Lawyers defending Vice President Sara Duterte pushed back Monday, August 24, 2026, against the vocabulary the prosecution has been using inside the impeachment court, arguing that words like “modus,” “scam” and “kasuklam-suklam” carry built-in judgments that could sway how the public reads the case before any verdict is reached.
The complaint centered on private prosecutor Atty. Amando Virgil Ligutan, who during questioning framed the handling of the Office of the Vice President’s confidential funds as a possible “modus operandi.” Defense spokesperson Atty. Michael Poa, speaking to reporters after the 17th day of proceedings, said the term was loaded. “Pag sinabi mong ‘modus’ eh may insinuation kasi ‘yun eh na baka ma-mislead ang publiko,” Poa said, adding that a neutral phrase such as “standard operating procedure” — the wording Presiding Officer Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero later adopted — would be the fairer choice.
Escudero has already intervened on similar grounds. According to Philstar.com, when Ligutan pressed former OVP special disbursing officer Gina Acosta on whether the fund arrangement amounted to a “scam” or deliberate deception of the public, defense counsel Atty. Lindo Bacquel objected to the characterization as improper, and the presiding officer ordered the word struck from the record and told the prosecutor to recast his question.
The exchanges unfolded around the testimony of Acosta, a hostile witness for Article I, which accuses Duterte of misappropriating P500 million in confidential funds at the OVP and P112.5 million channeled to the Department of Education during her time as education secretary. Acosta told the court she alone bears accountability for the P500 million, even as she said she had no knowledge of how the cash was distributed or who several of the listed recipients actually were.
Much of the day’s friction traced back to acknowledgment receipts bearing improbable names. Ligutan presented documents showing sums released to individuals recorded as Antonio Pagong and Timon Andrew Pusa, among others, with Rappler reporting that two senator-judges recognized their own surnames on the list. Acosta conceded she never personally saw former OVP security chief Col. Raymund Dante Lachica hand over the money attributed to those names, and repeatedly told the court she could not recall specifics of the fund allocations.
The rephrasing Escudero offered drew a substantive answer. When he asked whether the practice of letting Lachica reclaim his signed receipts after liquidation — leaving Acosta without any record of the transfers — was the standard operating procedure at the OVP and earlier during Duterte’s years as Davao City mayor, Acosta agreed that it was.
Poa also signaled that the defense intends to keep its cards hidden for now, telling reporters the team will not preview its witnesses or approach because it does not want to tip off the prosecution while the public has, to this point, mostly heard one side of the case.
