Vice Pres. Sara Duterte Attends House Hearing but Moves to Terminate Probe
SARA DUTERTE – The Vice President refused to take an oath at the House of Representatives hearing on budget use.
One of the fund proposals that went through the scrutiny of the Senate and the House of Representatives is the budget proposal of the Office of the Vice President (OVP). However, the said scrutiny led to heated arguments between Vice Pres. Duterte and the House and Senate members.
At the Senate hearing, Vice Pres. Duterte and Senator Risa Hontiveros had a clash after the latter moved for the re-allocation of the assistance program budget of the OVP to the relevant agencies and made mention of the P10 million allotted for the distribution of the book authored by Duterte.
At the House of Representatives hearing, Vice Pres. Sara Duterte also had a spar with some of the House members most especially ACT Teachers Party-List Representative France Castro. The continuation of the deliberation was moved to a different schedule.
However, at the resumption of the House hearing, Vice Pres. Duterte was no show. It triggered talks that the Office of the Vice President may be defunded or given a P1 budget for 2025. According to the Vice President, her office can operate even without a budget.
The OVP is seeking for a P2 billion budget for 2025 with no confidential funds. Recently, the Vice President attended a House hearing where she gave a speech.
Vice Pres. Sara Duterte refused to take an oath at the start of the House hearing. In her speech, she accused the House members of lodging a “political attack”. According to her, it is allegedly not a hearing for misuse of funds and accountability but to degrade her name and encourage the people not to vote for her in 2028.
“What we’re witnessing is no ordinary legislative inquiry. This exercise is a well-funded and coordinated political attack,” Duterte said.
At the hearing, the Vice President also stressed that the OVP did not do anything wrong and there is allegedly no misuse of funds. According to her, if there are audit findings, they will address it to the Commission on Audit. If there are legal charges filed, they are ready to face it at the court.
“Hindi ako ang problema ng bayan na ito,” Vice Pres. Duterte
Duterte stressed that the real problem of the country are hunger, poverty, drugs, crimes, insufficient healthcare, educational quality, lack of infrastructure plan for disaster response, and many more.
“You may try to destroy me… But let it be known that you will find me unbowed. I will continue to serve the people no matter the personal cost,” the Vice President said.