ACT Party-list Representative France Castro (L) and Vice President Sara Duterte | Photos from official Facebook pages of Act Teachers Party-list and VP Duterte
MANILA, Philippines — Some lawmakers in House of Representatives claim the supposed secretive nature of confidential and intelligence funds (CIF) bars them from determining whether or not government agencies have committed violations in handling taxpayers’ money.
Lawmakers ACT Teachers Party-list Representative France Castro and Gabriela Party-list Arlene Brosas made gave this reason during a briefing on Friday when asked if they have proof of any crime or unethical practice done.
This pertained to the confidential funds in the Office of the Vice President (OVP) for 2022.
Brosas said Congress can only get information that can serve as evidence if agencies and offices report how CIFs were spent.
“Maybe, as I said, if we can publicly scrutinize this, we can know what it was used for. We can ask,” she said in Filipino.
“But then there are provisions about the reportorial. At (and) according to that, the extent of what we can see are documents provided or made available, which basically says, it was released on December 13, reported on December 31, which is 19 days, a total of P6 million per day,” she added.
Brosas was referring to reports showing how OVP, under Vice President Sara Duterte, got the P125 confidential funds initially believed to be from Office of the President (OP).
The funds were supposedly spent it within 19 days.
The lawmakers contend OVP should not have any confidential funds for 2022 as the original budget, crafted under former Vice President Leni Robredo’s time, did not have a line item for CIFs.
However, Duterte had maintained a Commission on Audit investigation would clear them of any alleged malpractice.
As for Castro, she admitted it is hard to check for evidence.
“We have no proof right now,” she admitted.
“But we can see that we have questions like these — that is why we ant to ask questions. We want to dig deeper as to what happened here,” she said.
Discussions at House and Senate regarding confidential funds heated up, with some lawmakers in the so-called Makabayan bloc and Duterte throwing jabs against each other.
Duterte questions Castro’s qualification to determine the presence of any corruption in the release of confidential funds to OVP, saying that the lawmaker is neither an auditor or a lawyer.
In response, the legislator is asking the Vice President to stop spreading reported lies after Duterte said Castro has a pending kidnapping charge.
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