VP Sara to youth: “Demand a history that is honest, complete, and unvarnished”
DAVAO CITY (MindaNews / 16 March) — Vice President Sara Duterte urged the youth to “demand a history that is honest, complete, and unvarnished” and urged them to “defend” the legacy of Vice Presidents as “leaders who served in the shadow.”
At the Office of the Vice President’s Pop-Up Exhibit Tour and Coffee Table Book Signing on Saturday at Abreeza Ayala Mall Davao, Duterte challenged the younger generation to explore the legacy of the country’s Vice Presidents, through the exhibit and the book – First in Line: The Vice Presidents of the Philippines.
She called on the youth to “dig deeper into the nuances” and “counter-narratives” of the OVP’s historical records and significance.
“Duty, continuity, legacy. Don't just read about them, defend them. Let us protect the honor of our country,” she said in mixed English and Cebuano.
“Because every Republic stays alive, not just because it has a past, but because its youth has the courage to demand a history that is honest, complete, and unvarnished,” she added.
The book, Duterte said, contains “permanent records of 14 leaders who held the Republic together” who “were not always celebrated, but they were always necessary.”
She jokingly remarked that it would soon be 15 Vice Presidents in the book if she will not be impeached.
Duterte, who has recently announced her bid for the Presidency in 2028, noted that the second highest post of the land is “set aside, kept in reserve, treated as proximity to power rather than power itself” but emphasized that the “assumption is always wrong.”
She referenced the former President Gloria M. Arroyo, who was with her at the book-signing ceremony, and her late father Diosdado Macapagal, for their advancement from Vice President to President.
“Study the decisions made by the VPs who were unpopular, but necessary. Question the silence of the archives,” she said.
Duterte became the first Philippine Vice President to be impeached. She was impeached in February last year on the grounds of misuse of confidential funds of the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education, bribery and abuse of power, threatening the lives of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and other leaders and betrayal of public trust.
The impeachment followed a series of investigations into the alleged misuse of confidential funds whose beneficiaries included a Mary Grace Piattos, seemingly a combination of names from a pastry shop and a popular potato crisps brand.
The Philippine Statistics Authority in November 2024 said there was no record of a “Mary Grace Piattos” in the PSA’s Civil Registry System database.
The impeachment, however, did not proceed to trial as the Supreme Court in July declared as unconstitutional the impeachment complaint against her for violating the one-year bar rule that only one impeachment proceeding may be initiated against the same official within one year. The High Court in January 2026 unanimously denied with finality the motion to reconsider its July 2025 decision.
But the Supreme Court stressed that the decision “is not absolving Vice President Duterte from any of the charges against her.” But any subsequent impeachment complaint may only be filed starting February 6, 2026, it said.
After the one-year ban expired, four new impeachment complaints were filed in February 2026 for misuse of hundreds of millions of pesos in confidential funds, failure to properly declare assets, graft, corruption, and bribery, abuse of power, threats against President Marcos and other officials and betrayal of public trust.
The House Committee on Justice accepted two complaints as “sufficient in form and substance” and ordered the Vice President to file a formal answer to the charges within 10 days.
Duterte’s office received the notice on March 5. (Razl EJ Teman / MindaNews)
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