Lanao del Sur 1st District Representative Zia Alonto Adiong stated on Thursday, October 29, that the House prosecution panel has no reason to feel demoralized by a recent Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey indicating that 35% of Filipinos are dissatisfied with how the impeachment case against Vice President Sara Duterte is being handled.
Adiong pointed out that the poll was conducted between September 21 and 27, a timeframe that preceded the prosecution’s presentation of critical financial records. This evidence supports Article II of the complaint, which accuses the Vice President of accumulating unexplained wealth through undeclared assets and failing to divest from business interests as required by the Constitution.
“The survey is not supposed to demoralize the prosecution because our track is based on a constitutional premise: Accountability. We all saw how the trial went. The Vice President was given due process to explain herself,” Adiong, a spokesperson for the House prosecution panel, said during a press conference.
“The prosecution’s focus is really to hold the Vice President to account based on constitutional duty. The survey is not for us and may speak of different things. It cannot be automatically translated into the prosecution doing not the right thing,” he added.
The impeachment proceedings now focus exclusively on Article II, following the panel’s decision to drop three other charges: Article I regarding confidential funds, Article III on bribery, and Article IV concerning grave threats directed at President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and his family. The reduction came after lawyer and certified public accountant Alex Cabrera testified that the Vice President and her husband recorded minimum unexplained wealth of ₱817 million and a maximum of ₱1.5 billion.
Cabrera’s findings were derived from an exhaustive review of the couple’s financial documents, which included Statements of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALNs), bank transactions, deposit records, insurance payments, income tax returns, and corporate filings.
“What drives us to move forward is the constitutional duty of the prosecution to hold the Vice President to account,” Adiong stressed.
Highlighting another metric from the same survey, Adiong noted that 78% of respondents believe it is important for the Vice President to personally address the allegations.
“There is a high percentage of the public who wants the Vice President to explain, and that speaks a lot on the a public clamor for an explanation directly from the Vice President,” Adiong said.
“That speaks about their belief that an irregularity happened and that is the most important thing that we need to focus on,” he concluded.