VP Sara confident in winning impeachment trial

National

VICE President Sara Duterte expressed confidence that she could hurdle what could be the biggest fight of her political career.

Duterte said her legal team was “more than confident” in their defense when she faces impeachment trial before the Senate in mid-July.

Upon her return from The Hague—where she visited her father, former President Rodrigo Duterte, who is currently awaiting trial before the International Criminal Court—Duterte met with her legal team to discuss preparations.

“I can’t tell you the preparations of my lawyers for the impeachment. But after I arrived from The Hague, we had a meeting. And they told me that they are more than confident in winning the impeachment trial, the impeachment case,” she said in a Philstar report.

The confidence displayed by the vice president was described by House Assistant Majority Leader and Tingog party-list Rep. Jude Acidre as “arrogance."

“You cannot claim vindication when you have yet to offer a full and truthful accounting of public funds entrusted to your office,” Acidre said in the same Philstar report.

Alongside the legal controversy, Duterte is also facing scrutiny after her "Duter10" campaign with an additional endorsement of two other senatorial candidates, Sen. Imee Marcos and Las Piñas Rep. Camille Villar.

La Union 1st District Rep. Paolo Ortega V believed such endorsement as expedient and preparatory for her impeachment trial in mid-July. By then, the winners of the May 12 midterm election will determine the members of the senate court participating in her trial.

Duterte refuted this, expressing the move as influenced by her father's recent political drama from the ICC arrest.

“What triggered me to come out was what they did to president Duterte. The injustice that they did to him. They took him from the Philippines, they forcibly boarded him on a plane without permits, bringing him to The Hague, detaining him under foreign (authorities),” Duterte said.

Duterte also shared this initiation as her promise to her father's bid to campaign for the PDP-Laban senatorial lineup, envisioning a “peaceful and prosperous Philippines."(Lovely May C. Mutia, CTU-TC Intern)