Out of the 4,000 individuals listed in acknowledgment receipts (ARs) for Vice President Sara Duterte’s confidential funds, why is the House prosecution panel bent on getting the testimony of just one person?

Prosecutor-solon Manila 3rd district Rep. Joel Chua provided a simple, but very tactical reason for this choice.

The person being eyed by the prosecution is none other than the infamous Mary Grace Piattos, who--even in her potential absence--could tell a lot to the Senate impeachment court.

“We just want to prove a point," Chua said over the weekend.

Congressmen have long suspected that Mary Grace Piattos is a fictitious name, since it is an amalgam of a popular café and a potato chips brand in the Philippines.

The name has since become a poster personality for the alleged misuse of P612.5 million worth of confidential funds on the part of Duterte, dating back to the previous 19th Congress when she was first impeached.

As such, prosecutors don't feel the need to summon a lot supposed confidential fund recipients to the witness stand as respondent Vice President Duterte undergoes trial.

“Sa ngayon po si Mary Grace Piattos dahil siya ang pinaka-prominente doon sa lahat ng mga nakatanggap ng confidential fund (Right now it is Mary Grace Piattos because she is the most prominent among all those who received confidential funds)," Chua said.

"Hindi naman kailangan lahat kasi kung makikita ninyo, 4,000 ang nakatanggap ng acknowledgment receipt. Hindi mo naman pwedeng ipatawag ang 4,000. Tapos na po ang termino ng susunod na administration, hindi pa po tayo tapos ‘pag lahat ’yan ipatatawag namin," noted the lawyer-legislator.

(It is not necessary to call everyone, because as you can see, 4,000 received acknowledgment receipts. You cannot summon all 4,000. The term of the next administration would already be over and we would still not be finished if we called them all.)

Chua says the prosecution will present only the witnesses needed to establish the allegations in the impeachment complaint, one of which is that the recipients of the secret funds were bogus.

The panel believes that Ms. Potato chips-café will suffice.

In case she fails to surface, it will show the impeachment court that there was no Mary Grace Piattos to begin with, the prosecutors argued.

"May mga point lang tayo na gustong i-prove na sa tingin natin ay kailangan at makakatulong sa panig whether sa prosecution or sa depensa kaya kami nagpapatawag ng mga ganyan,” Chua said.

(We only have certain points we want to prove that we believe are needed and will help either the prosecution or the defense, which is why we summon such individuals.)

Mary Grace Piattos drew widespread attention after the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) said it found no birth record under the name. This raised questions about whether the recipient actually exists.

Dozens of other names listed on ARs similarly yielded no records.