MANILA, Philippines — Davao City 1st District Rep. Paolo "Pulong" Duterte questioned whether the House prosecution panel had sufficient evidence when it approved the Articles of Impeachment against, Vice President Sara Duterte, saying its move to seek subpoenas for additional financial records suggests prosecutors are still building their case.
"If your case was already complete when the House approved the Articles of Impeachment, why are you only now looking for documents that you should have already had?" Duterte said Monday evening, arguing that impeachment "is not a fishing expedition" where evidence is gathered only after charges have been filed.
Duterte also questioned why the prosecution was seeking documents that, according to him, had already been submitted to the Senate and returned to the Bureau of Internal Revenue, asking whether the records had been lost, forgotten or only recently deemed necessary.
He argued that the prosecution appeared to have followed a process of "impeach first, then look for evidence," maintaining that an impeachment complaint should already be supported by sufficient evidence before it is approved by the House of Representatives.
The lawmaker also compared the impeachment case with ongoing investigations into alleged irregularities in flood control projects, claiming authorities were still gathering evidence in those cases while the Vice President was impeached despite what he described as insufficient proof, and suggested that political motives were behind the proceedings.
