House prosecutor Rep. Terry Ridon expects the panel to finish laying out its evidence against Vice President Sara Duterte by the close of September, a timeline that would give her defense team roughly six weeks to mount its own case.
“We will try to wrap up all of the presentation of evidence hopefully by the end of next month so that the defense will have an opportunity to present their evidence from October up to the middle of November,” Ridon said Friday during an online briefing.
That schedule dovetails with a push from Senate President Sherwin “Win” Gatchalian, who has floated December as the point by which the impeachment trial should reach its end. Asked directly about that goal, Ridon signaled the prosecution was on board.
“We share the same sentiment as the Senate President that the trial will finish at the earliest time,” he said, adding, “Hopefully before December the trial will finish.”
The urgency comes against the backdrop of repeated delays. Gatchalian has warned that the case risks spilling into 2027 should hearings keep moving at their present rate, an outcome made more likely by suspensions that have thrown off the calendar. He pointed to a fix already under discussion among senators: shifting to four hearing days each week and pushing the daily start time to 3 p.m. A “consensus” had formed around some arrangement, he said, though the specifics were left unstated. Meeting a pace of one witness per day, he noted, would require the chamber to adapt.
Next week’s proceedings are expected to center on the alleged mishandling of confidential funds tied to the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education. Ridon said the panel plans to summon multiple witnesses, among them officials from the Philippine Statistics Authority. Their role would be to address whether individuals listed on acknowledgment receipts for those expenditures actually exist in government records.
The question is not academic. Earlier, during House Committee on Justice proceedings, the PSA reported that certain names on the receipts, including “Mary Grace Piattos” and “Milky Secuya,” turned up nowhere in its database. Ridon framed that testimony as central to the panel’s argument, since the receipts anchor the documentary trail for the disputed money.
“It just adds to the fact that there was something anomalous, a misuse of public funds, not just for the P125 million confidential funds but for the entire confidential funds being discussed for 2022 and 2023,” he said.
Ridon also disclosed that the Commission on Audit has formally directed Duterte to personally repay P448 million.
