NAAWAN, Misamis Oriental (MindaNewS) – Sara Duterte is an incarnation of the deadly mix of arrogance and impunity.
VP Sara Duterte arrogantly declared she would not defend the budget of the office of the Vice President; she would not answer any question.
What impunity. Refusing a budget hearing is disrespectful to the constitutional process.
Naturally, her budget proposal for 2025 was sidelined. Just the same, a hearing was rescheduled.
When a head of office presents a budget for his agency, he or she is expected to answer questions on how the agency’s past budget was spent. It is to determine the expenditure’s conformity with the purpose of the allocation.
A budget proponent presents himself to the hearing committee to defend his/her proposal and answer questions from the members. He/She is there to listen and has no business asking the hearing committee questions. VP Sara Duterte, as budget proponent, whimsically changed the rules and procedure. She was not recognized, and yet she asked questions, made snide remarks, and even demanded the replacement of the presiding officer of the House Appropriations Committee.
There is no doubt Duterte refused a hearing on her budget to avoid, obviously, queries on her past budget performance, particularly on the notice of disallowance (ND) of the Commission on Audit (COA) dated August 8, 2024. The COA disallowed the amount of P73,287,000.00 in the P125-million confidential funds disbursed by the OVP in 2022, for “non-submission of documents evidencing the success of information gathering/and or surveillance” broken down as follows:
Reward payment: P10,000,000.00
Payment of Reward (various goods): P34,857,000.00
Payment of Reward (medicines): P24,930,000.00
The OVP is not in information or intelligence gathering. Why, in the first place, was it given a confidential fund? Attribute that to the immense popularity and influence of Sara then.
Confidential funds are allocations within the budget of government agencies that are specifically set aside for sensitive, confidential, or secret operations. These funds serve specific purposes related to national security, intelligence gathering, law enforcement, and other covert or confidential operations.
In her term, VP Leni Robredo had no confidential funds; Sara Duterte, on the other hand, had P125 million in 2022 and spent it all in just 11 days at the equivalent of 11.3 million/day.
State auditors shall issue an ND for transactions that are irregular/unnecessary/excessive and extravagant as defined in COA circular No. 85-55A as well as other COA issuances, and those which are illegal and “unconscionable,” according to COA 2009 Revised Rules of Procedure.
An ND means that state auditors had disapproved of the transaction in question. If such a transaction or account is not settled, the concerned agency must return the funds to the government.
It is doubtful that VP Sara Duterte whose sense of entitlement and impunity is overblown would return what is due to the government.
In breaking the alliance with PBBM and making enemies in Congress, Sara Duterte drains effusively her political resources. Once a feared and respected public official, she now has reduced herself to a scarecrow. Her huge ego and arrogance, her questionable public spending, and her public support and alliance with the fugitive sex trafficker Apollo Quiboloy make her vulnerable to an impeachment proceeding. She is now at the end of the road.
(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. William R. Adan, Ph.D., is retired professor and former chancellor of Mindanao State University at Naawan, Misamis Oriental.)
