The House prosecution panel has accused Vice President Sara Duterte’s defense team of contributing to delays in the Senate impeachment trial, whether intentionally or otherwise.
Atty. Benjamin “Jay” Tolosa Jr., a member and spokesperson of the prosecution panel, pointed to the ongoing testimony of Commission on Audit (COA) auditor Xylene del Campo as an example of the issue.
Del Campo is scheduled to continue testifying on allegations involving Duterte’s supposed misuse of ₱612.5 million in confidential funds covered by Article I of the impeachment complaint when the Senate trial resumes.
Tolosa said the prosecution has been attempting to arrange an early comparison of thousands of documents shared by both sides in connection with the confidential funds. However, he said the defense has declined to conduct the comparison immediately.
He said the prosecution had repeatedly sought to have the documents compared before the next hearing to avoid spending valuable trial time on records that are common to both parties.
“Ayoko namang husgahan, kung anong intentions nila if they’re really doing this on purpose to try to derail or delay the proceedings. But what I will say, I think it’s clear, whether it’s intentional or not, eh, yan ang nagiging resulta, no,” Tolosa said.
According to Tolosa, a similar dispute arose during the June pre-trial conference, when more than 4,000 documents related to Article I needed to be marked. He said the defense at the time also rejected a proposal to jointly identify common exhibits.
Tolosa said the impeachment court had already provided both parties with another opportunity to conduct the comparison outside the courtroom so that document authentication would not take up hearing time.
“But ang message nila sa amin, they want to do it on the 14th,” Tolosa disclosed.
He noted that the defense’s proposed schedule falls after the hearing when the prosecution intends to use the documents during Del Campo’s testimony.
“So we will have to let the presiding officer know about this para clear na hindi kami nagco-cause ng delay dito. Sinusubukan talaga namin gumawa ng paraan para mapabilis, no, but ito yung nangyayari,” he explained.
Disagreements over documentary evidence have previously prompted recesses during the proceedings, giving the prosecution and defense time to compare and authenticate records in the presence of the impeachment court.
“And nakita na natin, yung mga senator judges, they were starting to lose patience, dahil nga, syempre, sayang ang oras, pare-pareho,” added then lawyer-spokesperson.
The prosecution said it is willing to authenticate and present the documents individually if the two sides cannot reach an agreement on common exhibits. However, it warned that this approach would take considerably more time during the trial.
The confidential funds covered by the allegations total ₱612.5 million, consisting of ₱500 million released to the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and another ₱112.5 million allocated to the Department of Education (DepEd) from December 2022 through the third quarter of 2023.