Hours after a small committee of the House of Representatives made the controversial decision to remove P650 million in confidential funds from Vice President Sara Duterte’s office and the Department of Education, her father, former president Rodrigo Duterte, lashed out against Congress. He called it a “most rotten institution” and even threatened to harm a leader of the House minority. The elder Duterte, acting as a spokesperson for his daughter, claimed that the confidential funds were intended to fight the communist insurgency and bolster the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps. He specifically targeted ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro, who has been a vocal critic of the Vice President’s use of confidential funds. Duterte also accused House Speaker Martin Romualdez of orchestrating the attack on his daughter because Romualdez allegedly plans to run for president in 2028. It seems that Duterte sees Romualdez as a potential rival to his daughter in her rumored presidential campaign.
This situation is reminiscent of how President Duterte treated his own vice president, Leni Robredo, during his time in office. Despite coming from an opposition party, Robredo was not given intelligence funds, nor was she appointed to a major cabinet position that would have provided her with additional resources for governance. In contrast, Vice President Duterte has been granted significant resources, including funds for satellite offices of the Office of the Vice President, aid distribution (even though this overlaps with other government agencies), and her own extensive security group with access to presidential helicopters and confidential funds. Additionally, it was revealed during House budget deliberations that the Vice President had requested P250 million in confidential funds and received P125 million from the Office of the President, which she spent in just 11 days. This year, Duterte was allotted P500 million in confidential funds as Vice President and P150 million as education secretary. However, she has refused to account for how these funds were used and instead labeled her critics as “enemies of the people.”
This controversy sparked outrage among the public due to the stark contrast between the Vice President’s excessive confidential funds and the meager amount allocated to the Philippine Coast Guard, which operates in the contested West Philippine Sea. The Coast Guard received just P118.7 million in confidential funds over a 17-year period, while Duterte’s allocation for 2024 was a staggering P650 million. As a result, the House leadership made the decision to reassign P1.23 billion in confidential funds, including Duterte’s P650 million, to other agencies with intelligence and surveillance functions. Leaders of the various political parties forming the House majority coalition expressed support for this realignment and denounced Rodrigo Duterte’s threat against a member of the House.
It seems that the elder Duterte views the House’s actions as politically motivated rather than a responsible safeguarding of public funds. And he may be partially correct. As the midterm elections loom next year and the presidential election approaches in 2028, the uneasy coalition between President Marcos and his political ally Romualdez is likely to fracture. This political wrangling ultimately benefits ordinary taxpayers, who rightly deserve transparency and accountability in the use of their money. The House should take this opportunity to create a law that prevents the allocation of confidential funds to agencies without intelligence-gathering functions.
With the House being urged to investigate the billions in confidential funds allocated during Rodrigo and Sara Duterte’s tenures as mayors of Davao City, it begs the question: will the administration reconsider its resistance to the International Criminal Court’s investigation into the former president for alleged crimes against humanity during his brutal drug war?
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