Photo: VP Sara

MANILA, Philippines – Vice President Sara Duterte isn’t just being plainly evasive about the issue on confidential funds, she is totally not recognizing congressional scrutiny because the Commission on Audit and not the lawmakers is the only authority mandated with such function. 

This is the conviction of the Vice President on why she keeps on denying her cooperation to the congressional inquiry into the utilization of the confidential funds of the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education during her time. 

“I am not being evasive, I am not answering questions because they have no authority to ask confidential questions. I am answering questions about the use of the money in the Commission on Audit,” she said in a media conference Wednesday shortly after her non-appearance at the National Bureau of Investigation. 

Her office may not be cooperative with lawmakers but it is with COA, she said. 

Duterte said her defiance to discuss confidential funds is because doing so will compromise national security as well as the safety of the people involved in intelligence work. 

She has reiterated that the OVP has been fully cooperative with COA whom she recognizes as the only institution having sole jurisdiction on scrutiny of public money like confidential funds. 

As for anybody else not COA, “No I will not explain because that will entail that I explain intelligence operations which will compromise offices who do intelligence operations. It will really compromise how they work.”  

Political attack

Duterte maintains that all of this is but a political attack by the administration and if Congress is indeed investigating in aid of legislation, the OVP should not be singled out, she said. 

“If you are in aid of legislation and you want to legislate about confidential funds, you do not target one office and terrorize and torment the employees of that office,” she said. 

“What you do is sampling, a random sampling of offices that have confidential funds. Why not call the office of the President who has been using billions of confidential funds if you want to legislate about confidential funds,” she said. 

In the recently released annual COA report, the Office of the President remains to be the top spender of confidential and intelligence funds in 2023 amounting to a total of P4.56 billion. 

The government has in fact hit an all-time high in terms of confidential and intelligence funds spending bringing the total expenditures to over P10 billion for the first time. 

According to the report, the OP spent P2.25 billion and P2.31 billion on confidential and intelligence funds in 2023 compared to the OVP with P375 million. Other big spenders include the Office of the Justice Secretary with P683 million, followed by the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency with P500 million. 

“It shows that  they’re singling out the Office of the Vice President,” she said. 

“They don’t like me, they don’t like my person, they don’t like Inday Sara Duterte but they have to respect the office of the vice president. If they want to investigate confidential funds they don’t single out one office,” she said.