Manila 3rd district Rep. Joel Chua had never conducted a direct examination for the House prosecution before Wednesday, July 29. By the time he finished with two witnesses in Vice President Sara Duterte’s Senate impeachment trial, the panel’s lead prosecutor was reaching past a perfect score to describe his work.
“11/10,” Gerville “Jinky Bitrics” Luistro told reporters at an afternoon briefing when asked to grade him. The Batangas 2nd district representative went further: “I wish to commend Congressman Joel Chua for having successfully concluded his direct examination to both witnesses.”
Luistro framed the moment as more than a rookie succeeding on his first attempt. She pointed to how far the lawmaker-prosecutors sit from the courtroom in their day jobs. “You have to understand that we are lawmakers, we are members of the House and it’s been quite a while na wala kami sa ligitation (that we have not been engaged in litigation),” she said. That distance, in her telling, made the effort notable: “these members of the House are showing their courage to once again engage in examination of witnesses.” She tied it to a single motive — “dahil sa pagmamahal sa bayan (because of love of country). Congratulations to Congressman Joel Chua.”
The witnesses Chua handled were both retired Land Bank of the Philippines officials called to support Article I, which concerns the alleged misuse of confidential funds by Duterte. Violeta Constantino, former manager of the bank’s Shaw Boulevard branch, testified to four cash withdrawals of P125 million each — P500 million in total — connected to the Office of the Vice President. Nenita Camposano, who once managed the DepEd branch, spoke to three checks encashed at P37.5 million apiece, or P112.5 million. The seven transactions add up to P612.5 million in confidential money entrusted to Duterte.
The assignment placed Chua on familiar ground. As chairperson of the House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability, he headed the 2024 legislative inquiry into the same confidential-funds controversy the prosecution is now pressing in court.
His debut also fed a broader run of confidence within the prosecution. Earlier in the week, Majority Leader and Ilocos Norte 1st district Rep. Sandro Marcos had called the team’s performance so far “brilliant.” The group carrying the case against Duterte is made up of 11 lawmaker-prosecutors and 15 private prosecutors.
