[ANALYSIS] Did the prosecution get anything from Baste?

Day 31 was another ho-hum moment in the trial of Vice President Sara Duterte, with the prosecution seeming to have lost its sense of direction.

Supposedly the star witness of the day, Davao City Mayor Sebastian Duterte took the witness stand on Tuesday, Sept. 29, as a hostile witness.

The sight of the VP's youngest brother walking from the Senate lobby into the trial room alone created tension, especially with his long-time critic, former senator Sonny Trillanes, walking in the same lobby minutes apart.

Given the prosecution’s proud announcement to call Mayor Duterte as a witness, the public had expected friction between him and the prosecution, this time with lawyer Theodore Te. 

At the behest of the prosecution, the court called for the mayor’s appearance only last Sept. 21. The prosecution had to rearrange its schedule of witnesses to present him.

But the expected fireworks didn’t come. Worse, the prosecution offered nothing to spark it. 

Known to have a penchant for making a public display of his rough tongue and rogue language, Mayor Duterte showed up in a black suit, with exposed tattoos on his neck. 

He was the lone witness of the day. He was supposed to take the stand on Day 30, a Monday. He asked the court for another day as he was preparing for the voluminous documents he wanted to present at the trial. 

He showed up as promised and submitted voluminous documents exhumed from Davao City Hall on contracts involving GenCorp, a company where the Vice President owed shares as declared in her SALN in 2024 and 2025.

Photocopying of the documents caused hours of delay in the trial, prompting presiding officer Chiz Escudero to call for an early but longer lunch recess to give time to both the prosecution and the defense to study the documents.

Before Duterte’s appearance, Rendell Sopeña of PhilGEPS told the court that PhilGEPS had recorded 15 contracts secured by GenCorp from the Davao City Hall.

On the witness stand, Mayor Duterte declared it was not just 15; it was 19 contracts in all, as he had previously announced, correcting Sopeña in a press statement.

Why did PhilGEPS fail to account for it? Nobody knows. Why did Mayor Duterte have to disclose the other four contracts? “It is in our records,” he said.

Save for the additional four contracts, there was nothing new in Mayor Duterte’s testimony.

Even compared with the testimonies of Sopeña and another witness Gerardo Del Rosario of the Securities and Exchange Commission in the last hearings, Mayor Duterte didn’t say anything new, nothing that would pin down his sister for violations of Article II of the impeachment complaint, which covers unexplained wealth, bribery, and unlawful business engagements.

“He didn’t say anything that we already knew,” said a lawyer guest in a TV show.

Like Sopeña, Mayor Duterte said all the contracts were above board, without a trace of VP Duterte or her minions getting in the way to win favors for GenCorp.

Duterte repeatedly told the court that he didn’t know of his sister’s SALN, nor of her business engagements. “We don’t discuss it,” he said. 

He said GenCorp's chief Jaime T. Cruz was a known businessman in Davao City and a known friend of his father. But he got no undue favors, he added.

Why did he get as many as 19 contracts? “Because he was qualified,” said Mayor Duterte. “Over a period of five years, that’s not much.”

Did he look at GenCorp’s corporate papers to check if his sister sat on its board? He said there was no time to look over all the minutest details of a contract. Mayor Duterte said he delegated the authority to his assistant city administrator, lawyer Tristan Dwight Domingo, to look over things for him. He would be told if there were issues, he added.

Mayor Duterte was subdued during the trial, providing straightforward and quick answers.

He showed no reluctance to field any question. At times, he was spotted raising not his voice, but his eyebrows for unclear questions.

Day 31 was completely boring, unexciting, and unremarkable, though we didn’t wish for the next witness. Nor did we spot if Manila Rep. Benny Abante had again fallen asleep.

Watching the trial, we didn’t feel Mayor Duterte was a problem; the dilemma obviously lay in the prosecution’s choice of witness and the line of questioning. “It was a waste of time,” according to the usually prosecution-friendly lawyer guest on a TV talk show. “The prosecution missed a lot of opportunities here.”

At some points, Te was visibly red and probably fidgety during cross-examination for his failure to extract anything new from Mayor Duterte, especially after Escudero and defense counsel Justin Nicol Gular would call his attention that the mayor was a witness, not a respondent in the impeachment trial.

Time and again, some senator-judges would ask the prosecution why they were not calling the right witness to answer their many questions. 

In the past, there were Col. Raymundo Dante Lachica, the OVP chief security officer, and Col. Dennis Nolasco, DepEd’s security chief, who both could provide the missing links between VP Duterte and the confidential agents who allegedly received collectively millions of pesos in confidential funds.

Only last week, senator-judge Bam Aquino asked why the prosecution would not invite Cruz and the other men and women of GenCorp, who could testify if the Vice President held any shares in their company.

Before Day 31 ended, prosecution lawyer Terry Ridon announced that the prosecution would like to call Trillanes, a known Duterte critic, on the witness stand—a move that surprised both Escudero and lead defense counsel Sheila Sison.

Escudero said it was too early to call him. “That’s placing the cart before the horse,” he said. Trillanes was supposed to provide some color to the testimony of AMLC and bank officials, as well as from their records to show Duterte’s cash assets.

But he would need a leg to stand on its own.

After meeting with some senator-judges, Escudero said he would not issue a subpoena for Trillanes, but it was up to the prosecution to call him, especially if he wanted to volunteer.

Sison initially opposed Trillanes' appearance. But apparently realizing that Trillanes was not the right person to testify on Duterte’s wealth, she agreed eventually.

Calling Trillanes, like calling Mayor Duterte, would serve a similar purpose. He could raise the room temperature during the trial. He could provide a good show, bravado and all.

Whether the trial would get something out of it is probably something else. The prosecution needs some good luck.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the opinions of PhilSTAR L!fe, its parent company and affiliates, or its staff.