Impeachment rumors no surprise for VP Sara Duterte

Vice President Sara Duterte —Inquirer photo/Richard A. Reyes

MANILA, Philippines — Vice President Sara Duterte said over the weekend that she was unfazed by the possible impeachment complaint against her, as she has been anticipating this move for quite some time now.

But she cried “political harassment” over the allegations against her brother, Davao City Rep. Paolo Duterte, and her husband, lawyer Manases Carpio, after a witness at a hearing at the House of Representatives implicated them in a conspiracy involving an P11- billion drug shipment in 2018.

However, the Vice President wanted to keep her distance from responding to the allegations, saying she could not speak for her older brother and her husband.

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“But as I always say … all of these are political harassment, political attacks. As you can see, all these allegations were made after I left DepEd (Department of Education) and after I started to speak out about what we are doing for our country,” Duterte told reporters in Filipino on the sidelines of the Kadayawan Festival in Davao City on Saturday.

“What I am hoping for is that our fellow Filipinos won’t forget that the real problem right now is poverty and the problem of our people, which is the rising prices of food. That is the basic problem, so, I hope they won’t get carried away with these noises but instead, focus on these problems,” she said.

The Vice President was responding to the recent congressional joint committee hearing last week wherein a former customs intelligence officer, Jimmy Guban, linked Duterte and Carpio to the smuggling of 355 kilograms of “shabu” (crystal meth) that were hidden in steel magnetic lifters.

The illegal drugs passed the inspection of the Bureau of Customs after arriving at the Manila International Container Terminal in 2018.

Duterte tendered her resignation as education secretary in June which took effect in July, after which she was replaced by then Sen. Juan Edgardo “Sonny” Angara.

Her resignation signaled the falling out between her family and that of the Marcoses. She also started to criticize some of the government policies including the “attacks” on televangelist and now fugitive Apollo Quiboloy and the changed stance on letting the International Criminal Court probe her father’s bloody war against drugs.

She also hit back at the Philippine National Police last month after the removal of 75 police escorts from her security team, while still maintaining less than 400 security personnel from the military.

At that time, Duterte lashed out at PNP chief Gen. Rommel Francisco Marbil and described the pullout of her security as a “clear case of political harassment.”