VP faces more scrutiny after budget no-show

VICE-PRESIDENT SARA Z. Duterte-Carpio has opened herself to further scrutiny by the House of Representatives over budget management issues involving her office after shunning a congressional hearing on the Office of the Vice President’s (OVP) budget for next year, a party-list lawmaker said on Wednesday.

“VP Duterte’s boycott of the budget hearing opened her up to further scrutiny,” Deputy Minority Leader and Party-list Rep. France L. Castro said in a statement in mixed English and Filipino.

“This act is a clear violation of her oath of office and a betrayal of public trust,” she added. “If it was already impeachable before, even more so now.”

Ms. Duterte-Carpio on Tuesday skipped the scheduled resumption of the House appropriation committee’s hearing on her proposed P2.02-billion budget for next year.

Her refusal to appear before the panel prompted calls to cut her office’s social services budget amid spending redundancies with the Department of Social Welfare and Development. 

The OVP’s budget for overlapping services should instead be allocated to the appropriate agencies, said Ms. Castro. “We cannot allow mismanagement to go unchecked, especially when it concerns the welfare of our people.”

In a prerecorded interview, released by the OVP on Wednesday, Ms. Duterte-Carpio said she is ready to work and exercise her mandate should the House decide to defund her office.

“We are ready. I am ready at the Office of the Vice President to work even without a budget,” she said according to official transcript of the interview.

‘SCRIPTED’ HEARING
In the same taped interview, Ms. Duterte-Carpio alleged the OVP’s budget briefing was scripted, after legislators came prepared with audiovisual presentations and questions concerning the utilization of her confidential and intelligence fund (CIF) in 2022.

She was referring to the Aug. 27 hearing during which state auditors flagged P73 million out of her P125-million secret funds due to the lack of documents supporting the spending.

The Commission on Audit’s flagging of the OVP’s CIF spending two years ago could be ground for her impeachment, Ms. Castro said late last month.

“The issue of impeachment is nothing new to me… it’s an open topic of discussion at the House of Representatives,” Ms. Duterte-Carpio said. 

Impeaching the Vice-President from office could be political suicide for Congress, Davao del Norte Rep. Pantaleon D. Alvarez said, noting the supposed development as driven by “petty political ambitions.”

“It would be the height of recklessness for Congress to impeach a Vice-President who… garnered the highest votes for any elected national official in the country’s history,” he said in a separate statement on Wednesday.

In the 2022 national elections, over 31 million Filipinos or 61% of all registered voters backed Ms. Duterte-Carpio’s bid for vice presidency.

Mr. Alvarez also warned that a move to impeach the Vice-President could “destabilize the nation.”

A political analyst, however, argued that the majority vote that elected Ms. Duterte-Carpio into office does not diminish the need to hold her accountable over alleged spending issues.

“There’s enough ground to mount a political call for impeachment,” Hansley A. Juliano, a political science lecturer at the Ateneo de Manila University, said in a Facebook Messenger chat.

“Whether that call gains groundswell in Congress is ultimately a question of whether Speaker Martin Romualdez wants to spend political capital on this.” — Kenneth Christiane L. Basilio