Sara Duterte trial recap, Sept. 7: '11th hour' admissions, switching articles
MANILA, Philippines — Nearly two-thirds of the confidential fund recipients that the House asked the Philippine Statistics Authority to check have no record of ever being born, married or dying, a statistician of the agency told the impeachment court Monday, September 7.
By the close of the day's proceedings, the defense had confirmed on the record that indeed, the odd and unusual names on those Office of the Vice President acknowledgment receipts are aliases — a disclosure the prosecution questioned for coming at the "11th hour."
PSA Assistant National Statistician Marizza Grande took the stand through direct, cross, redirect and two rounds of senator-judge questioning before being excused in the afternoon; the defense waived recross.
The court today spent its first hour on stipulations covering former DepEd special disbursing officer Edward Fajarda. The prosecution asked to recall his subpoena after a medical certificate showed he needs another 30 days to recover from a stroke.
The prosecution remains on Article I, which covers the alleged misuse of P612.5 million in confidential funds.
Here are the three highlights from today's proceedings.
1. PSA statistician: the 63% being non-existing is unusual
Grande testified that 1,685 of the 2,669 names the House good government committee submitted for verification in 2024 have no birth, marriage or death record.
This includes the now-infamous "Mary Grace Piattos" who's listed as having been paid confidential funds by the OVP.
Of 677 DepEd payees, 398 had no record of any kind; of 1,992 OVP payees, 1,287 had none.
Only 152 names across the full list returned a unique, single match.
The PSA also found 34 people who died before the 2022 disbursements — one, Marlene Sunga, dead since 1965 — and 25 minors, including infants barely a year old when the funds were supposedly released to them, based on the records.
Asked by Sen. Joel Villanueva to describe these findings, Grande confirmed it was unusual for 63% of all names on a list to not show up in their records.
She explained that her office normally sees a negative rate of 7 to 8% on walk-in requests for verification, and about 38% on the largest bulk request it had handled before.
Defense counsel Justin Nicol Gular used his cross to mark the limits of what the PSA can find out about the confidential fund payees. Under cross, Grande confirms PSA runs no field investigations and depends on what local registrars and foreign posts send it.
Registration is also not exactly universal: a tiny 3% of births go unregistered, and death registration sits at about 84 percent.
"We are testifying as to the availability of the record and not as to the existence," she said.
2. Defense belatedly says names are aliases
Sen. Risa Hontiveros asked defense counsel Justin Nicol Gular to clarify their position after observing the defense had been arguing two things at once — that the names on the receipts could be real people who happened to not be in the records, and that aliases would never appear in the records at all.
Gular was careful to say that the defense would be reserving its full position for its presentation of evidence, which will come after the prosecution concludes all four articles.
He added: "That is classified information, but these are in fact aliases, your honor, for the consideration of this court."
Prosecutor Mae Divinagracia then pointed out that the defense had two chances to state the same, in its answer to the impeachment articles and during pre-trial. Because it did not state its position on the authenticity of the names on the receipts, the prosecution built its case without assuming the names were bogus.
"With all due respect, it's already a tad too late for the defense, to be adopting the position that these are aliases," Divinagracia said.
"It's not only the defense who has the right to due process, even the prosecution is entitled to due process. We are entitled to know what we are working on, the theories of their case... We're already at the 11th hour, and there's still none. What is their position?" she added.
Lead defense counsel Sheila Sison replied that the prosecution must first discharge its burden of proof, and until it does, the defense may stay silent. "This is not yet the time for the defense to present its evidence, or whether we will even present evidence if the proper time comes," she said.
3. Prosecution reorders the remaining articles, drops two colonels
Lead prosecutor Gerville Luistro told the court the prosecution will present its evidence on unexplained wealth next, moving it ahead of bribery. Neither article is being dropped, she said. "The only thing that is being changed is the order of presentation."
Sen. Erwin Tulfo pressed her on whether the prosecution intends to present Cols. Raymund Dante Lachica and Dennis Nolasco, who served as security officers for OVP and DepEd's confidential funds, respectively.
Luistro confirmed the prosecution will not call either, saying the allegations of misuse and misappropriation have already been established. Luistro also put on record that the choice of witnesses is the prosecution's to make.
Escudero confirmed that right and noted the defense may still call the two, since both are listed as common witnesses in the pretrial order. Failing that, the court can summon a witness itself after both sides rest, but that witness would answer only senator-judges.
Police Maj. Jovelyn Magay, DepEd Assistant Secretary Sunshine Fajarda and COA's Bresilio Sabaldan are set to testify tomorrow.
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