WOULD the military respect a defense secretary who, despite already enjoying wealth and privilege in the Philippines, chose to acquire citizenship in another country? That is the question Gilberto “Gibo” Teodoro Jr. must answer about his decision to become a Maltese citizen in 2014. 

As important as that question, in the light of rumors that President Marcos Jr. is considering to support him as his presidential candidate in 2028: Would the country trust a rich individual who spent P105 million for him, his wife and son to become Maltese citizens?

His subsequent documented renunciation does not erase the decision that made that necessary. Soldiers asked to stake their lives in this country are entitled to scrutinize the character of their civilian leader — especially one who directs defense policy — who was willing to abandon his native land. Filipinos should be skeptical of Teodoro, who has been thumping his chest professing to be a resolute nationalist who treats China as an enemy, even feared to be provoking that superpower to go to war against the Philippines — when his links to Malta and the entire European Union that tiny country is a member of, would make it easier for him to leave the country at the drop of a hat.

That he can do so if his wife and son, who had become Maltese citizens with him in 2016, have not renounced such citizenship. I emailed Teodoro and his lawyers to ask whether they did. As of my submission of this column to our editorial desk, I haven’t received any reply from them.

Teodoro’s Maltese citizenship was disclosed to the public by a Manila Times reporter way back in July 2025. His “Renunciation of Maltese Citizenship,” sworn to on Sept. 30, 2021, before a notary public and submitted to the Comelec on Oct. 7, 2021, when he filed his candidacy for senator, was very strangely unreported by media.

THIRTY-ONE trial days in, the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte has collapsed under the weight of what it never had: a witness who can say, under oath, that Sara herself stole money, ordered someone else to steal it, or personally pocketed a single peso of it. The prosecution has produced boxes of records, confidential-fund liquidation papers, bank statements, corporate filings — and, most recently, Sara’s own brother.

What it has not produced after a month of trial is the one thing an impeachment for graft and corruption actually requires: a direct line from the money to her.

The impeachment project has all but imploded. The Fates seem to have conspired to get Sara’s brother, Davao Mayor Sebastian Duterte, to make a dramatic appearance at the trial, stupidly subpoenaed by the prosecutors themselves. Clad in an all-black suit, Baste Duterte exuded a quiet gravitas and undeniable charisma, stepping into the impeachment trial like a stoic executioner telling the conspirators that the impeachment will soon be led to the gallows. Even the prosecutor Teodoro Te, a human rights lawyer, appeared to have cowed under Baste’s gravitas that he stammered while asking him questions.

The House persecutors have been ignorant of what an impeachment is. The Constitution allows removal of a high official for “high crimes” that make them unfit for public office: culpable violation of the Constitution, treason, bribery, graft and corruption, or betrayal of public trust — not for messy bookkeeping. Documentation defects and liquidation irregularities may be real, and the prosecution insists its evidence already proves misuse and misappropriation. What they are really claiming is their own inference, not proof.

THE Office of the Ombudsman’s special panel of investigators has done something no previous anti-corruption body managed to do with the perennial scandal of corruption over infrastructure projects: It has drawn a straight, documented line from contractors’ kickbacks to specific bank transactions, specific shell corporations and specific prime properties.

The complaint filed at the Sandiganbayan, OMB-C-C-APR-26-0044, which found probable cause to charge former House speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, former Ako Bicol Party-list representative Elizaldy “Zaldy” Co, Romualdez aide Joselyn Serenio and foreign-exchange operator Felicito Guevarra with plunder, puts a number on the scheme’s output: P7.44 billion in ill-gotten wealth, of which P5.49 billion has been traced to real estate, corporate shares and university donations.

STRIP away the shell companies and the offshore trusts, and the Ombudsman’s 113-page resolution in OMB-C-C-APR-26-0044 describes something almost artisanal: men carrying suitcases of cash across Metro Manila, three to five times a week, for three years.

The resolution builds its case for plunder against former House speaker Martin Romualdez on two separate but connected systems — one institutional, the other purely mechanical.

The first is how a legislator and a party-list representative captured the national budget itself. The second is how the money that budget generated was physically moved, in suitcases, paper bags and envelopes, into Romualdez’s hands. Both come chiefly from the sworn account of Roberto Bernardo, the Department of Public Works and Highways’ (DPWH) former undersecretary for operations, corroborated by former lawmaker Elizaldy “Zaldy” Co, and eight of Co’s former security aides.

Bernardo’s affidavit walks investigators through three stages. At budget preparation, the DPWH identifies candidate projects for its proposal; legislators and executive officials — “proponents,” in the resolution’s term — use their influence to get specific projects included in the National Expenditure Program (NEP). The DPWH’s proposal goes to a regional development committee for review, is revised, then folded by the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) into the NEP that the president submits to Congress.

At budget legislation, the House Committee on Appropriations, working with the DPWH secretary and undersecretary for planning, shapes the House’s version of the General Appropriations Act (GAA). Even projects that miss the GAA have a second route: proponents lean on the DBM to approve a special budget request and release a special allotment release order (SARO) for “unprogrammed funds.”

Sen. Erwin Tulfo’s project to reduce the number of senators needed to convict Vice President Sara Duterte an exercise in futility, a waste of the Senate’s valuable time, already suffering from the Marcos-ordered impeachment project.  Before lawyers plunge into constitutional interpretation, Supreme Court precedents and the meaning of the phrase “all the Members of the Senate,” simple arithmetic shows why.

Under the Constitution, 16 of the Senate’s 24 members must vote to convict. Sara therefore doesn’t need a majority to acquit her. More precisely, she merely has to prevent the prosecution from obtaining its 16th vote. Nine senators acquittal votes are enough.

She already has an unwavering core of seven: Alan Peter Cayetano, Pia Cayetano, Ronald “Bato” de la Rosa, Bong Go, Rodante Marcoleta, Imee Marcos and Robin Padilla.

Add to that Jinggoy Esrtada, who cannot forgive this administration for rushing the plunder charges against him and jailing him. Add Loren Legarda, as this regime’s plot to terrorize her — by filing charges against her and her son for the latter’s solar project — to vote against Sara has backfired. Legarda has assembled a strong defense team. Its head, former Ateneo dean Anthony la Viña, on a Facebook post convincingly outlined why, as he termed the suit being planned against her and her son as a condemnable weaponization of the law for political purposes.

That’s already nine voting to acquit her, so there are no 16 (two-thirds of Senate) senators voting to convict her, the constitutional requirement.

Not only that: Joel Villanueva and Miguel Zubiri seem to be leaning toward acquittal, based on their statements at the trial, so 11 will acquit her.