Ramil Madriaga’s allegations were intense, yet Vice President Sara Duterte did not seize the clear and present opportunity to make mincemeat out of them.
There was no bloodbath during the daylong hearing of the House justice committee last Tuesday although there was a recurring ritual performed for the record: Madame Chair, the redoubtable Batangas Rep. Gerville Luistro, would direct that Duterte be formally called to comment on what had been said by Madriaga and each of the other resource persons, and the TV camera would pan to the space reserved for her and present an empty chair and the plate bearing her name and title. A bit of theater in the TV coverage, one might say, but effective in portraying the Veep’s distinctive no-show style.
Not that she clammed up altogether. At the end of the day, her camp was describing Madriaga’s narrative as contained in his supplemental affidavit as “pure fiction.” And the next day, she was taking umbrage at the claim of the “bar flunker and kidnapping suspect” that she was an unremarkable law student and needed a leg up in getting through law school. It was, she said, incredibly, the only one among “the lies thrown” by him that she “[took] issue with.”
No relationship
Duterte had been emphatic in disclaiming any association with Madriaga, who is being held at Camp Bagong Diwa on a kidnapping-for-ransom charge, and who declared in an initial affidavit in December 2025 that, among other roles, he had served not only as her bagman in delivering huge amounts of money to certain persons but also as her father’s bank dummy, in compliance with her and her father’s instructions. But it took her three months, or after his affidavit was cited in the impeachment complaints filed against her in the House, to avow the supposed blank slate between them.
She filed a 340-page perjury complaint against him last March at the Taguig City prosecutor’s office, in which she claimed that they had no personal or professional relationship. “In fact,” she was quoted as saying in an Inquirer report, “prior to the dissemination of the Madriaga affidavit, I had no recollection of knowing, meeting or interacting with” the man who claimed to have helped set up a network for her vice presidential campaign.
What then is the attentive viewer to make of the videos and pictures shown during the hearing belying that explicit distance? Why was there a failure of recollection, a disremembering of pleasant moments? Was the risk of dissembling not considered? One vid shows her greeting the man on his birthday and, for good measure, holding up a sign expressing the same happy message.
Not one word has been heard from Duterte about Madriaga’s startling claim that it was “wrong” to say that the Office of the Vice President (OVP) spent ₱125 million in confidential funds in 11 days in 2022—a point included among the alleged instances of wrongdoing cited in the impeachment complaints—because, he said, “I personally disposed [of] the money in less than 24 hours.” Reading from his supplemental affidavit, he detailed the trips he and others supposedly made on Dec. 20, 2022, in delivering the money to specific locations.
Nor did she take issue with Madriaga’s claim that accounts were opened in his name in six banks by “close associates” of her father, then President Rodrigo Duterte, into which, he was supposedly told, funds “for intelligence operations and for laundering” would be deposited.
Were it another time and place, one might say that the plot has thickened into a playwright’s dream. This piece of information offered by Madriaga was unexpected in that it presented a view of the larger landscape of family affairs (a manifestation of the family brand, as it were)—a view that may be validated through the bank secrecy waiver signed by him and conceivably in the course of an investigation by the Office of the Ombudsman. His lawyers are reported to have submitted his supplemental affidavit to the antigraft body yesterday, Friday.
Unfinished business
Let us be clear: The impeachment proceedings including the charges against the Vice President constitute unfinished business that has dragged on far enough, abetted by parties in the public and private spheres. Her camp has tried yet again to seek aid and comfort—“clarity,” she said—from the Supreme Court. That no temporary restricting order has been issued by the tribunal indicates a refusal to intervene in the workings of a coequal branch of government. (In an interview last week with Bilyonaryo News Channel, retired Supreme Court associate justice Adolfo Azcuna said the tribunal should “lay off” impeachment cases at this stage.)
The House committee on justice now continues to find probable cause to submit to the plenary the impeachment complaints it has found sufficient in form, substance and grounds, for transmittal to the Senate for trial. (Recall that in June 2025—how long ago it seems—the Senate impeachment court led by the chamber’s then president, Chiz Escudero, voted 18-5 to remand the verified impeachment complaint against Duterte to the House. The Supreme Court eventually ruled that the complaint was unconstitutional, having violated the one-year bar. But it did not clear the Vice President of the charges.)
There was more to Tuesday’s hearing than the narrative Madriaga presented, occasionally emotionally, for public inspection. The Commission on Audit’s Gloria Camora testified that Duterte and others in the OVP are obligated to return at least ₱73 million in confidential funds that were spent in 2022 without the proper paperwork. The National Bureau of Investigation’s Carolyn Pitoy presented forensic-examination findings on acknowledgment receipts involving the OVP’s confidential funds: that not only the signatures but also the dates on certain groups of receipts were written by “one and the same person.”
This tangled web may yet provide the probable cause that the House committee on justice is seeking. It proceeds with its work on April 22 and 29 notwithstanding the four petitions filed by Duterte’s camp to stop its hearings—petitions that, Chair Luistro observed, are long on technicalities but short on answers to the charges against the Veep.
Former senator Antonio Trillanes IV has been called to testify, along with representatives of the Anti-Money Laundering Council. News of the arrest in Prague of the fugitive ex-lawmaker Zaldy Co, who is presumed to hold many answers to the corruption scandal involving flood control projects, is providing a pleasant distraction. But the work of the House justice committee merits public attention. It may yet achieve the conclusion recently arrived at by a recent Octa Research Tugon ng Masa survey: that 69% of adult Filipinos back an impeachment trial for Duterte. Even if she keeps running from it. CS
