VP Sara dodges light on controversial ‘confidential funds’
Vice President Sara Duterte —Inday Sara Duterte FB
Dodging questions on how she got P125 million in “confidential funds” (CF) that were not allocated in the 2022 budget law, Vice President Sara Duterte said on Wednesday that there was “nothing irregular or unauthorized” in the questioned lump sum that was allegedly allocated as contingent funds and not confidential funds.
In a statement issued on Wednesday, Duterte did not elaborate on where the P125 million, which the Office of the Vice President (OVP) spent over 19 days in December 2022, came from or how her office got the funds without prior congressional approval, as required by law.
Duterte simply said the OVP “already planned and identified events, activities, and projects to be covered by the CF as early as August [2022]” and urged her critics in Congress to “show respect for Filipinos.”
“We urge the Makabayan bloc to end its rabid vilification of OVP over the 2022 CF if it doesn’t have any substantive information to back up imputations of misuse.
“These incessant malicious attacks betray the Makabayan bloc’s lack of respect for the Filipinos being served by OVP and their inability to appreciate OVP’s involvement in the fight against insurgency, terrorism, and social inequality,” Duterte’s statement added.
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But lawyer Ibarra Gutierrez, former Akbayan congressman and a longtime aide of former Vice President Leni Robredo, said the OVP’s original 2022 budget, crafted during Robredo’s incumbency, did not contain any item for “confidential funds.”
Article continues after this advertisement“Short of Congress passing a law providing a supplemental budget, I don’t know how it could have happened,” Gutierrez said.
Lawyer Neri Colmenares, another former congressman who now chairs Bayan Muna, said the matter raises serious questions on how the House of Representatives is handling taxpayers’ money.
“Congress has the power of the purse, and yet its Speaker is not interested at all in how VP Duterte spent auditable contingent funds disguised as confidential funds? That does not give Filipino taxpayers comfort in the current budget deliberations,” echoed Colmenares.
“Congress is expected by the people to guard the spending of public funds, not to dispense with this function out of courtesy to a public official they are supposed to oversight,” he added.
Colmenares also challenged Duterte aide Michael Poa, spokesperson of the Department of Education, which Duterte concurrently heads, to identify the law that, according to Poa, allowed public officials to spend auditable budget items, like contingent funds, as confidential funds.
“What law allows such unlawful spending?” Colmenares asked. “We challenge Atty. Poa to name that law; otherwise, he will be called an unprincipled apologist for Duterte and a liar.”
Abolish confidential funds
The OVP’s lack of transparency, added Bayan secretary general Renato Reyes, should instead provoke discussions on abolishing “all forms of confidential funds,” which he characterized as “lump-sum appropriations that are not open for scrutiny.”
“They are in the nature of pork barrel funds. They can even be acquired even without congressional authorization, months after the budget has been approved,” he said.
“In a time when so many important social services are experiencing cutbacks, the so-called confidential funds are an unjustified and unconscionable burden on the taxpayers,” he added.
If agencies cannot specify a line item for appropriations and provide a clear basis for such appropriations, “then it should not be in the GAA (General Appropriations Act),” Reyes said.
