lawmakers exposes the cynical arithmetic behind the Sara Duterte impeachment trial.
Amparo Cabotaje-Tang, testifying under subpoena as the prosecution's first Article II witness, said undisclosed spousal assets and disproportionate wealth trigger a legal presumption Vice President Duterte must personally rebut.
