Sara leaves fate of P500 million confidential fund to House

MANILA, Philippines — Vice President Sara Duterte will leave it to the House of Representatives to decide on whether to keep her proposed P500-million confidential fund, which opposition lawmakers have been questioning, or simply scrap it.

Whatever the decision, according to Rep. Ma. Carmen Zamora who sponsored 2023 budget proposal for the Office of the Vice President (OVP), Duterte will respect it.

“The honorable Vice President has just shared it with me now. She’s saying, she defers to the decision of the majority of this Congress,” the Davao de Oro congresswoman said.

The militant Makabayan bloc, along with independent opposition lawmaker Rep. Edcel Lagman (Albay), has been questioning Duterte’s confidential funds, saying her predecessors didn’t have such or even if they did, it was not a huge amount.

“The vice presidents then, before martial law, during martial law and after martial law did not enjoy the allocation of confidential funds, and they did not ask for the appropriation of confidential funds,” Lagman reminded Zamora.

He noted that the post Marcos Sr.-era vice presidents – from Salvador Laurel to Leni Robredo – did not get confidential funds for their office.

But Zamora said this was not entirely true as the OVP was given P6 million in 2009, P3 million in 2010, another P6 million in 2011 and P9 million in 2012 and that all of these were in the form of confidential funds.

If this is the only amount needed, Lagman replied, this is just fine “since this is not half a billion pesos.

Lagman then pressed for the basis of the intelligence funds and what Duterte, who is also the concurrent Department of Education secretary, plans to do with it.

“Our understanding is that the honorable Vice President is not willing to forgo, not even a single centavo of the P500 million, the confidential fund allocated in her office,” the lawyer-legislator observed.

For Kabataan party-list  Rep. Raoul Manuel, the P500 million out of the OVP’s P2.3-billion total budget for 2023 is simply a “pork barrel,” which can be considered as discretionary funds at the beck and call of Duterte.

“I believe the current proposal of the OVP can be likened to the VP’s pork barrel cloaked with good governance,” Manuel said with sarcasm following Zamora’s line that Duterte will be using it for good governance programs, like financial subsidy.

Senate hearing

After the budget hearing at the House of Representatives, Duterte’s spokesman Reynold Munsayac said they are now preparing to defend the 2023 OVP budget proposal before the Senate on Sept. 29.

“We expect senators to also ask about some provisions of the OVP budget but we are ready to explain it thoroughly to them,” he said, noting that the office earlier drew criticisms over the inclusion of P500 million in confidential funds.

Munsayac earlier explained that the fund would be used for projects related to national security and peace and order.

“The position and mandate of the Vice President allows her to utilize those kinds of funds regarding peace and order and national security, especially since we have livelihood projects that will be implemented in conflict areas in our attempt to maintain peace and order and pursue national security projects,” he said at a press briefing on Sept. 1.

The proposed OVP budget next year is more than three times its current budget of P702 million.

Budget documents showed that the OVP’s proposed budget for financial assistance increased from this year’s P357.6 million to P920.8 million. Other items with significant increases include travel expenses (from P25.3 million to P59.5 million), supplies and materials expenses (from P45.8 million to P262.99 million), professional services (from P41.78 million to P193.95 million), representation expenses (from P29.57 million to P79.31 million) and rent or lease expenses (from P18 million to P32.48 million).

Munsayac said the increase in these items is related to the opening of satellite offices across the country, as well as the distribution of supplies and dental kits to students under Duterte’s “pagbaBAGo bags” initiative. – Janvic Mateo, Rhodina Villanueva