There’s something familiar about the lawmakers who endorsed the third impeachment complaint filed against Vice President Sara Duterte.
Catholic priests, civil society groups, and lawyers led the filing on Thursday morning, December 19, and of course, there were some interesting names that popped out, such as Congressmen Gabriel Bordado Jr. and Lex Colada.
Why so?
Bordado is Camarines Sur’s 3rd District Representative and a former vice mayor of Naga City. During his tenure, he was appointed House assistant minority leader. In October, Bordado was revealed as former vice president Leni Robredo’s running mate for the 2025 polls. Robredo is gunning for mayor of Naga City with the congressman as her vice mayor.
The former vice president and the congressman have been long-time friends. When the late Jesse Robredo was Naga City mayor from 2004 to 2010, Bordado was his vice mayor.
But what makes him familiar isn’t just that he’s friends with Duterte’s sworn enemies — it’s that he was one of six lawmakers out of 279 at the time who voted no to House Bill No. 6608, also known as the Maharlika Investment Fund (MIF) bill.
While the MIF was positioned to be a way to “sustain and fast-track the momentum for the Philippine economic growth,” opposition lawmakers argued that there was a lack of sufficient justification for the fund and that it was prone to corruption and investment risks.
It appears that when Bordado decided to endorse the impeachment complaint, he put himself in the same corner as another congressman who once supported the (late) Uniteam Alliance — Colada.
Colada is deputy minority leader and a representative of the Western Visayas-based Ang Asosasyon Sang Mangunguma Nga Bisaya-Owa Mangunguma (AAMBIS-Owa) party list.
At present, his wife, Jennifer, is mayor of Guimbal town, Iloilo. Jennifer is also a member of the Garin clan that affirmed their support for then-presidential candidate Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and then-vice presidential candidate Sara Duterte in 2022.
What makes Colada interesting is that in November, police recovered a gun registered in his name that was used in the murder of former village chief Joevanie Triste in Barangay San Rafael in Tigbauan town.
Colonel Bayani Razalan, Iloilo province’s police chief, confirmed that a .45 caliber pistol used to kill Triste on October 24 ended up in the hands of a John Castro Jr., a suspected gunman and alleged former member of the Revolutionary Proletarian Army-Alex Bongcayao Brigade.
On October 28, Castro surrendered to the police and on November 14, police filed charges before the Iloilo Provincial Prosecutor’s Office against Colada for allegedly being an accessory to the murder.
A month later, University of the Philippines law professor Amando Virgil Ligutan spoke to media after the groups filed the third impeachment complaint, revealing that Colada and Bordado had endorsed it.
Life sure has a funny way of bringing people together. – Rappler.com
