Vice President Sara Duterte on Wednesday fired back at Ramil Madriaga, the detained witness who testified before the House Committee on Justice the previous day, singling out one allegation she found particularly objectionable — that she required assistance to get through law school.
In a two-page statement dated April 15, Duterte said she graduated from SSC-R College of Law in May 2005 and sat for the Bar Exam that same September — a feat she described as unprecedented at the institution at the time. She said she passed on her first attempt with a general weighted average of 80, five points above the passing mark.
“Of all the lies thrown during the Committee on Justice ‘mini trial’ on April 14, the one I personally take issue with is the claim, made by a bar flunker and kidnapping suspect, that I needed someone to help me get through law school,” Duterte said.
She acknowledged not prioritizing academic standing, saying she “placed a higher premium on living a well-rounded life rather than pursuing academic excellence,” but maintained she never sought special treatment from any professor and was never the subject of complaints involving rudeness or violence against fellow students.
Duterte characterized Madriaga’s testimony as part of a broader pattern she attributed to what she called an abusive and corrupt process. She accused some members of the House of Representatives of being incapable of anything beyond “abuse and corruption,” and referenced what she described as bribery allegations that tainted the first impeachment case against her.
“Madriaga and his cohorts in the House of Representatives do not come close to my capacity to achieve results with very little effort because they cannot even weave a believable lie, much less follow the rule of law,” she said.
Madriaga, currently held at Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig City on a kidnapping-for-ransom charge, appeared before the justice panel on April 14 under a court order that allowed his presence from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. He was excused by committee chair Rep. Gerville Luistro at around 3 p.m. Before leaving, he submitted a waiver of his rights under bank secrecy laws, opening his financial records to committee scrutiny.
Among his claims before the panel was that the VP’s ₱125 million in confidential funds was distributed in roughly 18 hours — a timeline he said contradicted official accounts citing an 11-day disbursement period.
Duterte, in her statement, also directed criticism at the Marcos administration, asserting that the government’s failure to address the ongoing price crisis stemmed not from insufficient resources but from the use of public funds for political ends, which she described as cover for “the most corrupt budget in our country’s history.”
