Sara Duterte: Marcos should jail himself over flood control mess
MANILA, Philippines — Vice President Sara Duterte believes that President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. should be investigated and jailed over the flood control anomalies, insisting on the role he played in signing the annual budget despite questions.
In an interview in Cebu City, Duterte also wondered why the president would not include former House Speaker Martin Romualdez to be sent to jail over the controversies surrounding government-funded infrastructure projects.
“What we’re talking about here is the 2025 budget,” Duterte said at a chance interview. “From that, you can already determine who among congressmen has insertions and who among them received those insertions.”
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This was her response to the president’s pronouncements that all officials involved in the flood control anomalies would spend their holidays behind bars. But when the president was asked if his statement included Romualdez, his cousin, he did not think so.
She insisted that the main evidence–in the case of the flood control projects–would be the 2025 General Appropriations Act (GAA), stressing how it can be used against Romualdez.
“Once [GAA] goes through the House, the budget ballooned,” Duterte said. “The budget grew when it was still a bill. Then you would ask, who ordered that? Those congressmen from out of nowhere? No, it would be the leader, the speaker [of the House].”
Duterte also recalled when she was education secretary, when her department faced difficulties in securing funding for their school building program, noting how this was taken from them by the Office of the House Speaker, then under Romualdez.
She claimed that House leaders “chopped” the funding for the school building program by distributing it to their allied lawmakers.
The president himself, according to Duterte, should also be included in the list of officials who should be investigated and sent to jail over the flood control anomalies.
She explained that the president signed the 2025 budget bill despite questions of its constitutionality raised before the Supreme Court.
“You’re the President. Once [the bill] arrives at you and let’s say there are thousands of pages, you have enough people around you to examine each page, right?” Duterte said.
“Yes, he can send himself to jail. He just has to admit that he has lapses on his end and not just that, he also has shortcomings in doing his job for our country, that’s why he can already jail himself,” she pointed out. /mr
