Sara Duterte's defense team drops most bank witnesses in impeachment trial

Make this your preferred source to get more updates from this publisher on Google.

The defense team in the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte has dropped most of its bank representative witnesses, retaining only a representative from the Bank of the Philippine Islands (BPI), in a bid to shorten the proceedings, spokesperson Michael Poa said.

Poa said the defense decided against calling the other bank representatives to avoid wasting the time of the Senate impeachment court and the witnesses, noting that testimonies on the authentication of bank records were already on record.

“We don’t think that there’s a need to, siguro, waste the time of the court… and waste the time also of the bank representatives sa pagpapatawag sa kanila tomorrow. Binawasan na natin, iniwan na lang natin yung sa BPI representative,” Poa said.

“We dropped, basically, the bank representatives,” he added.

Poa said dropping the witnesses would help abbreviate the proceedings. The defense also dropped a barangay captain from its witness list.

The spokesperson, however, did not disclose the identities of the remaining defense witnesses.

Earlier in the day at the trial, some senator-judges raised concerns about the lack of details in the testimony of GenCorp Industries and Metro City Chow Foods in-house lawyer Suzette Balucanag-Punay.

Asked about how the defense planned to address these gaps, Poa said that there will be other witnesses to be presented who could answer questions about Duterte’s Statement of Assets, Liabilities, and Net Worth (SALN).

“I don’t think there’s a hierarchy of gaps or anything like that but with the questions of the senator-judges, for example, ‘Why is it in the SALN’, ‘Why do the SEC [Securities and Exchange Commission] documents reflect otherwise’, those are the issues we will address with future witnesses,” Poa said in a mix of English and Filipino.—Jean Mangaluz/LDF, GMA News