One of Vice President Sara Duterte’s “most trusted” officials acknowledged on Wednesday, Sept. 2, that he was unaware that she had tasked a security officer, Lt. Col. Dennis Nolasco, with handling multimillion-peso confidential funds at the Department of Education (DepEd). 

Michael Poa, a former education undersecretary and chief of staff, said he learned of Nolasco’s role only when the department’s special disbursing officer Edward Fajarda told a congressional hearing in October 2024 that he transferred Duterte’s confidential funds to Nolasco. 

“That’s the first time I heard there was a security officer,” Poa told Benjamin Tolosa Jr., a counsel for House prosecutors, on Day 21 of the Senate impeachment trial of Duterte for alleged misuse of the DepEd funds when she was its secretary. 

House prosecutors presented Poa as their third hostile witness. Poa was Duterte’s former spokesperson at the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and now serves as her lead spokesperson of her defense team in the impeachment trial.

Poa said he did not know of Nolasco’s involvement when he drafted DepEd’s response to the Commission on Audit (COA) audit observation memorandum (AOM) in February 2024, which requested evidence of how it used ₱112.5 million in confidential funds, including ₱15.5 million to pay informants. 

In trying to justify DepEd’s spending of the funds, the witness repeated his earlier testimony in Congress that he relied heavily on reports given to him by Fajarda and Education Undersecretary Nolasco Mempin. The two, he said, gave him four Army certifications of anti-insurgency programs on supposedly fund recipients. 

But on Tuesday, two Army colonels told the Senate impeachment court that the DepEd never funded the programs and that, on the contrary, the military organized and spent money for these.

In response to the military officers’ testimony, Poa confirmed Tolosa’s assertion that DepEd did not give a single peso from the confidential funds to the Philippine Army’s eight youth leadership summits and 53 information, education and communication campaigns in 2023. 

Tense moments

The five-hour trial had its intense moments following heated exchanges between Tolosa and lead defense counsel Sheila Sison during the prosecution’s direct examination of Poa. 

Presiding officer Francis “Chiz” Escudero reminded the counsels to take their arguments “down a notch.” At one point, he asked for public understanding and patience given the seemingly “tagisan ng talino” or intellectual competition among the three lawyers. 

Sison and Tolosa tangled at the start of the trial when she sought and got the court to strike off the record Tolosa’s description of Poa as an “abogadong walang alam,” which she found to be “irrelevant, improper and insulting.” 

During the offering of Poa’s testimony, Tolosa noted that the witness “knew nothing about” how DepEd’s confidential funds were spent though he was tasked by Duterte with answering state auditors. Instead, he said Poa “gave COA more theories and presumptions dressed as facts” when he used the Army certifications as evidence of the fund spending. 

Escudero then asked Tolosa: “Why are we asking him to testify if he knows nothing?” 

The counsel said the prosecution wanted to know why the Vice President asked him to respond to the COA when he knew nothing about confidential funds. “That’s very material,” he said. 

Poa said that as DepEd spokesperson and undersecretary and then officer-in-charge of finance, his first and only involvement in the department’s confidential funds was when Duterte asked him to reply to the audit commission’s AOM. 

Army certifications

But when he approached Fajarda, he was told to seek Mempin’s help, who in turn provided the four Army certifications to show proof of successful operations arising from information obtained through confidential activities.  

Tolosa noted that the Army certifications were issued between December 2023 and January 2024, two months before the COA issued the memorandum to DepEd and Poa’s response on April 17, 2024. 

He then asked Poa whether he “repurposed” these documents as a response to the AOM, prompting Sison to call out Tolosa for being “argumentative” in his line of questioning. 

Escudero interjected, asking Poa whether the Army certifications could be antedated. Poa said he did not want to speculate, but there were a “lot of possibilities.” 

But Tolosa reminded the court that the two Army officials on Tuesday testified that those were the actual dates they issued the certifications. 

Poa defended his use of the certifications, saying that his impression was that the documents referred to intelligence used to identify areas where the anti-insurgency activities would be conducted. Moreover, he said, Fajarda told him that rewards were given to informants. 

On whether he reviewed the acknowledgment receipts (ARs) that contained the names of informants, Poa said Fajarda showed him one AR sample from a sealed envelope. He said he did not find any odd-sounding name such as the one earlier presented in Congress. 

DepEd vault

Senator-judge Francis “Kiko” Pangilinan asked Poa if he saw a vault in DepEd, which was supposed to safeguard documents such as the ARs as required by Joint Circular Memorandum No. 2015-01. The circular governs how confidential and intelligence funds should be spent. 

“I did not see any vault when I was in DepEd,” Poa said, prompting Pangilinan to say this violated the circular. 

On his belated knowledge of Nolasco as a security officer, Poa was asked by Tolosa if he approached Duterte about it since he had direct access to her. The witness replied in the negative: “It was a very strange time at that point because I just resigned as spokesperson of the OVP.” 

But Senator-judge Risa Hontiveros did not buy Poa’s explanation. She said it was “impossible” that a chief of staff did not know the security officer’s existence. 

Hontiveros asked Poa if Duterte’s use of her confidential and intelligence funds was in line with the law and with rules and regulations. 

“I can’t answer that question,” he said. “I love to answer that question. Aside from attorney-client privilege, obviously whatever I say here would be biased. I just want to be objective. I hope you understand, Your Honor, with all due respect.” 

He added: “I would rather the evidence answer than a statement from one of her counsels.” 

Hontiveros asked Poa if Duterte is found guilty of wrongdoing, would the people in DepEd and OVP who helped her also be liable under the law. “As a lawyer, that’s possible,” Poa said. 

“Is it possible that you will be among the ones to be held liable, too?” she continued. Poa said it was “possible, but hopefully not.” CS

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