Explanation required

Public officials, elected or appointed, have the obligation to properly explain how they are spending the people’s money. We have the Commission of Audit to make sure they do. But as we have seen in recent experiences with Vice President Sara Duterte, her explanations fall short or in many instances, she even refused to provide any.

It seems, the Vice President has the audacity to think that whatever budget has been provided her office can be spent any way she pleases. This is probably how she handled her budget as Davao City’s mayor and how her father also used to handle government funds as mayor and as president.

Someone in our government institutions must have the responsibility of making her and all public officials realize their budgets are not personal funds and must be spent to accomplish the task for which the funds were made available.

We are not a rich country and our funds for public purposes are rather limited. We need to invest in human capital like education and health care. We need to build roads, bridges and irrigation systems but instead, we build a P30-billion Senate building.

We also have to borrow heavily to support our national budget, money that future generations will have to pay. We don’t have a centavo to waste. Surely, anyone who takes an oath to serve as a public official must be ready to explain how the people’s funds are properly spent by their offices.

Just to put numbers to drive the points made, the national government debt as of August 2024 is P15.589 trillion. The Senate is now deliberating on a 2025 national budget of P6.352 trillion that was approved by the House. According to Finance Secretary Ralph Recto, tax and other government collections are projected at P4.64 trillion. Therefore, we have to borrow P1.712 trillion. Almost P2 trillion pesos… that’s a lot of money!

Forget the rosy projections of government economists who believe that economic growth will effectively shrink our debt level. At the rate we are going, that’s not going to happen. We are not using debt to build infrastructure and invest in human capital to improve our economy. We are borrowing to fund pork projects. We are borrowing to fund corruption and enrich our officials. Our public officials are wasting our money. That’s why they can’t and won’t explain how they have spent it.

Such is the case with VP Sara. She is stonewalling efforts of Congress to get an explanation of how she has spent our money. Her chief of staff even took a midnight plane to Los Angeles to avoid having to explain the alleged misuse of public funds, particularly confidential funds, worth a total of P612.5 million in both the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd).

Batangas Rep. Gerville Luistro said the Vice President is liable for malversation of public funds because of the P10.4 million confidential funds that remain unaccounted for until now. The amount is part of the P15.5 million in confidential funds of the DepEd’s Youth Leadership Summits (YLS) in 2023. It is easy to agree with the congresswoman that at the very least, this is a breach of public trust.

The House good government committee has been pressing VP Sara to explain why the DepEd told the COA that it used P15 million of its confidential funds for eight YLS events in 2023 when it was the AFP that paid for it. Four military officers told the House committee that the Philippine Army and local government units spent their own funds for the YLS. Besides, those funds were supposedly allocated for informant payments.

Worse, the OVP and DepEd under VP Sara, according to Antipolo Rep. Romeo Acop, submitted 787 receipts to liquidate confidential funds with unnamed signatories and 302 with unreadable names of signatories. Some had the signature “Mary Grace Piattos” and Acop asked “sa tingin mo, totoong tao yan?” Mary Grace is a popular restaurant chain and Piattos is a popular brand of potato chips. Parang bastusan na!

So Acop concluded that given such circumstances, the confidential fund was either pocketed or used for other purposes, tantamount to a crime of technical malversation of public funds. VP Sara should explain otherwise the public will conclude the worst. She probably doesn’t care and neither do her supporters. We must have a law that will make her care, take accountability.

There are other ways public funds are wasted. The 2024 national budget allocated P997.9 billion for flood control projects and the DPWH is requesting a P900-billion budget for next year. Flood control projects are the favorite of politicians since they can steal up to 80 percent because performance is hard to measure.

Sun Star Bacolod reported that bamboo was found in some portions of the 6,900-meter flood control project in Barangay Maguikay, Mandaue City, while not a single steel bar was found in the collapsed section of the project. The elements exposed the anomaly in Mandaue.

For now, Congress and the Ombudsman must get the second highest official to account for her use of funds. These institutions must make sure no one is above the law, and the use of public funds must be explained.

Once upon a time a dictator was ousted for, among other reasons, thinking that public funds were his family’s funds. That’s why we have an Ombudsman and the COA, if only they can effectively protect the national treasury.

Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on X @boochanco.