MANILA, Philippines — Senators are expecting Vice President Sara Duterte to personally face the chamber during plenary deliberations on the 2027 budget of the Office of the Vice President (OVP), with Sen. Risa Hontiveros warning that another absence would be considered “improper conduct.”
The reminder comes after Duterte skipped the OVP budget briefings at both the House of Representatives and the Senate committee level, sending her chief of staff Zuleika Lopez instead.
Hontiveros stressed that Senate President Sherwin Gatchalian had laid down a clear directive requiring all agency heads to be present, from the committee hearings up to the plenary debates on their respective outlays.
She noted that the rule applies to all departments, adding that the Senate had previously called out attached agencies of the Department of Social Welfare and Development for similar absences.
“I’m sure we will flag that because that is not proper conduct of any head of agency, even if and especially if it is the Vice President,” Hontiveros said when asked what would happen if Duterte again skipped the budget hearing.
Hontiveros dismissed the idea that the OVP budget would breeze through the plenary unchallenged out of traditional “parliamentary courtesy,” emphasizing that Congress has a mandate to scrutinize how public funds are allocated and spent.
Impeachment already decided?
Meanwhile, claims that the Senate has already secured the numbers to either convict or acquit Duterte are “premature,” Hontiveros said ahead of today’s impeachment trial resumption.
Hontiveros dismissed speculations circulating on social media that the senator-judges have already predetermined the outcome of the historic trial.
“I think premature for me or anyone to say that there are already numbers for conviction or acquittal because we have only heard half (the arguments),” she said in an interview with radio dzBB.