Human rights alliance Karapatan and Hustisya (Victims United for Justice), whose representatives are complainants in the second impeachment complaint filed against Vice President Sara Duterte, assailed a Supreme Court (SC) ruling stating that the articles of impeachment against her are unconstitutional for having allegedly violated the ban on the conduct of more than one impeachment proceeding per year.
Karapatan and Hustisya were among the signatories in the second impeachment complaint filed at the House of Representatives in December 2024.
“The SC ruling, based on a disputable technicality, is a blow against the people’s quest for accountability,” said Karapatan secretary general Cristina Palabay. “It is not only Sara Duterte who has been granted a reprieve that enables her to engage in more corruption. Every other corrupt bureaucrat, including those within the Marcos clique, has been given the green light to misuse public funds because they know they can do so with impunity.”
One of the articles of impeachment against Sara Duterte concerns her anomalous use of Php612.5 million in Confidential and Intelligence Funds (CIF). “Marcos Jr., however, has a Php4.5 billion CIF comprising 44% of the total amount allotted to CIF in the 2025 budget, the biggest of all,” added Palabay. “And he is not being held accountable for its disposition because of the fund’s ‘confidentiality’,” she said. “The current regime has resorted to so many tricks to delay or do away altogether with Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial because it does not want it to snowball into a bigger anti-corruption campaign that will target other corrupt officials, including Marcos Jr. himself.”
“Recent developments indicate that there is rule of injustice, as efforts for truth and accountability are being blunted by all branches of government,” Palabay added.
On the other hand, Hustisya spokesperson Atty. VJ Topacio decried that the SC ruling is a slap in the face of those who were victimized by the evil ways by which the CIF was used by Sara Duterte and others like her. “Sara has admitted that she used her CIF to pay off informants, maintain safehouses and conduct other security operations. Her father Rodrigo Duterte has also admitted that his CIF was used, among others, to incentivize the drug war killings.”
“With his own dirty human rights record, it would not be much of a stretch to conclude that a significant portion of Marcos Jr.’s CIF has been used for the red-tagging and surveillance of dissenters, for psywar operations, including orchestrated social media attacks to vilify activists and for black operations to abduct, forcibly disappear or extrajudicially kill them,” said Topacio.
“The victims cannot stay quiet in the face of such rank injustice,” said Topacio. “Through their collective efforts, the fight for justice and accountability continue in all arenas,” concluded Topacio.