Politicians’ Tale of the Tape

To advertise the June 14, 2023 World Boxing Series card, the publicists used a graphic presentation of Nonito Donaire and Ryan Burnett. This graph is known as the “Tale of the Tape.” This idiom represents a showcase of an objective comparison of the combatants. Before any boxing fight, the physical attributes of the pugs like their height, wing span and reach, are taken using a tape measure. That is why it is the story of the tape.

The comparison, however, has gone beyond the tape. Other statistics, not taken by the tape measure, are written in the graph. The weight, for example. Boxers compete in specific weight divisions. They must not exceed the limit of the specified weight class on the day of the official weigh-in, usually occurring one day before the fight. In the June 14, 2023 fight, a 5’6” Filipino Nonito Donaire weighed 118 pounds to a 5’ 4” Irishman Ryan Burnett’s 117.8 pounds. More importantly, the records of the fighters such as their wins, losses and draws, in previous bouts, are shown in the Tale of the Tape. When they fought, Donaire had 42 wins, 28 by knock outs compared to Burnett’s 20 wins with 10 knockouts.

The recent Donaire-Burnett “Tale of the Tape” reminded me of Robredo and Carpio. In the art of governance, we can measure the performance of personalities occupying a specific position like boxers fighting in a specific weight division. Unlike pugilists though who are matched to face each other, a Tale of the Tape of specific elected leaders has to be a comparison between an incumbent and a former official based upon few and limited criteria.

I searched the internet and found, former Vice President Maria Leonor “Leni” Robredo to be 5’7” in height and about 121 pounds in weight. Surprisingly, no such physical data are shown, of incumbent Vice President Sara Zimmerman Duterte-Carpio. The absence of such information deprives us of a basis to compare their physical attributes although from what we saw during the campaign period, there is no doubt that they are lovely ladies. Robredo and Duterte-Carpio are articulate lawyers capable of capturing their audiences with as profound thoughts as the knockout punches of Donaire, in boxing.

The area of confidential and intelligence funds is one aspect of their governance that differs. A Philippine Star feature citing a 2015 joint circular between and among the COA, DBM, DILG, GOCC, and the DND, explained that confidential and intelligence funds are lump sum allocations set aside in the national budget for expenses that involve surveillance and intelligence information gathering activities.

The Business World once reported that Vice President Robredo had zero budget for confidential funds. Probably, then President Rodrigo Duterte and his majority lap dogs in both houses of Philippine Legislature took to heart the theory that the vice president in our system of government is only a spare tire and whose work is only to pray for the death of the president. What confidential information has the Office of the Vice President to gather?

The same Business World reported a twist of fate in the Office of the Vice President. VP Duterte-Carpio spent confidential funds worth P125 million in 2022 or a record of just six months compared to the ZERO budget of VP Robredo. What appeared to me to be a worse and atrociously inexplicable item in an updated Tale of the Tape is the confidential and intelligence budget of P500 million of Duterte-Carpio, for 2023, as our vice president when there was none in Robredo’s vice presidency. What a Tale of the Tape!