Dead meat

By the all the rules of the political game, Sara Zimmerman Duterte should by now be damaged goods; dead meat. Or the pariah of Philippine politics. And ousted pronto as vice president, never to be allowed to hold any public office, elective or appointive, ever again.

Instead, the Vice President continues to gallivant abroad, immune from the vagaries of impeachment shame at home.

She still gets invited as a guest of honor and speaker in some decent conferences of businessmen locally. During such events, she invariably denounces the Marcos Jr. government and offers herself as the solution to any and all major problems of ordinary Filipinos – inflation, high prices, high energy prices and shortages, massive corruption and equally massive sense of immunity of those in power. Like her.

Propping Sara up immensely are so-called surveys of trust, approval and presidential preferences ratings expressed by some 1,200 respondents, supposedly representing 117 million Filipinos. The margins of errors of such polls range from 3.8 percent to 6.0 percentage points – percentages that do not give 95 percent of ordinary Filipinos confidence about their reliability. Or truthfulness.

In one survey, Leni Robredo is only nine percentage points behind Sara Duterte in a simulated presidential race. If Sara is ahead by nine points and the margin of error is six points – isn’t that garbage? Because if you are a frontrunner and you lead by just three points (nine minus the margin of error of six), that’s practically a tie. Sara cannot be considered the sure winner in the May 2028 presidential elections.

My suspicion is that the various survey companies use the same base of respondents provided by the same supplier or contractor of instant respondents.

You know, it’s expensive and nearly impossible to get a reliable pool of respondents of 1,200 people representing the entire population of Filipino adults. You probably need to interview up to 10,000 people scattered in 50 major cities, 100 provinces, in the three major regions, within two weeks or more, to get reliable findings or opinions.

Unless you are an aide of Sara Duterte who delivers hundreds of millions to 30 different places, north to south of the Philippines, in one day. Sara’s people can deliver P125 million of confidential and intelligence funds to thousands of recipients nationwide in just 11 hours. Sara and husband Manases, in fact, can withdraw P41 million from two banks in less than an hour.

For instance, a pollster who wants to interview two people to represent the entire population of Alabang, south of Manila, will need to drive two hours and spend five hours to interview 20 people – representing two respondents and one whole town.

VP Sara is guilty as hell.

Yes, she threatened to kill President Marcos Jr., the First Lady and the former speaker. There are videos to prove grave threats. Yes, she pocketed P612.5 million of our tax money as confidential and intelligence funds and produced 5,000 fake receipts to justify the plunder. Names of alleged recipients are weird, funny and out of this world – like two people named after a vagina. Yes, she regularly bribed her subalterns at the DepEd with cash envelops to make them malleable during biddings.

And yes, she made many omissions and committed lies in her annual statements of assets, liabilities and net worth (SALNs), yearly, habitually and with breathtaking impunity.

Renato Corona was impeached and removed as chief justice in 2011 because he made the mistake of not disclosing his dollar deposits in his SALN. Yet, dollar deposits are secret. They should not be revealed. Maria Lourdes Sereno was removed as the 24th chief justice in 2018, her appointment illegal from the start, for failing disclosure requirements in her SALNs.

In Sara’s SALN omissions and lies, the evidence is overwhelming.

SALN is required of public officials, elected or appointed, to measure their trustworthiness, their fitness to hold public office, their honesty and whether they enriched themselves using their positions.

Failure to list real estate property, funds or financial assets in the SALN simply means one thing – the wealth is unexplained. Unexplained wealth is, by law, subject to seizure, because it is ill-gotten or illegally acquired. Sara and husband Manases Carpio earned P85 million jointly from 2007 to 2025. Yet, they were found to have wealth of P1.5 billion. An intel operative told me Sara’s cash hoard is P6 (SIX) billion.

Sara and Mans, both lawyers and both required by law to be covered by SALN truthful disclosures, declared zero cash balances in banks. Anti-Money Laundering Council records say so.

In the few instances she admitted to having cash, the money was only 10 percent of her actual money stash.

In the years, she declared NO cash balances as VP, Sara had in her banks these cash balances: P8.72 million in end-2022, P11.92 million in 2023,P8.53 million in 2024 and P12.18 million in 2025. Manases had these cash balances: P41.55 million in end-2022, P49.2 million in 2023, P13.43 million in 2024 and P28.41 million in 2025. Total cash in banks: P174 million. Declared in their SALNs as cash balance: ZERO.

As vice president, Sara is not allowed by the Constitution to engage in business or own businesses. Yet, she has GenCorp, Cale88, Metro City Chow, insurance policies, income generating investments and contracts with the Davao City LGU whose mayor is her brother. She also received P319 million from Chinese state-owned entities. Is that payola or loyalty money for an act of treason? Or for being in the pockets of drug lords?

Sara’s answer to all the incriminating violations of the Constitution and the laws against graft and corruption of public officials. Two answers: one, “I don’t know” and two, “I don’t know.”

When asked about Pax Silica recently, she betrayed the same “I don’t know” wisdom.

“If she doesn’t know,” asks prosecution lawyer Lorna Kapunan, “what does she know?”

Kill people, perhaps?

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