Former government official Lorraine Badoy claimed in a Facebook post that private prosecutor Amando Virgil Ligutan is a member of the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL) linked to an “underground organization” designated by the Anti-Terrorism Council as a terrorist group. This is false.
Badoy, a former spokesperson of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC) known for her public statements regarding alleged communist ties, said in a July 10 post:
“Atty Ligutan is a member of the CPP NPA NDF front, NUPL that is linked to the underground org LUMABAN [Lupon ng mga Manananggol para sa Bayan], a designated terrorist organization.”
Ligutan, who serves as counsel for the House prosecutors in the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte, has no ties to the organization.
In a July 11 report by the Cebu Daily News, Ligutan debunked the claim.
“I respect the NUPL and what they do for the people but it just surprises me why they would include me in an organization just so they can use it to attack me,” he said in the regional language.
While the red-tagging seemed to emerge “out of the blue,” Ligutan said it was to be “expected,” suggesting that the allegations may have stemmed from his performance as part of the prosecution panel during the first week of Duterte’s impeachment trial.
For its part, human rights lawyer and NUPL-National Capital Region Secretary General Kristina Conti likewise said on July 10 that Ligutan is not a member of the group, adding that Badoy’s accusations were “outright false, malicious, and intended to ‘poison the well,’ particularly in the impeachment proceedings against Sara Duterte.”
Despite this, Conti noted that they are “happy to note he practices people’s lawyering too.”
Ligutan is currently the Managing Partner of SALiGAL Law, a Cebu-based firm he joined in 2010. The law firm described him as a “topnotch court litigator who has successfully handled various high-profile civil, criminal, and public interest cases that have gained national attention.”
Meanwhile, the NUPL previously condemned the “repeated vilification of [the organization’s] lawyers as ‘communist terrorists,'” citing a red-tagging committed by the NTF-ELCAC “within the context of a pending civil case.”
In a 2024 Supreme Court ruling, the high court declared that “red-tagging, vilification, labelling, and guilt by association threaten a person’s right to life, liberty, or security.”
The red-tagging of Ligutan happened three days after the House prosecutor conducted on July 7 the direct examination of its first witness.
National Bureau of Investigation Senior Agent John Mark Calilung authenticated Duterte’s Nov. 23, 2024 online media briefing offered as evidence where she made the alleged “kill threat” against President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., First Lady Liza Araneta-Marcos and former Speaker Martin Romualdez.
The spurious post by Badoy has so far gained 14,000 reactions; 1,300 comments and 3,300 shares. At least five other FB users and pages, including Historya Channel (created on July 20, 2019), whose false post was fact-checked by VERA Files earlier this year, amplified Badoy’s statement, collectively garnering 10,690 engagements as of writing.
