At least 10 to 12 lawmakers from across party lines are planning to endorse one of the three impeachment complaints filed against Vice President Sara Duterte, a House official said yesterday as a fourth rap may be filed next week.
House Secretary General Reginald Velasco said the lawmakers set to endorse one of the impeachment raps are from both the majority and minority blocs, but he declined to identify them.
Velasco said his office is already verifying the three impeachment complaints previously filed against Duterte even as some House members havea asked for more time for the filing of a possible fourth case before these are referred to the Speaker.
“If they file it (fourth impeachment complaint) on Monday, I will have to make a decision whether I will then refer it to the Speaker or delay it further,” he said.
For her part, ACT Teachers party-list Rep. France Castro said the Makabayan bloc will call a meeting of all complainants and endorsers by the second or third week of January.
“There are already three impeachment complaints. It will be difficult if we delay these any further. We have seen what Sara Duterte has done with public funds. And she is also not fit to be Vice President because of what has done,” Castro said.
“We need a unified effort to push the Marcos administration and the House leadership to allow the impeachment cases to push through,” she added.
The Makabayan bloc, which endorsed the second impeachment case against Duterte on the grounds of alleged betrayal of public trust, has been doing a signature campaign among House members to hasten the process.
“The Vice President’s brazen misuse of more than half a billion pesos in confidential funds, particularly the suspicious liquidation of P125 million in just 11 days at the end of 2022, represents a grave betrayal of public trust,” Bayan chairperson Teddy Casino said in an earlier statement.
If the complainants are able to gather 106 signatures, the impeachment complaint can be immediately endorsed to the Senate.
Duterte, for her part, said she is ready to face the impeachment complaints against her, with her father, former President Rodrigo Duterte, serving as one of her lawyers.
“I am confident that I did not break any law. I did not do anything illegal. Once the cases are there, then we will face it,” the Vice President said in a previous interview.
