MALAYBALAY CITY (MindaNews / 5 October) – It may have escaped many observers, but in the past few weeks media has riveted its attention on Vice President Sara Duterte when it comes to the issue of confidential and intelligence funds. Did her cavalier attitude during the budget hearings simply create a backlash? Or is there more than meets the eye?
Consider: The fire is concentrated on Duterte even if the Office of the President is also seeking confidential and intelligence funds for 2024. The amount sought is 4.56 billion pesos as per the budget proposal submitted by the Department of Budget and Management to Congress.
Aside from the confidential funds amounting to 500 million pesos in its budget this year, the Office of the Vice President received late last year 125 million pesos from the Office of the President. The amount, which the OVP treated as confidential funds, was spent in just 11 days, according to Rep. Stella Quimbo, who cited the Commission on Audit as her source. The OVP insisted it’s 19 days.
(Last year, the OVP only had a budget of 702,035,000 pesos and had no confidential and intelligence funds, a consistent feature of its budget under then Vice President Leni Robredo. This year, it got 2.34 billion pesos in total budget, including half a billion pesos in confidential funds. Besides, the Department of Education, of which she is the concurrent secretary, has 150 million pesos in confidential funds.)
The Vice President refused to answer head-on the questions from two opposition lawmakers during the budget hearings because she has “no respect for them.” Then came Quimbo’s revelation, which surely dumbfounded even a number of Duterte’s supporters. For many, spending 125 million in 11 days—and for supposedly surveillance functions that properly belong to the police and the military—is simply stupendous, making matters worse for her.
ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro dug deeper into the pit and found out that during Duterte’s stint as mayor of Davao City from 2016 to 2022, the city government spent 2.697 billion pesos in confidential expenses, or an average of P1.235 million pesos spent every day, for six years.
From 114 million pesos in 2016, Davao’s annual confidential funds had ballooned to 460 million pesos by the time Duterte resigned as mayor to run for vice president in 2022. From 2016 to 2022, the Armed Forces of the Philippines had an annual confidential fund of 444 million pesos. The Coast Guard, which is trying to fend off Chinese aggression in the West Philippine Sea, only had 10 million pesos in intelligence funds yearly during the same period.
The apparent lack of sound prioritization in the allocation of confidential funds, and its disposal posthaste, could only raise suspicions. I guess that even among the supporters of this administration there are those who are scandalized by Duterte’s eagerness to get hold of funds the use of which may not be scrutinized by the Commission on Audit.
Perhaps, this explains the decision of the House of Representatives to strip Duterte of confidential funds.
There’s another possibility though. The Romualdez-controlled House did not act out of moral conviction; it could just be exploiting the issue to send across the message that the honeymoon with the Duterte bloc will be over sooner than expected. If you think this is too outlandish, you must have missed the news that former president and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has been sued for graft and malversation for alleged illegal disbursements of Malampaya funds.
Arroyo, a pro-China official like the Vice President and her father, former President Rodrigo Duterte, brokered the Marcos-Duterte tandem for the 2022 elections.
Is the Palace now taming the shrew?
(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. H. Marcos C. Mordeno can be reached at hmcmordeno@gmail.com.)
