The coast guard and the vice president

Few days ago, I played the records of Jose Feliciano, one of the four blind singers I know, on my antiquated components. I did that while I was reading the FB posts and comments in the group called Pink Sambayan, which I joined recently. When Feliciano’s song “Love comes from the most unexpected places” started to play, I came upon an FB post about Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio and the Philippine Coast Guard. The Feliciano lyrics “If someone’s smile you can’t forget, and if the music plays on, in your mind” and Pink Sambayan’s post seemed coincidental.

What do we know about the Philippine Coast Guard? Many of us do not know much, really. What we think we know is that it is primarily tasked with first, safeguarding life and property at sea, second protecting marine resources and the environment, and third assisting in the enforcement of maritime laws within the Philippines” jurisdiction. Security of our country and our people appears to be its main job.

What about the vice president of the republic? A former law professor uttered a cruel joke about the vice president as a spare tire who has no defined function or power other than to pray that the presidency is vacated so that he can succeed as president. Dean Vicente Sinco, former President of the University of the Philippines and a respected constitutionalist, said that “the president (of the Philippines) is authorized xx to appoint the Vice President as a member of his cabinet. This provision is not mandatory. He need not appoint the Vice President to the cabinet, and if he does not, the Vice President will actually have nothing to do except to draw his salary. He becomes a useless appendage in the government.” There is no provision in the present constitution that details any work for the vice president to do.

The Facebook post that I read revealed that the confidential funds allotted to the Philippine Coast Guard had been a constant amount since 2009. That internet posting of Pink Sambayan, which it accordingly based on Department of Budget and Management documents, mentioned that the PCG has only received P10 million in Confidential and Intelligence Funds (CIFs) annually. Up to the year 2022, the total CIFs of the coast guard totaled only P117 million. But relevant to Jose Feleciano’s song, what played in my mind was an earlier information that Vice President Duterte-Carpio, admitted to have spent the unimaginably huge sum of P125 million of confidential fund in December 2022 alone.

Thinking that the Pink Sambayan is a crusade against the present dispensation, I deemed it necessary to validate its post. The confirmation came from the utterances of no less than Senator Juan Miguel Zubiri, the President of the Senate. In a mix of English and Tagalog statement recorded by Phil Star, his words were “xxx Imagine, the Coast Guard only has P10 million in confidential funds. Other agencies of government, hundreds of millions. xxx”

When I realized that the Philippine Coast Guard, in helping secure our country, spent 117 million pesos of Confidential and Intelligence Fund in more than 10 years but Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio in a reportedly record time of LESS THAN two weeks, spent 125 million pesos of Confidential and Intelligence Fund, I thought Jose Feliciano was fortunate in his being blind because he could not see how our leaders invent ways to pillage our money.