WHY SARA WOULD BURN THE HOUSE DOWN FOR ZULEIKA LOPEZ

[An MCT Opinion]

There is a detail from the night of November 23, 2024, that gets buried under the bigger headline.

That infamous Zoom press conference, the one where the sitting Vice President of the Philippines said she had instructed someone to kill the President if she herself were assassinated, was not originally a Sara Duterte show. It was supposed to be a Zuleika Lopez briefing.

Lopez was inside the Batasang Pambansa Complex, detained after being cited in contempt by the House committee investigating confidential funds.

She started the Zoom call, cried on camera, railed against congressmen, and then suffered an anxiety attack. Sara, who had been in her brother Paolo Duterte’s office the entire night, took over.

What came out of her mouth turned into Article IV of the impeachment case now being heard in the Senate: grave threats and an alleged assassination plot against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, and former Speaker Martin Romualdez.

All of it, because of one woman.

WHO ZULEIKA LOPEZ IS IN SARA’S WORLD

Atty. Zuleika Tanglao Lopez, often called “Lyka” or “Zu,” has been orbiting Sara Duterte’s political life for almost two decades. She first appears in public records in 2007 as secretary to the Davao City Council, at a time when Sara was still vice mayor.

When Sara became mayor in 2010, she appointed Lopez as Davao City administrator.

A SunStar report from that period described Lopez as a “little mayor,” leading city hall meetings, running Sara’s 10-point agenda, and acting as the operational driver of the administration.

Her appointment was contentious.

Rodrigo Duterte, then vice mayor, openly grilled Lopez in council deliberations.

Sara pushed back, warned of a communication breakdown between city hall and the council, and still got Lopez confirmed.

That early story already shows the pattern. Even when her own father was skeptical, Sara chose Lopez.

Fast forward to 2022. Sara wins the vice presidency.

Lopez follows her to Manila and becomes Chief of Staff of the Office of the Vice President (OVP).

Constitutional lawyer Howard Calleja later calls Lopez the VP’s “alter ego” and says she would know “both legally and factually” what happened inside the office.

She was not just an aide. She was the person through whom everything flowed.

THE MONEY UNDER THE MICROSCOPE

By the time Lopez was sitting at that House hearing in November 2024, the issue on the table was not small.

In 2022, the OVP received P125 million in confidential funds, released from the Office of the President’s contingent fund only months after Sara took office.

Those funds were reportedly exhausted in 11 days.

In 2023, the OVP’s confidential fund allocation jumped to P500 million.

When you add the P112.5 million confidential funds given to DepEd while Sara was education secretary, the total amount tied to her offices being scrutinized hits P612.5 million.

The receipts tied to those funds became their own kind of scandal.

Names on the acknowledgment receipts could not be found in PSA records.

“Mary Grace Piattos” signed for medicines worth P70,000. The PSA later confirmed no such person exists in its birth, marriage, or death databases.

Then came more names that sounded made up: “Jay Kamote,” “Miggy Mango,” “Dodong Alcala,” “Dodong Bina,” and eventually names similar to public figures or their relatives.

Out of 1,992 payees in the OVP’s list, 1,322 had no corresponding PSA record.

[Side comment: The question in my head has always been is this an accounting oversight or a structural lie?]

This is the backdrop against which Lopez appears before the House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability and says, under oath, that she does not know how OVP confidential funds were used.

THE TESTIMONY THAT BROKE THE ROOM

Lopez’s official position at that hearing was simple and almost unbelievable.

She told lawmakers she was not involved in the disbursement, liquidation, or utilization of the confidential funds.

Yet OVP administrative and finance director Rosalynne Sanchez testified that three people had direct access to confidential fund transactions: Lopez, Special Disbursing Officer Gina Acosta, and Sara Duterte herself.

Lawmakers started pressing.

Deputy Speaker David Suarez pointed out that Lopez signed the OVP’s responses to COA about the funds.

Rep. Romeo Acop asked if she had written a letter to COA requesting that audit observation memoranda not be furnished to the House committee yet. She admitted it.

That letter is what pushed things over the edge.

Lopez had asked an independent constitutional body to hold back documents requested by congress, effectively interfering in an ongoing inquiry.

Rep. France Castro moved to cite her in contempt for undue interference. The committee agreed.

[Side comment: this should give you an idea kung bakit galit na galit si Sara kay France.]

Lopez tried to apologize, describing the letter as just a request. The committee was unmoved. She was detained within the House complex.

A few days later, the committee ordered her transfer to the Correctional Institution for Women in Mandaluyong.

That is the moment Sara Duterte walked into the picture.

THE NIGHT SARA WOULD NOT GO HOME

Sara did not send a lawyer to handle the situation. She became the lawyer.

She went to the Batasang Pambansa Complex, presented herself as Lopez’s legal counsel, and physically blocked the execution of the transfer order moving Lopez from House detention to the correctional facility. She stayed inside, occupying Paolo Duterte’s office, and told reporters she was not leaving.

[Note: Per my research, Sara violated the law here. Full‑time government officials are barred from private law practice unless a specific legal exception applies, so walking into Batasan as Lopez’s “lawyer” was not just dramatic, it was improper.]

The House Sergeant-at-Arms Napoleon Taas later described her behavior as a “blatant disregard for institutional authority.”

By then, Sara and Marcos were already on opposite sides of the political field. Sara had resigned from the cabinet in June 2024, stepping down as DepEd secretary and NTF-ELCAC vice chair, without giving a clear reason.

