VICE President Sara Duterte on Tuesday said the country can see that the impeachment complaint against her is not supported by evidence as the fifth day of her impeachment trial continued at the Senate, saying that the “rule of law” depends on facts.
“Repeatedly claiming that there were threats when none existed, inventing an assassin where there was none, and fabricating evidence to support those claims does not transform fiction into fact,” Duterte said in statement on Tuesday.
She added that such actions “undermine the integrity of public institutions, erode public trust, waste public resources, and corrupt the search for truth.” She said that an impeachment proceeding should be grounded in credible evidence, not speculation, manufactured narratives, or unsupported allegations.
“The rule of law depends on facts, not fiction,” Duterte said.
Meanwhile, the defense team of Vice President Sara Duterte has announced one of its counsels as its deputy spokesman.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, lead spokesman Michael Wesley Poa said the defense has appointed Justin Nicol Gular as its deputy spokesman who would be available to speak to the media whenever Poa is unavailable.
Poa also said that Gular would also help them reach “the regional level” due to his fluency in Bisaya.
Meanwhile, Poa said they are unsure whether Duterte would visit again her counsels at the Senate as she has “several meetings scheduled” in Manila.
On the fifth day of the trial, Poa said their cross-examination aims to test the credibility of National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) regional director Jeremy Lotoc, and reiterated that their objections would depend on the question propounded by the opposing counsel.
“Like yesterday, we didn’t really see any basis for raising objections. As you saw, we were being reasonable — we weren’t objecting just for the sake of it. But if a question is genuinely objectionable, then we would not be doing justice to our client. We would not be fulfilling our responsibilities if we failed to object,” Poa said.
