VP Sara Duterte says she feels for OVP staff amid House hearings

Vice President Sara Duterte on Thursday said she is feels sorry for the Office of the Vice President (OVP) officials getting involved amid persecution. 

In a 24 Oras report by Ian Cruz, Duterte said the biggest challenge for her right now is her staff being drawn into the ongoing House panel inquiry. 

“Naaawa ako dahil, as I said, politiko ako at iyang mga politiko sisirain talaga nila ang iyong pangalan because there’s a race. Para makalamang sila sa kalaban, sisirain talaga nila ang kanilang kakumpetensiya sa politika,” Duterte said in Bisayan during an interview on Wednesday.

(I feel sorry because, as I said, I am a politician, and these politicians will really destroy your name because there's a race. So they can gain an advantage over their opponents, they will tear down their competition in politics.)

Duterte's chief of staff, Zuleika Lopez, was cited in contempt by the House on Wednesday over a letter, which she signed, asking the Commission on Audit not to heed a House committee's subpoena to submit audit reports on the OVP and the Department of Education’s use of confidential funds.

In an interview on Thursday, Speaker Martin Romualdez said Duterte should appear before the committee herself instead of her staff and explain how the confidential funds were used.

"E ‘di dapat lang siyang sumipot at mag-oath at mag-salita at mag-eksplika kasi lahat ng mga opisyales niya… siya lang yata may alam kung ano’ng nangyari d’yan sa mga pondo eh kaya dapat siya ang mag-eksplika. ‘Wag na niyang ibigay sa mga officials ng OVP at sa DepEd. Sana lang magsalita, ‘yon na lang po,” Romualdez said. 

(Well, she should just show up and take an oath and speak and explain because all his officers... I think she's the only one who knows what happened to the funds, so she should be the one to explain. She should not put it on her officials at the OVP and the DepEd. She should speak up, let it be like that.) 

Duterte showed up on Day 1 of the House panel inquiry but refused to take the oath. Instead, she read a statement and alleged that the House members were conducting an inquiry to build up an impeachment case against her.

Duterte said it was useless to defend her office's proposed budget for 2025 because Romualdez controlled the budget allocations.

This has been denied by Romualdez and his allies, saying that the budget process did not allow the Speaker to allocate funds on his own.

Also on Thursday, House good government and public accountability panel chairperson Manila Representative Joel Chua of Manila said impeaching the Vice President was a reasonable action, although it may not be possible with the looming campaign and May 2025 elections.

The next House inquiry on the OVP and the DepEd's budget use has been set on November 25.

The ongoing House panel inquiry has so far revealed the following:

• the OVP spent P16 million of its P125 million confidential fund in 2022 for safehouses
• the DepEd under Vice President Duterte submitted certifications from military officials to justify confidential fund use without the consent of the military personnel
• the OVP and DepEd submitted acknowledgement receipts with wrong dates, unnamed signatories, if not unreadable signatories in liquidating the confidential funds it received in 2022 and 2023, among others.

— Sherylin Untalan/BM, GMA Integrated News