A former head of the country’s anti-graft court found herself fielding questions about her personal politics on Monday, September 14, as the defense team in Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial sought to probe whether the witness carried any bias against their client.
The exchange came during the cross-examination of retired Sandiganbayan Presiding Justice Amparo Cabotaje-Tang, who had earlier been cleared by the Senate impeachment court to testify as a witness for the House prosecution on Day 24 of the proceedings.
Defense counsel Atty. Mark Vinluan pressed the retired magistrate on where her sympathies lay. When he asked whether she held anti-Duterte views or backed the Vice President, Cabotaje-Tang rejected the first suggestion and said she had no personal acquaintance with Duterte.
The questioning then turned to the opposition-aligned movement that rallied behind the 2022 presidential bid of former vice president Leni Robredo. “Kakampink po ba kayo, Ma’am?” Vinluan asked. The retired justice did not appear to recognize the label, and Vinluan rephrased his query to ask directly whether she belonged to the “pink” camp. She replied that she had “never been political” and described herself as consistently “apolitical.”
Vinluan also sought to establish a personal tie between the witness and one of the lawmakers arguing the case against Duterte. Asked whether she counted House prosecutor Rep. Chel Diokno among her friends, Cabotaje-Tang said no, explaining only that the two had encountered each other during proceedings at the Court of Appeals.
At another point, the defense attempted to put before the court a 2018 online news report by ABS-CBN that raised allegations of favoritism against the witness. That accusation traces back to a letter-complaint filed with the Judicial and Bar Council claiming she had shown partiality in approving a retirement gathering for a clerk of court — a charge she has denied and that the Supreme Court threw out in July 2018 for being unverified and lacking supporting documents.
Diokno moved to block the report from entering the record, arguing that the material had not been properly authenticated.
