Who is Dean Ralph Sarmiento, tapped by Sara Duterte's camp as witness - GMA Network
Law professor Dean Ralph Sarmiento was listed as Vice President Sara Duterte’s first witness at her impeachment trial. He, however, decided to decline to participate as a witness a day after the announcement was made.
So who is Sarmiento, and why was he called to become a witness for the Vice President?
On his Facebook profile, Sarmiento listed several educational institutions he attended. In 1992, he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science at University of Negros Occidental – Recoletos.
He earned his Juris Doctor degree at the University of St. La Salle (USLS), where he would spend most of his professional career. Sarmiento graduated Magna Cum Laude from USLS and placed 10th in the 1997 Bar Exams, according to publisher Centralbooks, where the law professor has two books.
In 2002, Sarmiento also studied Classical Works and Scholarly Approaches to the U.S. Constitution as a Fulbright Institute fellow at Temple University in the United States, according to his Facebook profile.
Sarmiento would also go on to study Constitutional and Territorial Reforms in Federal Switzerland as a Swiss Institute of Federalism scholar at the University of Fribourg in 2008.
According to Sarmiento’s LinkedIn page, he has over 28 years of experience working as a law professor at the USLS, where he held various positions.
From June 1998 to May 2010, he was the executive director of the school’s Law Center. From 2010 to 2016, he was the university’s College of Law Dean. He took the position once more from August 2023 to January 2026.
By October 2025, he became the USLS’s Vice Chancellor for Administration. While both his LinkedIn and Facebook profiles still list him as presently working as a vice chancellor, Duterte’s defense team labeled him a “former Vice Chancellor for Administration.”
Sarmiento has over 318,000 followers on Facebook.
During Duterte’s trial, Sarmiento has offered his legal opinions on the matter to several news outlets. Many of his views, however, could also be found online.
“We should hold VP Sara Duterte accountable for every peso of public money and every act properly charged against her. But accountability loses its moral force when fairness is sacrificed. Due process is not a favor to the accused. It is what makes accountability credible,” Sarmiento said in a Facebook post on October 14.
“The Constitution does not ask us to choose between accountability and due process. It demands both, and I support both. I support accountability. I also support due process. We should not have to choose between the two. The stronger the accusation, the greater the need for a complete and tested record,” he added.
The post came a day after the House prosecution dropped three out of the four articles of impeachment against Duterte.
Duterte’s defense team decried the dropping of the cases, as it did not give them a chance to defend the Vice President. —AOL, GMA News
