Davao Mayor Baste Duterte Ordered to Testify in His Sister's Impeachment Trial

What the subpoena requires

The office of Davao City Mayor Sebastian Duterte received the order through its administrative services division on September 22. Court spokesperson Reginald Tongol said the sergeant at arms delivered a subpoena ad testificandum et duces tecum, the form that compels both testimony and documents, setting his appearance for September 28 to 30.

The mayor was told to bring certified true copies and complete electronic copies, loaded on three flash drives, of city government records covering all contracts and similar transactions entered into with Gencorp Industries Inc. from 2020 to the present. The order also covers records involving any entity that owns or operates a Jollibee branch.

It was the second order sent to his office. An earlier one was recalled when the prosecution moved its witnesses around.

The documents relate to Article 2 of the case, the charge built on the Vice President's wealth, her asset declarations and her business interests. The Constitution bars the Vice President from holding a financial interest in any contract with the government or with any local unit while in office.

The Gencorp contracts at issue

Rendell Sopena, a division chief at the Philippine Government Electronic Procurement System, told the court on September 22 that its database shows Gencorp winning 34.2 million pesos in projects from the Davao City government.

That figure is more than twice the 14.3 million pesos identified in a September 15 report by Rappler, which first drew attention to the contracts. Sopena also testified that the regional office of the state health insurer in Davao Region awarded 33 contracts to the same company.

Prosecutors argue that the Vice President listed the firm as a business interest in her 2024 and 2025 statements of assets, liabilities and net worth, and that the entry works against her own case. Panel adviser Robert Ace Barbers and spokesperson Zia Alonto Adiong said that admission should carry more weight than the absence of her name in the company's corporate filings.

The prosecution frames the relationship between a sitting mayor and a sitting vice president as the heart of the problem, since the contracts were awarded by a city government her brother now leads.

How the mayor answered

In a press statement, the mayor put the total at 33.2 million pesos in contracts with city hall since 2022, spread across 19 awards.

He said he and every other official and employee at city hall had no knowledge that his sister held any interest in the company, and that neither her given name nor the surname Duterte appears anywhere in the corporate documents attached to those awards.

He has not said publicly whether he will appear on the dates set. The court has treated the statement as a reason to push ahead rather than to drop the request.

Reaction in Davao

Councilor Luna Acosta of the first district called the subpoena politically motivated at a briefing of the Davao Peace and Security Press Corps on September 22, tying it to the wider case against the Vice President rather than to the contracts themselves.

Prosecution spokesman Adiong said the mayor's statement only vindicated the request for his testimony. Private prosecutor Jay Tolosa said the denial was itself the reason to put him on the stand, so the account is given under oath and on the record.

Davao City Hall is the single largest source of the contracts in question, which is why the prosecution wants the city's own files rather than copies obtained from the procurement system.

Where the trial stands

The day before the subpoena was served, a Securities and Exchange Commission official, company registration director Gerardo Fernando del Rosario, testified that the Vice President remained a member of the board of directors of Metro City Chow Foods Corporation until 2025, based on general information sheets the company filed from 2022 to 2024. Defense lawyer Justin Nicol Gular called the commission's summary of her holdings misleading, saying the figures reflect transactions by corporations rather than by her.

On September 23 the court changed the arithmetic of a conviction. Thirteen senator judges backed a motion by Senator Erwin Tulfo to reconsider the ruling of July 6 that set the threshold at 16 votes, two thirds of the full 24 member Senate. The threshold now rests on two thirds of the senator judges legally allowed to take part, a smaller base whenever any of them are excluded.

The Mindanao interest in the case runs through Davao City. The charge that produced the subpoena is the one built on money and business records, and the documents the court wants are held at city hall.