The recent actions of Vice President Sara Duterte while posting a ₱360,000 bail at the Quezon City Regional Trial Court exposed a jarring double standard in our nation’s justice system. By orchestrating a highly publicized weekend surrender, demanding a media shield over phantom safety fears, and completely skipping the mandatory booking mugshot, the Vice President did not just navigate the legal process—she bent the justice system to her will.
When a sitting impeachable official successfully bypasses the Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) that bind ordinary citizens, it aggressively erodes the public’s remaining trust in the rule of law. It sends a dangerous message: the justice system confirms it is now a pliable instrument for the powerful, rather than an equalizer for all.
VP Sara’s sudden plea for a media escort, citing fear for her life, is a calculated political theater. By framing her legal accountability as an existential threat, she attempted to transform a routine criminal procedure into an act of political persecution. Yet, while claiming to deeply distrust the justice system, she weaponized its technical loopholes. Preempting law enforcement by initiating a voluntary “weekend surrender” allowed her to control the narrative, dictate the timing, and completely evade the indignity of a standard police arrest.
The most glaring subversion of standard legal procedure was her exemption from taking a booking photograph (mugshot). The law is clear, a warrant of arrest demands uniform compliance. History has repeatedly proven that no office shields an individual from this indignity. Former President Joseph Estrada underwent standard booking and had his mugshot taken upon his arrest for plunder in 2001. Former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was photographed in her hospital bed under strict police booking procedures in 2011.
VP Sara’s defense counsel, Atty. Paul Lawrence Lim, asserts that official police mugshots are legally reserved for individuals who are forcibly captured and detained by law enforcement. Her client voluntarily appeared and bypassed police custody and went straight to the court staff, submitting her “own” identification photographs to satisfy the administrative requirements.
Her other lawyer, Trixie Cruz-Angeles, defended their submitted “bail shot procedure,” drawing a distinction between booking photos and bail attachments. Cruz-Angeles claimed the photos were “bail shots,” which are taken for the purpose of attaching them to her bail bond, arguing they are separate from mugshots, which are mandatory for detained individuals.
Legal analysts and constitutional experts countered all this, saying that allowing a defendant to submit pre-selected, curated personal photographs undermines the integrity of a standard judicial booking process. The standard rules of criminal procedure do not explicitly state that high-ranking officials can “opt out” of a standard frontal and profile mugshot simply by arriving at a courthouse before the police serve a warrant. They also argue that former Presidents Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo—who held higher constitutional designations—still underwent uniform physical booking processes.
By waiving the physical, on-site photography requirement for a sitting Vice President, the Quezon City RTC set a dangerous legal precedent, a textbook definition of special treatment. The Rules of Court are not a menu from which powerful defendants can pick and choose. When a court allows this for a Vice President, it loses its impartiality and becomes a facilitator of political privilege.
This display of legal exceptionalism deeply damages the public’s perception of the judiciary. For the ordinary people , a simple offense leads to swift detention, rigid booking procedures, and public exposure. For VP Sara—facing serious charges of grave threats against the nation’s highest officials—the process was repackaged into a customized, sanitized VIP experience.
This accommodation legitimizes the very distrust the Vice President professes to have. It paints a cynical picture of a two-tiered justice system: one that is swift, unyielding, and harsh for the poor, and another that is flexible, accommodating, and protective for the elite and powerful.
Ombudsman Crispin Remulla should probe NIA anomalies
The National Irrigation Administration (NIA) is now mired in a slew of controversies, congressional inquiries and legal complaints over alleged systemic corruption, “ghost” projects and bidding anomalies and Administrator Eduardo “Eddie” Guillen is failing to address these issues.No longer are the public being fed bits and pieces of the delayed infrastructure, now they are being faced with formal, high-stakes legal charges of systemic corruption, bid rigging and the open abuse of billions of public money. If these anomalies are confirmed, the Office of the Ombudsman must carry out a thorough and independent investigation to prosecute all persons.We see a deeply disturbing picture of the alleged mishandling of public funds intended for Filipino farmers. The Task Force Kasanag (TFK) filed a formal plunder and graft complaint with the Ombudsman that points to a disturbing pattern of bid-rigging. The complaint’s allegations are staggering. It alleged that persons affiliated with the Bids and Awards Committee (BAC) asked for a ₱2 million extortion fee to open a bidder’s proposal. However, the NIA leadership has been consistently defending itself, attributing these serious allegations to mere “politics of perception” and justifying the incomplete and fragmentary bridge and flood control structures as the inevitable result of “phased budgeting.” Their narrative of inconsistency must not impede justice. To dismiss the multi-million peso discrepancies, the allegations of “ghost projects” and rigged tendering as partisan mudslinging is a betrayal of the farmers who continue to suffer from inadequate irrigation while insulting the public’s intelligence. If the leadership has nothing to hide, then it shouldn’t just “shrug off” these accusations in media interviews. Instead, everything must be put under a full and transparent forensic audit. Conflicts of interest inherently undermine the NIA’s internal validation mechanisms, and therefore the Office of the Ombudsman is obliged to assert its constitutional mandate. The agency must conduct a thorough investigation of the tendering procedures of the Balog-Balog Multipurpose Project, the San Felipe Earthfill Dam and the contractor networks operating within the agency. Records of public procurement show one company enjoyed an incredible streak of NIA awards all over Northern Luzon: the West Apayao–Abulug Irrigation System (₱243.81 million), the Apayao Solar Pump Irrigation Project (₱227.80 million), Apayao Solar Pump Irrigation Project 3 (₱151.03 million), the Union Irrigation System in Cagayan (₱247.46 million), the Bacsay–Educar Irrigation System (₱245.58 million via joint venture), the Santor–Langagan Communal Irrigation System (₱98.06 million) — and, reigning over everything, a mind-boggling ₱2,077,892,598.74 water-impounding megaproject.If Ombudsman investigators find that bids were rigged, that extortion took place or that payments were made for projects that did not exist, the repercussions must be immediate and severe. Government positions and private consortiums should not be used as a cloak for self-enrichment. It’s time to move past the media grandstanding and political spin.
Ombudsman Crispin Remulla must get to the objective truth in NIA, cut through the fog of rhetoric and make sure that anyone found to undermine our nation’s agricultural base, they must suffer the full, undiluted force of the law.