Camarines Sur 3rd district Rep. Gabriel Bordado Jr. (left), Vice President Sara Duterte (Facebook)

A third impeachment complaint has been filed against Vice President Sara Duterte, with one of the solon-endorses being a known close ally of former vice president Leni Robredo. 

Lawyer Amando Ligutan led a group mostly composed of priests and lawyers in the filing of the complaint Thursday, Dec. 19, at the secretary general's office at the House of Representatives in Quezon City.

Ligutan, in a chance interview with reporters, identified Camarines Sur 3rd district Rep. Gabriel Bordado Jr. and AAMBIS-OWA Party-list Rep. Lex Anthony Cris Colada as the endorsers of the complaint. Both are members of the House minority bloc.

Under impeachment rules, a complaint is a mere piece of paper until at least one House member endorses it. Secretary General Reginald Velasco officially received the complaint at past noon Thursday. 

Bordado formerly served as vice mayor to ex-Vice President Robredo's husband, the late former Naga City mayor and Department of the Interior and local Government (DILG) secretary Jesse Robredo.

Ligutan said there are a total of 12 complainants behind the document they filed.

"We have priests from the diocese of Novaliches, we have priests from the order of Carmelites, we have priests from the Congregation of Mission. We have lawyers from the Union of People's Lawyers of Mindanao. We also have...ma'am Pinky Tam," the lawyer from Cebu said.

"The grounds for impeachment invoked by the complainants are the following: number one, culpable violation of the Constitution; we also have the ground of bribery; we also have the ground graft and corruption; plunder; malversation and technical malversation. The ultimate sa (on the) ground is betrayal of public trust," added Ligutan.

The impeachment complaint was the third filed against Vice President Duterte this month.

A group composed of civil society figureheads led by former senator Leila de Lima filed the first complaint on Dec. 2.

A second impeachment complaint was filed agaisnt the lady official on Wednesday, Dec. 4, this time by members of progressive groups.

The first two complaints have yet to be transmitted to the Office of the Speaker.

Wednesday, Dec. 18 was the last session day of the year.

Moral obligation 

"What makes this complaint different from the two already filed impeachment complaints is that these priests, these lawyers believe that with what transpired and with what the public saw during the committee hearings, it's no longer just the legal and constitutional obligation of the members of the House of Representatives to impeach and for the Senate to remove from office the sitting Vice President of the Republic of the Philippines. It has now become their moral obligation to do so," Ligutan said.

"Not only legal, constitutional--it's now their moral duty to do so," added the lawyer, who was referring to the hearings carried out by the House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability on the alleged misuse of P612.5 million worth of confidential funds by the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and Department of Education (DepEd) under Duterte. 

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One of the complainants of the third complaint, Fr. Joselito Sarabia, said in a separate interview:  "We believe Vice President Sara committed something illegal and something immoral against the Filipino people."

'For us, thou shall not kill, thou shall not steal, thou shall not bear false witness," he said.

Ligutan said the impeachment complaint was "based on how the Vice President of the Republic of the Philippines illegal disburses the confidential funds entrusted by the republic to her".

He went on to cite the findings of the good government panel, including the strong evidence from the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) that most of the alleged recipients of the secret funds from the OVP and DepEd were fictitious.

"So the complainants believe that these disbursements were in fact illegal. And we believe, the complainants believe that these acts of the Vice President constitute grounds for her impeachment," Ligutan said.