[ANALYSIS] Tale of two witnesses: Where is the trial going?

Two prosecution witnesses took the witness stand on Day 30 of Vice President Sara Duterte's impeachment trial—one on cross-examination and the other on direct examination. Despite presenting their knowledge and documents, their testimonies left the public wondering whether the trial was moving any closer to a conviction or an acquittal, especially given the political ruckus the threshold vote created last Wednesday, Day 29, which sent anti-Duterte supporters into a frenzy—with some predicting her conviction sooner than expected.

The prosecution spokesmen always managed to connect the dots and the missing links as well as pin down Duterte each trial day so neatly outside the court. Well, not unlike what had happened in the House hearings of the impeachment complaint.

Alas and alack, while spokesmen could litigate outside the court, say what they wished against Duterte, without having to face any challenge, the witnesses, as in the case of Rendell Sopeña and Police Major Joericson Sangalang, faced cross-examination on Day 30 and, in the process, left the public at large wondering: Where is the trial going?

On cross-examination on Monday, Sept. 28, Sopeña, chief of the Philippine Government Electronic Procurement System, admitted that he didn’t know if Duterte had any role in the 49 contracts with an aggregate amount of some P35 million awarded to GenCorp, a company Duterte had declared to have some business interests supposedly based on her Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth in 2024 and 2025.

Of the 49 contracts, 11 were negotiated, in other words, without bidding, since some of the 11 contracts amounted to less than P500,000. In all, the 11 contracts had an aggregate amount anywhere between P7 and P8 million.

Sopeña could not provide an iota of information to show that Duterte or a mere mention of her name, even in whispers during bidding, had exerted some persuasive power for GenCorp to win the contracts.

Sopeña had provided the impetus on Day 28 when he revealed details of GenCorp's 49 contracts, amid the testimony of another prosecution witness, Gerardo del Rosario of the Securities and Exchange Commission, who declared that Duterte’s name did not appear in GenCorp’s corporate papers.

GenCorp got a contract from OWWA worth P330,000; 33 contracts from PhilHealth worth P1.3 million; and 15 to 19 contracts from City Hall worth P34 million, he said. 

The prosecution counsels and spokesmen went to town with Sopeña’s disclosure on Day 28, declaring that Duterte violated a provision of the 1987 Constitution prohibiting her from engaging in any business. The court had previously asked two of these counsels to explain why they talked too much outside the court.

Given that Sopeña and Del Rosario clashed over Duterte’s role in GenCorp, senator-judge Bam Aquino asked the prosecution why it didn't call the men and women of GenCorp, the “right people” who could provide the missing answers. It wasn’t the first time the prosecution missed the “right witness.” It had refused to call Col. Raymundo Lachica to shed light on the movement of confidential funds between the OVP and the alleged confidential agents.

Until Day 30, the Del Rosario-Sopeña conflict in testimony was not settled.

Sopeña’s testimony on Day 30 was anticlimactic, way, way below public expectations.

If some irregularities had marred GenCorp's contracts, he said, other government offices like COA and the Ombudsman should flag the same. “We (in PhilGEPS) are merely the repository of the documents,” he said.

So anticlimactic, perhaps, was Sopeña’s testimony that it even lulled one of the prosecution’s rabid anti-Duterte spokesmen, Manila Rep. Benny Abante, into sleep during the trial. Presiding judge Chiz Escudero caught it and called the attention of Abante’s fellow prosecution panel members to ask Abante to take a nap elsewhere. “He needed some rest, but not here at the back of the witness,” Escudero said.

The question—Where is the trial going?—reached its peak when the prosecution presented Sangalang, the head of the PNP firearms and licensing unit, in support of Article II of the impeachment complaint, which covers unexplained wealth, bribery, and unlawful business engagements.

No less than some senators-judges, including those perceived to be anti-Duterte because of their vote in the new controlling threshold, questioned the wisdom of hearing Sangalang's testimony, especially in the face of the prosecution’s pronouncements that it was willing to cut the number of its witnesses in the hope of speeding up the trial. Among them, senator-judges Raffy and Erwin Tulfo, and Migz Zubiri.

Thanks to Escudero, Sangalang’s testimony pushed through. Prosecution lawyer Ysabel Zamora was probably too pleasant-looking not to be given her share of the limelight.

Zamora is the lone representative of San Juan, a post once held by his father, 1969 bar topnotcher Ronaldo Zamora, a close friend of Escudero's father.

On the witness stand, Sangalang said Duterte has 22 firearms, both short and long, while her husband, lawyer Mans Carpio, has 29 firearms, both short and long.

There was nothing irregular in the firearms; all were registered, according to the PNP official.

And the senator-judges likewise didn’t find anything wrong with the aggregate worth of the firearms, at a P7 million market value, a fortune by the standard of the Filipino Everyman, except that the Dutertes, including her father, former president Rodrigo Duterte, were putative firearms holders. Well, even Zubiri and the late president Noynoy Aquino were known gun enthusiasts.

The prosecution went to town outside, asking why Duterte did not declare these firearms under such a category in her SALN.

Escudero looked amused when Raffy, who had made reservations about hearing Sangalang's testimony, stood up for some interjections.

Raffy found nothing wrong with it as Duterte could have declared these under the personal property category. “Lahat naman ng tao dito palagay ko, in one way or another, may baril,” said Raffy, who, as a mediaman, travelled accompanied by armed bodyguards.

To sum up his interjections, he said there ought to be a law limiting the number of guns for any individual.

A UP lawyer guest on a TV talk show said these firearms could have been brought during the hearing on Article IV, which accuses Duterte of grave threats.

Indeed, if the idea was to portray Duterte and her husband as some kind of Mr. & Mrs. Smith, a 2005 action movie starring Brad Pitt and his now-estranged wife, Angelina Jolie, it would have been apropos.

Defense lawyer Carlo Joaquin Narvasa didn’t bother to cross-examine Sangalang, saying Escudero has established that the firearms were at market value, not acquisition value.

The prosecution explained things better after the trial during a press conference. They talked about Duterte’s SALN and firearms.

For a witness whose testimony they said was irrelevant for Article II, Sangalang’s story took Day 30, hands down.

Maybe not that irrelevant. But it was a disruption, nonetheless.

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