1 hour ago
4
Upgrade to High-Speed Internet for only ₱1499/month!
Enjoy up to 100 Mbps fiber broadband, perfect for browsing, streaming, and gaming.
Visit Suniway.ph to learn
Cristina Chi - Philstar.com
September 1, 2026 | 4:26pm
MANILA, Philippines — The impeachment court on Tuesday, September 1, heard the testimonies of two military officials whose signatures are on documents the Department of Education, under then-Secretary Sara Duterte, used to liquidate its confidential funds in 2023.
Duterte's trial entered its ninth week today with the prosecution's relatively brief presentation of witnesses Col. Manaros Boransing II and Col. Magtangol Panopio, as the defense chose not to cross-examine both military men.
Boransing and Panopio signed certifications that attested to the "successful" conduct of youth leadership summits and information campaigns that their Army units ran in 2023.
Tuesday's session is still on Article I, which accuses Duterte of misusing P612.5 million in confidential funds across the Office of the Vice President and DepEd; the P15.54 million tied to today's witnesses is one slice of that larger figure.
Here are the three highlights from today's proceedings:
1. DepEd didn't "release" funds to the Army, though used its summits as proof its confidential spending worked
Both Boransing and Panopio testified their units, the Army's 1st Infantry Division and 7th Infanty Division, respectively, received no funds from DepEd, the Office of the Vice President, or the Vice Presidential Security and Protection Group for their divisions' conduct of 2023 Youth Leadership Summits and information campaigns.
Sen. Bam Aquino got Boransing to confirm the Army's total operational spending across all eight summits, through a rough on-the-spot computation, likely stayed under P500,000, with local governments covering most youth participants' costs and other agencies shouldering their own expenses.
DepEd nonetheless submitted Boransing's certification to the Commission on Audit as what the agency called proof of success of an information-gathering or surveillance activity, one of its bases for P15.54 million in confidential funds it claimed went to rewards payments for informants.
Private prosecutor Reynaldo Robles, who led the prosecution's direct examination today, said the amount covered a large number of individual payments, roughly P100,000 to P200,000 each, some listed under names he described as unusual, and that the figure covered only the first two quarters of 2023.
The certificates signed by Boransing and Panopio, however, both make no mention of any amount. Under questioning from Presiding Officer Chiz Escudero, Boransing acknowledged the certificate did more than state the successful conduct of activities, as there was a sentence that the Army "successfully collaborated with the Department of Education," resulting in "zero reported [communist terrorist] recruitment." Boransing agreed that it amounted to a claim of success.
Sen. Joel Villanueva pressed the same point and argued that a certificate stating an activity was "successfully conducted" doesn't establish any link between a specific informant, the information that informant supplied, and a reward paid for it. Boransing said he had no opinion on how his certificate was used and is not qualified to weigh in, since he isn't an intelligence officer.
Boransing and Panopio both said they had only learned their certificates were submitted by DepEd to justify its confidential spending during the 2024 House good government committee hearings that sought to probe Duterte's use of secret funds.
2. DepEd's "confidential" information about student matters, which partly shaped where the Army held its summits
Boransing, under questioning from Escudero, said he could not characterize DepEd's inputs as confidential in nature. What DepEd provided, he said, was information on school schedules and permission to speak with students — details he distinguished from anything resembling intelligence work.
Later, under questioning from Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian, Boransing went further and said DepEd gave his division no confidential or surveillance information at all. What DepEd contributed, he said, was "open-source information," including which students showed leadership potential, and so could be pulled in to be participants in the leadership summits, and which schools made suitable venues.
Panopio, under questioning from Gatchalian, gave a similar account but with an added detail. He said his certification's claim that DepEd information had "enabled" the Army's civil-military and intelligence operations referred to input from teachers on the ground, not DepEd officials at higher levels. Asked what kind of information this was, Panopio said it covered matters happening in the community — including communism, terrorism, drug abuse and family issues — and that he could not say definitively whether any of it counted as confidential.
Pressed by Gatchalian to specify what, if anything, DepEd shared that he would call confidential, Panopio said: "Siguro po 'yung mga... I can speculate only... Maybe the personal circumstances like teenage pregnancies or other personal information na maging confidential because it is their personal life."
Panopio said this kind of community-level information factored into how the Army unit picked where to hold its summits and campaigns, depending on the "needs" of the communities.
3. No substantial stipulations
Before Panopio took the stand, the prosecution tried to speed up the trial by asking the defense to stipulate — agree without live testimony — that three more AFP officers (Panopio, Maj. Gen. Adonis Bahau, and Lt. Col. Carlos Sangdaan) would testify essentially the same as Boransing had.
Lead defense counsel Sheila Sison, however, refused to go that far, and the defense agreed only that the officers issued the certifications and that no confidential funds were transferred from DepEd to their units.
She would not stipulate that the officers were unaware their certifications would be used in DepEd's liquidation, arguing each certificate closes with the line "for whatever legal purpose it may serve" — language she said shows the officers signed knowing the documents could be put to legal use.