Analysts read that resignation as the formal collapse of the Marcos-Duterte alliance.

From that point on, she was a likely 2028 presidential contender operating outside Malacañang’s control.

So when she turned the House into an overnight campsite, it was not a small act. She did it with full knowledge of how it would look.

Then Lopez’s Zoom briefing melted down, Sara stepped into the call, and the words that came out have been replayed across every platform since:

“‘Huwag kang mag-alala, Ma’am, sa security ko, kasi may kinausap na ako na tao. Sabi ko sa kanya, kapag pinatay ako, patayin mo si BBM, si Liza Araneta, at si Martin Romualdez.’”

She later confirmed to the media that she had spoken to this person.

She called her words “a plan without flesh.”

The NBI opened an investigation. Article IV of the impeachment complaint was built around that statement.

It began as a reaction to what was happening to Zuleika Lopez.

WHAT THE PROSECUTION SEES IN LOPEZ

When the Senate impeachment court released its pre-trial order, it listed Article IV—grave threats and an alleged assassination plot—as the first article to be heard, with eleven trial days assigned to it.

The prosecution’s witness list for that article includes three key names: NBI lawyer Jeremy Lotoc, House Sergeant-at-Arms officer Capt. Belinda Bello, and Atty. Zuleika Lopez. Lopez is explicitly described as “a key figure” in the allegations that Sara made grave threats against Marcos, Araneta-Marcos, and Romualdez.

On July 8, 2026, the Senate impeachment court formally issued a subpoena ad testificandum to Lopez, ordering her to appear on July 13 and 14 at 2 p.m. and testify on what she knows. The subpoena has been served and received by the OVP.

Court spokesperson Reginald Tongol confirmed that Lopez is being summoned specifically in relation to Article IV.

In parallel, the prosecution has already told the court it intends to call Sara herself as a hostile witness later on. They are reserving that right for Article V, but the intent is clear: they want Sara on the stand.

That is the courtroom reality: Lopez is positioned as the bridge between the confidential funds scandal, the night in Batasang, and the assassination threat article.

WHY SARA’S PROTECTION MAKES SENSE AND DOESN’T

You can lay out all of this and still dodge the actual conclusion. I do not want to do that here.

Sara Duterte protected Zuleika Lopez because Lopez is both her closest ally and her most dangerous witness.

Lopez sat at the center of the confidential funds transactions, signed letters to COA, faced congress saying she knew nothing, and was physically present the night Sara said she had ordered revenge killings if she were assassinated.

If Lopez speaks freely at trial, she can connect three things that Sara has been trying to keep separate:

- The fake names and irregular receipts tied to the confidential funds.

- The internal operations of the OVP that made those transactions possible.

- The emotional and political context of the night in November 2024 when Sara lost control in front of a camera.

That’s the political side of it: protecting herself by protecting the one person who knows the most.

But when you watch how Sara behaved—blocking the transfer order with her own body, sleeping inside the House, refusing to leave, taking over a Zoom call in the middle of the night—you feel something else sitting underneath the strategy.

You see someone who could not emotionally separate the political risk from the personal loyalty.

In November, 2024, Veteran columnist Ramon Tulfo claimed it was an “open secret” in Davao that Sara and Lopez had been in a romantic relationship “matagal na,” and framed their bond in terms of long-term partners rather than boss and subordinate.

Senator Bato dela Rosa slammed him for it, calling him a malicious person.

I am not treating Tulfo’s claim as proven fact.

What matters is how widely that possibility was already being discussed, and how easily the public mapped it onto Sara’s behavior that night.

Because through the lens of an ordinary boss-employee relationship, her decisions do not make sense.

A politician protecting an asset releases statements, hires a legal team, and keeps distance. She does not risk a charge of inciting sedition, grave threats, and contracting a hitman just to keep a chief of staff from a correctional facility.

The protection was too intense, too physical, too self-destructive to be purely transactional.

[Side note: look at what’s happening to Rodante Marcoleta. He’s facing a non‑bailable plunder case and you don’t see Sara camping out in the courthouse for him. Anyway….]

THE BLUNT PART

So here is what I think…

Sara Duterte was protecting Zuleika Lopez for two reasons at once: the political need to keep the wall intact, and the personal bond built over almost twenty years.

She could not separate those reasons during the crisis in November 2024.

The result was a decision that felt deeply human and at the same time politically suicidal.

If she had seen Lopez only as a strategic asset, she would not have camped out inside the House.

She would not have taken over that Zoom call, live, in front of the country, and said what she said.

She would have kept her own hands off the scene and let the lawyers handle it.

She did not. She stayed. She spoke. And that choice is now being dissected, frame by frame, at her impeachment trial.

There is another line worth saying out loud.

If there is one person who can make Sara Duterte truly appear in this trial, beyond the formal presence of her lawyers, it is Zuleika Lopez.

Not the NBI, not the senators, not the spokespeople.

The woman Sara burned her future for is also the woman who can strip away every layer of distance she has tried to maintain between herself and the truth of what happened to those funds and what really happened that night.

The irony is brutal.

Sara chose Lopez over institutional decorum, over political caution, over her own safety as a public official.

She went to war for her. She turned a House detention drama into a national security crisis.

And now Lopez is scheduled to walk into the impeachment court on July 13 and 14 and speak under oath.

Whatever Lopez says, history has already recorded the most important part: on that night in November, when the stakes were highest, Sara Duterte did not protect the office. She protected Zuleika Lopez.

The trial will tell us if Lopez is ready to protect her back.