Marcos: No politics in OVP budget hearings

MANILA, Philippines — Budget hearings have nothing to do with politics, President Marcos said yesterday, following Vice President Sara Duterte’s claim that she was being “crucified” by lawmakers scrutinizing the proposed outlay of her office for next year.

In a media interview, Marcos said that he does not know how Duterte could characterize the hearings as politicking since these are “essentially an information-gathering exercise” for lawmakers so that they would know how the budget would look like.”

“This is something that every single government agency has to do. So it’s a hearing. There’s no politics in it. We do it every year. We do it with the same department. That process is well-established. It has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with the budget,” the President said while conducting an aerial inspection of flooded areas in Luzon.

“That’s very far from politics,” he added.

Duterte, whose family has had a falling out with the Marcoses, resigned as Department of Education (DepEd) secretary and vice chair of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict in June.

During recent hearings on the proposed budget of her office, Duterte had heated exchanges with some members of the House of Representatives who questioned her about various issues to the point that she asked them why she was being “crucified.”

Among the topics raised during the hearings were the spending of P125-million confidential funds in just 11 days two years ago and the allocating of P10 million for the distribution of “Isang Kaibigan,” a children’s book written by Duterte.

The Vice President claimed that the confidential funds of her office were not misused. She added that her book is being used for book donation and reading sessions to encourage children to read and to write their own stories.

According to Duterte, the inclusion of her name as the author was not meant to be a political move.

The House will resume hearings on the Office of the Vice President (OVP)’s budget on Sept. 10.

Sen. Risa Hontiveros has vowed to scrutinize the budget of the Office of the President (OP) in the same way she looked into the questionable use of funds by the OVP.

She promised to scrutinize the OP’s budget after she traded barbs with Vice President Duterte over the OVP’s P10-million budget allocation next year for the distribution of her children’s story book “Isang Kaibigan.”

“All agencies – including the executive branch – will be subject to scrutiny by Congress, a co-equal branch of government,” Hontiveros said.

The OP has a proposed 2025 budget of P10.5 billion, according to the National Expenditure Program. The OP has requested the biggest amount of confidential and intelligence funds (CIF) at P4.5 billion.