Opening Doors, Striking ‘Scams’: How Kapunan Outplayed the Duterte Defense”

Poa Opened a Door; Kapunan Burned the Whole House Down

By Louis ‘Barok‘ C. Biraogo — August 6, 2026

SO this is what accountability looks like in the Republic of the Philippines: a polite courtroom brawl over who opened what door, while the public funds allegedly blown on “Mary Grace Piattos” and a pharmacy’s worth of disallowed medicines hang in the balance like a bad joke no one in the Senate is brave enough to laugh at. Day 12 of the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte was not a legal proceeding. It was a masterclass in prosecutorial jiu-jitsu, defensive obstructionism, and the slow-motion political assassination—or salvation—of a dynasty.

Let’s stop pretending the four corners of this trial contain the whole truth. This is the toxic, logical endpoint of the imploded UniTeam, a political war being waged by constitutional means. The Marcos machine wants Duterte legally decapititated before 2028. The Duterte camp wants to martyr itself on the cross of “political persecution,” with the ghost of Rodrigo Duterte’s International Criminal Court (ICC) detention looming over every objection. The weapon of choice? P612.5 million in confidential funds and the legal definition of a door.

**“Poa Opened a Door. Kapunan Burned the House Down. The Senate Counted Ashes.”**

The Kapunan Gambit: Turning Poa’s Shield into a Sword

Lorna Kapunan, the grand dame of this legal theater, didn’t just walk through an open door; she kicked it off its hinges. The defense counsel, Michael Poa, in a seemingly innocuous cross-examination, scored the minor point that the Office of the President (OP) had approved the Office of the Vice President (OVP)’s confidential fund requests for Q4 2022. He wanted to plant the seed that this was all officially sanctioned, an act of good faith reliance, not theft. Look, the Palace signed off! How can it be a crime?

Kapunan’s redirect was a legal scalpel. She didn’t dispute the approval; she disemboweled its legal significance. “If the president gave this grant,” she purred, “does the vice president no longer have an obligation to liquidate?” The answer from Commission on Audit (COA) Auditor Roderick Wamil, a man who has seen the innards of this bureaucratic beast, was immediate and definitive: “She is obligated; she has an obligation to liquidate.”

Poa sputtered, objecting that this was beyond the scope, a leading question, a prosecutorial ambush. “Counsel opened the door!” Kapunan thundered. And legally, she was flawlessly correct. Poa dangled the OP approval as an implicit absolution. Kapunan simply clarified the foundational principle of the 1987 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines Article XI, Section 1: public office is a public trust. The President can write a check, but he cannot write a blank check of immunity. Authorization and accountability are two separate branches on the tree of public finance, and the Supreme Court’s guardrails on betrayal of public trust in Emilio A. Gonzales III v. Office of the President (Gonzales III) don’t vanish just because Malacañang signed a disbursement form.

The “Scam” Bomb and Escudero’s Split-Screen Justice

But Kapunan, God bless her theatrical soul, couldn’t leave a perfect legal point alone. She had to crown it. She declared that the evidence no longer showed mere prima facie evidence of personal conversion as defined by COA-DBM-DILG-GCG-DND Joint Circular No. 2015-01 (COA-DBM Joint Circular No. 2015-01), but a full-blown “scam.” It was a deliberate media moment, a branding iron pressed onto the skin of the Duterte campaign. Poa, suddenly a guardian of courtroom decorum, moved to strike, and Senate President Francis Escudero sustained the objection, flushing the word from the record.

This is the tragicomic paradox of this trial: it’s simultaneously a court of law, where name-calling is forbidden, and a political contest, where public branding is the entire point. Kapunan knows her “scam” line will linger in the headlines even if stricken from the stenographic notes. She is playing for the gallery, building a narrative of systemic fraud for the 16 Senator-Judges who will cast the final, non-appealable vote, a narrative that hinges on the absurdity of P40 million in CFs buying medicines, an expenditure as illegal under the COA-DBM Joint Circular No. 2015-01 as it is baffling in a non-health agency.

The Piattos Defense: Between Legal Calisthenics and Political Calculus

And what of Michael Poa? He is executing the only defense available when the facts look like a COA auditor’s fever dream: procedural trench warfare. His strategy is not to explain “Mary Grace Piattos” or her suspiciously crunchy-sounding cohort “Renan Piattos.” It’s to constrict the record, object to the scope, and preserve every comma of error for an appeal that will likely be decided not by the Supreme Court but by a political backroom in the Senate. Every sustained objection is a delay, a stone in the gears of the prosecution’s momentum machine. It’s legally astute, tactically transparent, and designed to run out the clock until the 2028 elections turn this trial into a footnote.

His client, the absent Vice President, is playing the most cynical game of all. By not showing her face, Sara Duterte avoids the perjury trap Kapunan has so lovingly prepared. She floats above the fray, a specter of grievance, while her proxies in the Senate—the three senators absent or in hiding—are already factored into the grim political math. To convict and permanently bar her from public office, the prosecution needs a supermajority of 16 votes. It’s a number that feels as fictional as an acknowledgment receipt for “Mico P. Harina.”

This is the decisive tension that will break the Republic’s back or, perhaps, set it straight: are the Senator-Judges treating this as a legal trial, where the prima facie evidence of unliquidated millions points to a betrayal of public trust under the Gonzales III standard? Or is this a political coliseum where they must decide if permanently crippling the Marcos administration’s chief rival is worth lighting their own political futures on fire? The evidence suggests the latter. This is an autopsy of a prosecution, a slow-motion acquittal dressed in legal robes. The defense is not arguing innocence; it’s counting votes.

So, we hurtle toward a verdict that will either breathe life into constitutional accountability or officially declare the Office of the Vice President a fiscal black hole exempt from the gravitational pull of Presidential Decree No. 1445 (Government Auditing Code of the Philippines). We call for the supremacy of the rule of law, knowing it’s a whisper in a hurricane of political payback. We call for accountability, for the ghost of Article XI, Section 1 to haunt these chambers, and for a future where the Filipino youth aren’t treated to the spectacle of their leaders debating whether a P70,000 payout to a potato chip alias is “regular” business. The window to prove that democracy is not a scam is closing, and Senator-Judges, your fingers are caught in it. The only question is whether you’ll have the spine to slam it shut.

Key Citations

A. Legal & Official Sources

The 1987 Constitution of the Republic of the Philippines. Official Gazette of the Republic of the Philippines, 1987, http://www.officialgazette.gov.ph/constitutions/1987-constitution/.
Emilio A. Gonzales III v. Office of the President. G.R. No. 196231. Supreme Court of the Philippines, 28 Jan. 2014, lawphil.net/judjuris/juri2014/jan2014/gr_196231_2014.html.
COA-DBM-DILG-GCG-DND Joint Circular No. 2015-01. Guidelines on the Entitlement, Release, Use, Reporting and Audit of Confidential and/or Intelligence Funds. 8 Jan. 2015, http://www.coa.gov.ph/wpfd_file/coa-dbm-dilg-gcg-for-goccs-dnd-joint-circular-no-2015-01-january-8-2015/.
Presidential Decree No. 1445. Government Auditing Code of the Philippines. 11 June 1978, lawphil.net/statutes/presdecs/pd1978/pd_1445_1978.html.

B. News Reports

Lalu, Gabriel. “Kapunan Hits Poa: If Palace Approved Duterte’s CF, Is She No Longer Liable?” INQUIRER.net, 4 Aug. 2026, newsinfo.inquirer.net/2277301/kapunan-hits-poa-if-palace-approved-dutertes-cf-is-she-no-longer-liable.