Vice President Sara Duterte is left with a minuscule number of allies in the House of Representatives, with only three House members coming to her defense from lawmakers who pounced on her disbursement of confidential funds from the previous years.
Her reception in the House in the past two years and this year are as different as night and day, as she was no longer granted the parliamentary courtesy that enabled the swift approval of her budget in 2022 and 2023.
Here’s a list of lawmakers who tried to shield Duterte from the barrage of questions thrown at her, and a recap of what they said.
Claude Bautista
Davao Occidental Representative Claude Bautista didn’t really get the chance to defend Duterte on Tuesday, but he appeared to be among the more sympathetic voices for the Vice President.
After Duterte’s opening speech, she expressed intentions to forgo her opportunity to defend her budget, then asked the committee to be given the chance to explain why.
Kabataan Representative Raoul Manuel raised a point of order opposing Duterte’s request, arguing that her presentation time was over and that the period of interpellation had begun.
Bautista then interjected, saying, “Because the Vice President already manifested that…” but was cut off by House appropriations senior vice chairperson Stella Quimbo. He was presumably about to echo Duterte’s sentiment that she didn’t want to be asked questions.
Right after the hearing was officially suspended five hours later, Bautista asked that he be allowed to speak. “I just want to ask the Vice President something,” said Bautista, who is among the 56 vice chairpersons of the appropriations committee.
Quimbo did not relent, saying that the panel had already formally ended proceedings that day.
Bautista was among Duterte’s campaign managers in 2022. He also attended the rally against charter change in Davao City in January.
Isidro Ungab
An important revelation during Tuesday’s hearing was the notice of disallowance issued by the Commission on Audit (COA) to the Office of the Vice President (OVP). The COA flagged irregularities in the OVP’s disbursement of confidential funds in 2022, asking it to return P73 million in “disallowed” expenses.
Duterte had already insisted she would not answer any question regarding her confidential funds.
Davao City 3rd District Representative raised a parliamentary inquiry.
“May I ask if the resource person is required to answer a question that is related to a Commission on Audit notice of disallowance when she already said she’s not going to answer?” Ungab asked.
“A notice of disallowance is not a judgment. It is a request, it is an order from the Commission on Audit for the particular office to explain what are the particulars,” he added.
Historically, notices of disallowance are not immediately enforced because the agencies appeal to eternity.
Later in the hearing, Ungab argued against striking from the record Duterte’s jab against House Deputy Minority Leader Castro on her child abuse conviction at a court in Tagum City. It stemmed from her supposed rescue of teachers and Lumad students from military harassment. The party-list lawmaker is still appealing the case in court.
Ungab is a close ally of the Dutertes. He was once the chairperson of the powerful appropriations committee in the House under the administration of Rodrigo Duterte. Vice President Duterte’s regional party Hugpong ng Pagbabago once endorsed him for speaker during the leadership row in the lower chamber in 2019.
He was initially a deputy speaker under the Martin Romualdez-led House, but was removed in November 2023, after not signing a House resolution supporting Romualdez in the wake of attacks by former president Duterte.
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo
The staunchest defender of Duterte on Tuesday was no other than former president Arroyo, the woman who helped broker the Vice President’s successful alliance with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in the 2022 elections.
She questioned why the House was asking Duterte questions about her budget from two years ago.
“In the beginning, it was settled that the issue would be the 2025 budget. And in all our hearings, when we want to question something about performance, we question the 2024 budget, not the 2023 budget,” Arroyo said.
“What is being questioned now is the 2023 budget which was discussed very extensively last year, and that is the reason why the House removed the confidential funds. That issue has been, to my mind, for the purposes of the budget hearing, laid to rest,” she added, prompting Bautista, who was seated beside her, to nod.
Quimbo, however, insisted that budgets from previous years are subject to scrutiny as they can be continuing appropriations.
“We also know that we debated on the 2022 confidential funds, and left the COA a homework to finish the audit by mid-November last year. Since then, we did not know what happened,” Quimbo told Arroyo.
“It’s a big amount of money. We owe it to the people to understand what happened,” Quimbo added.
Later, Arroyo also decried the “eloquent examination” of the OVP’s 2022 and 2023 budgets, in response to House Assistant Majority Leader Mikaela Suansing’s presentation summarizing the COA reports on Duterte’s office.
“There is oversight of any House committee, but not during the budget hearing of specific years’ budget. There is a committee on public accounts…those are all venues within the House, not to mention the legal issue of what is already being discussed in the Supreme Court,” Arroyo said, but Quimbo, as presiding officer, did not take up her point of order.
Duterte’s OVP had P125 million in confidential funds in 2022 and P500 million in 2023. The House denied her request for secret funds for 2024 after a backlash, and she is no longer asking for such in the 2025 budget.
Arroyo was the mentor of Speaker Romualdez, until a falling out that was publicly exposed by the House’s removal of Arroyo from the deputy speakership. Romualdez hinted at an alleged ouster plot against him by Arroyo, which the former president denied.
Despite the spat, she remains a member of Romualdez’s party Lakas-CMD, and was seen in January attending Marcos’ Bagong Pilipinas rally in Manila, even though the Dutertes had a simultaneous anti-administration rally in Davao City.
The House appropriations committee ended Tuesday’s proceeding with a decision to defer budget deliberations, withholding the submission of the OVP’s proposal to the plenary.
The panel will hold another round of deliberations on September 10.
– Rappler.com