House prosecutor Terry Ridon insisted on Friday that a simple check of the prosecution team’s public interviews would show none of its members went after the detained senator-judges hearing Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment case.
The Bicol Saro party-list representative said the record does not back up Senator-judge Robin Padilla’s assertion that prosecutors had turned on Senators Jinggoy Estrada and Rodante Marcoleta, both jailed over plunder charges. Padilla had singled out Ridon as one of two House prosecutors who supposedly verbalized attacks against the pair.
“His remarks are without basis. They are absolutely fake news,” Ridon said.
According to Ridon, Padilla had accused him and Mamamayang Liberal party-list Rep. Leila de Lima of arguing that Estrada and Marcoleta should be kept out of the proceedings because of their detention. Ridon countered that he had never taken any position at all on whether jailed senator-judges may sit in the trial, whether in remarks made at the House or the Senate.
Where that question belongs, Ridon said, is with the Senate Impeachment Court and with the trial courts handling the detained lawmakers’ respective cases — not with the prosecution.
The senator’s accusation, as reported by the Philippine Daily Inquirer, followed an appearance on Sonshine Media Network International, a broadcaster aligned with the Duterte camp, where Padilla questioned why prosecutors were going after senator-judges while defending his earlier call for the panel not to be “one-sided.”
Even while pushing back, Ridon maintained a conciliatory line toward the chamber trying the case. “We have the highest respect for the Senate Impeachment Court and our Honorable Senator-Judges, including Senator-Judge Padilla,” he said.
Padilla later walked back part of his statement. In a subsequent message reflected in an Inquirer graphic on the exchange, he apologized to Ridon for the misidentification, saying Ridon’s name had come to mind first because he associated the congressman with the same progressive and leftist background as his own. He clarified that the comment he had attributed to Ridon was in fact made by Manila Rep. Joel Chua.
The friction traces back to the ninth trial day, when Padilla pressed lead public prosecutor and Batangas Rep. Gerville Luistro on whether her stance that witnesses with pending cases may still testify ought to apply equally to senator-judges facing charges — a line of questioning that spilled into an exchange with the prosecution’s lawyers over their right to speak during his manifestation.
