TURNING POINT: A Betrayal of Public Trust

NAAWAN, Misamis Oriental (MindaNews / 14 Nov) – Digong’s apple of the eye is rotting and may fall before her time. Her humongous sense of invulnerability and entitlement drives her to splurge on government resources without concern for accountability. Her good graces at Congress as a key figure of UniTeam allowed her to corner in 2022 an unprecedented amount of confidential funds amounting to P500 million for the Office of the Vice President (OVP), and another P500 million for the Department of Education (DepEd) where she served as Secretary, agencies of the government that are not in intelligence work.

Politics, indeed, expands or blurs boundaries. How she spent the money in her custody jars the imagination.

According to the Commission on Audit, the P125 million OVP confidential fund of 2022 was spent on the following items: purchase of information: P14 million; payment of reward: P10 million; payment of rental and other incidental expenses relative to the maintenance of safe houses: P16 million; purchase of supplies: P35 million; provision of medical and food aid: P40 million; payment of incentives for traveling related to confidential operations: P10 million.

The Commission on Audit disallowed P73 million worth of the P125 million confidential funds that Vice President Sara Duterte spent in 11 days in 2022 because it was highly irregular beyond comprehension. For instance, what kind of safe house has Duterte rented that cost her P1 million/day? A luxury resort?

On the other hand, the purchase of goods and services was supported by questionable documents, that is, by bogus receipts or fabricated certification of activities.

Government funds misuse may mean that the money is diverted to other purposes for the benefit of someone or pocketed by its custodian. It is a criminal offense, a betrayal of public trust.

To place the OVP’s confidential expenditures into perspective, Rep. Mikaela Suansing (Nueva Ecija, First District) scaled down the OVP’s expenses in “peso terms.”

Based on Suansing’s estimates of the OVP’s P125 million confidential fund expenditure in the last quarter of 2022, for every P10 that taxpayers “entrusted” to the OVP, at least P6 out of P10 were deemed by the COA as inappropriate expenditures.

Suansing added that this seems to be the same case for the first two quarters of 2023, with the first and second quarters showing P5 out of P10 was spent inappropriately.

The Office of the Vice President did not request confidential and intelligence funds for 2025. This is likely to avoid further scrutiny of her past controversial spending.

Would you allow someone to run this country, who, this early, has betrayed public trust?

(MindaViews is the opinion section of MindaNews. William R. Adan, Ph.D., is retired professor and former chancellor of Mindanao State University at Naawan, Misamis Oriental.)