Pa-rant lang sandali.
This is a non-lawyer's observation. Just another opinion that probably will not change anything. But I want to say it anyway.
Yesterday, the prosecution dropped Atty. Zuleika Lopez and Captain Belinda Bello as witnesses in the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte. This was announced in court by private prosecutor Lorna Kapunan.
The reason on record: their testimonies would be redundant and unnecessary.
I do not buy that.
WHAT THEY JUST THREW AWAY
The first two witnesses for Article IV were both from the NBI: Senior Agent John Mark Calilung and Regional Director Jeremy Lotoc.
Calilung authenticated videos and explained the investigation into Sara Duterte's public statements. He admitted he had no personal knowledge that Sara hired any assassin.
Lotoc traced what they knew about the supposed assassin and about "Operation Romanov" and told the court there was no proof that Sara actually hired anyone to kill the President.
They are doing their job. But they are still one type of witness: investigators looking at screens, reports, and digital files.
Lopez is a different thing.
She is Sara's chief of staff. She was detained by the House and almost moved to the Correctional Institute for Women after a contempt citation. Sara went live in November 2024 and threatened the President and his family because of what was happening to Lopez.
Bello is also a different thing.
She is the executive director of the House Legislative Security Bureau. She was in charge of the security side of Lopez's detention and the planned transfer.
You cannot get that kind of testimony from an NBI report.
If you want to show that Sara's words were not just drunk talk on a livestream, you put on the stand the aide she said she was protecting and the House security chief who handled that aide.
You let the country see what kind of atmosphere Sara created around her office and her people.
Then you ask the Senate: is this how a vice president behaves and still keeps her job?
Instead, the prosecution walked away from them.
THE "OPERATION ROMANOV" EXCUSE HAS NO BACKBONE
The defense keeps reaching for "Operation Romanov" as the emotional excuse for everything. They say there was a plot to kill the Duterte family. They say Sara was reacting as a daughter, wife, sister.
Right now, that story has no spine.
Lotoc told the court that whatever "Romanov" intel they saw was not about the Dutertes. It was about the Marcos First Family.
The NBI tagged any supposed Romanov threat against Sara as "unvalidated."
Their supposed main source, "Princess Maui," was invited for validation. She did not appear.
Malacañang said no "Operation Romanov" could justify threatening the President.
They pointed out that it was Sara's own camp that raised Romanov and challenged her lawyers to show proof if they had any.
The PNP and AFP both said they had no evidence of any assassination plot against the Duterte family.
Right now, every single member of the Duterte family is still alive.
No attack. No injury. No concrete proof that someone was about to kill them on orders of the state.
So when Sara went live and said she had already spoken to someone who would kill Marcos, his wife, and his cousin if something happened to her, what was that based on in real life?
If "Romanov" is just a rumor and she still said those words, what does that say about her judgment?
WHAT SARA'S WORDS REVEAL
I am not a lawyer. I am not arguing jurisprudence. I am just looking at this as a Filipino watching a vice president speak.
You are the second highest official of the country. Your aide is in trouble. You believe she is being abused by people in power. You have options.
You can file cases. You can go to the Ombudsman. You can go to the courts. You can tell the public what is happening, present documents, and demand accountability.
Sara chose to go live and brag about having a man ready to kill the President and his family.
No one forced those words out of her mouth. There was no gun pointed to her head. There was a camera, an audience, and a habit of talking like everything is a street fight.
My mother-in-law put it in one line while we watched the clips: "napaka palengkera niya ano?" It sounds funny at first. But it's also a better character assessment than most legal arguments I have seen. It points to a way of talking and thinking that feels more palengke baranggayan drama than vice president.
If there was even a small sense of being a statesman in her, those words would not have left her mouth. She would have been angry. She would have been loud. But she would not casually dangle a kill order on the President as a punchline.
THE SENATE IS NOT A NEUTRAL COURTROOM
This is the part that makes me nervous.
Sixteen out of twenty four senators are needed to convict. That is already a high bar.
Some senator judges look like they are doing the defense's job for them, even if they will never admit it.
Pia Cayetano has been very active in "reminding" the prosecution about rules and framing. On Day 2 she pushed back on the way prosecutors were speaking and wanted parts of their remarks stricken. On Day 5 she again raised questions on what counts as "grave threats."
During Lotoc's testimony, Alan Peter Cayetano left the hall for almost an hour. Robin Padilla, Mark Villar, Camille Villar, and Imee Marcos also left for long stretches. The explanation is that there are monitors in the lounge, so they can still watch.
For me, that image is enough. While the country is trying to figure out if a sitting vice president should be removed, some senator judges are not even in their seats for full hearings.
These are the people who will get to decide whether Article IV is impeachable or not.
A senator who keeps trimming the prosecution's language. Senators who leave the room while key witnesses testify. A Senate that already spent the past year dodging this case on technicalities and Supreme Court rulings.
In that kind of chamber, you do not relax just because the defense "admits" that the threat was said. You build every layer you can. You put every insider who saw and felt that night on the record. You force the Senate to see, not just hear, what kind of leader is on trial.
INSTEAD, THEY BLINKED
The prosecution said Article IV was their strongest article. They chose to start the trial there. They lined up NBI, House security, and then Lopez.
Then, after two NBI witnesses, they declared Lopez and Bello redundant.
So what do we have now?
We have the threat itself, basically admitted.
We have "Operation Romanov" hanging in the air with no solid proof that anyone wanted the Dutertes dead.
We have a vice president whose own words reveal more about her character than any legal defense ever could.
And we have a Senate that does not look like a quiet, focused jury. It looks like a room where some people are half-listening while already drafting the acquittal in their heads.
ONE MORE THING I WANT TO SAY
I will be honest about something.
Beyond the legal arguments, beyond the witnesses and the articles and the constitutional thresholds, I wanted to see Zuleika Lopez on that stand for a different reason.
I wanted to see her grilled. And I wanted to watch Sara Duterte squirm.
Not out of cruelty. Out of years of watching a public official talk like she is untouchable, perform for cameras like accountability is something that happens to other people, and treat the weight of her office like background noise to whatever she is feeling that day.
Lopez on the stand, under cross-examination, with Sara in the room watching her closest aide answer questions neither of them could control, would have been one of the rare moments in this trial where Sara could not perform her way out.
That is the trigger point. That is where her palengkera character, as my mother-in-law would say, would have shown itself in a room full of senator judges who are supposed to be paying attention.
Kapunan made a legal call. I understand it.
But for the Filipinos watching at home who have waited a long time for this, the prosecution did not just drop two witnesses today.
They dropped the moment.