Two people expected to take the stand this week in Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial will no longer be called, after House prosecutors concluded that what those witnesses could offer had already been covered by evidence on the record.
The decision, announced late in the fifth day of Senate proceedings on Tuesday, July 14, removed Office of the Vice President chief of staff and Undersecretary Zuleika Lopez and House Legislative Security Bureau executive director Capt. Belinda Bello from the prosecution’s lineup. Private prosecutor Lorna Kapunan delivered the manifestation shortly after the defense finished questioning National Bureau of Investigation regional director Jeremy Lotoc.
Kapunan told the impeachment court the panel had weighed the testimony and documents supplied by its first two witnesses, NBI officials John Mark Calilung and Lotoc, along with the questioning from both sides and the senator-judges, before reaching its conclusion. “It is the wisdom of the public prosecutors as expressed by this representation that we find it totally unnecessary, redundant, and a surplusage,” she said of proceeding with the two remaining names.
Lopez, a longtime aide to the Vice President, had been positioned to speak to three points tied to Duterte’s November 23, 2024 online press conference, the event at the center of Article IV of the impeachment complaint. According to Kapunan, the prosecution had wanted her to confirm she was inside the House detention center when Duterte spoke, that reporters were on hand to hear the remarks, and that the recording of the event was authentic.
Each of those purposes fell away during the trial itself, Kapunan explained. Defense counsel Mark Vinluan had acknowledged that the briefing occurred and that both Duterte and Lopez were present when the statements were made, which the prosecution said settled the first point. The question of authenticating the footage also dissolved, she argued, once the defense played portions of the same recording during its own presentation. “Totally unnecessary because, why? Because the defense themselves used the very same video, that exhibit, in their defense when they showed Atty. Zuleika crying and allegedly complaining about the violation of her human rights,” Kapunan said. “So, by their own admission, there is no question about this video.”
Bello’s proposed appearance was tied to a narrower matter. She had been slated to speak to a transfer order affecting Lopez inside the detention facility, a detail that surfaced in the November 23 broadcast. Kapunan described that account as supporting material only. “The testimony of Capt. Belinda Bello is merely corroborative,” she said.
The defense raised no objection. Attorney Michael Poa, one of Duterte’s counsels, told reporters the move caught the team off guard but sat within the prosecution’s rights. “It’s okay with us…We honestly did not expect it. But that was the prerogative of the prosecution, and we have no objection,” he said. Poa added that the defense keeps reserve witnesses and left open whether it might summon Lopez itself.
Kapunan stressed that stepping back from the two witnesses does not signal that the prosecution has closed its case on Article IV. She noted that both sides must file a witness list for the following week each Tuesday, meaning the panel’s next moves would become clear in the coming days. The prosecution is also weighing whether to subpoena NBI director Melvin Matibag.
Lopez had been at the Senate across Monday and Tuesday, waiting to be called, and would likely have been treated as a hostile witness had she taken the stand. Had she testified, the prosecution intended to draw out her account that she stood in the detention center when Duterte allegedly said she had arranged for a contract killing targeting President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., First Lady Louise Araneta-Marcos, and then-House Speaker Martin Romualdez, per Kapunan’s remarks reported by Rappler.
