MANILA, Philippines — A House lawmaker has called on his colleagues to no longer give Vice President Sara Duterte a “free pass” during deliberations of the proposed budget of the Office of the Vice President.
How Duterte spends the budget of the OVP — which lawmakers have consistently passed within minutes at the committee level since 2022 — should be scrutinized “down to every peso,” Rep. Joel Chua (Manila, 3rd District) said in a statement.
“No more and never again shall the VP not be held to the same level of scrutiny as other public officials during the budget hearings,” Chua said.
The lawmaker issued the statement in response to another open letter released by Duterte on Wednesday where she lamented the state of the country “currently being led by leaders with no honors.”
Duterte’s three-page letter began with expressing gratitude to six Muslim tribes in Davao City for issuing a support statement for her family’s security.
The vice president then rattled off a laundry list of problems with the country’s healthcare system, flood control infrastructure, and lawmakers “trying to meddle with others’ issues.”
Duterte said members of Congress should understand that the shortage of police “cannot be solved during our lifetime due to the annually ballooning population and lack of budgetary resources to hire more personnel.”
“Subalit ang Pilipinas ngayon ay may representante na imbes na magpasa ng makabagong batas, ay nagpupumilit sumasawsaw sa isyu ng iba,” Duterte said.
(But the Philippines has representatives who will meddle in the affairs of others instead of passing new laws.)
Chua called Duterte’s letter “empty” and “full of generalizations” and challenged the vice president to show proof of how the OVP has helped create jobs and improve health care services.
“Siya ba’y komedyante, panay selfie, feeling artista, pero wala namang aktuwal na ginagawa? Patunayan niya sa Kongreso kung anong ginawa niya sa budget niya noong 2022, 2023, at ngayong 2024,” the lawmaker added.
(Is she a comedian, always taking selfies, feeling like a celebrity, but not actually doing anything? Let her prove to Congress what she has done with her budget in 2022, 2023, and this 2024.)
In last year’s deliberations of the OVP at the House, the OVP had merely presented a ten-minute audio-visual presentation on its accomplishments and priorities for the proposed 2024 budget, after which the committee had moved to end the deliberations.
It was the president’s son, House Senior Deputy Majority Leader Sandro Marcos, who made a motion to terminate the deliberations for the OVP’s proposed 2024 budget, citing “parliamentary courtesy” and tradition.
During the term of former Vice President Leni Robredo, the OVP’s budget was also approved in minutes due to the lower chamber’s tradition of not raising questions with respect to the top officials of the executive branch.
Robredo’s OVP budget, however, is significantly lower than Duterte’s.
Besides not having confidential and intelligence funds, the OVP under Robredo only received P700 million in her last year in office.
This jumped to around P2 million in 2023 — the first full year Duterte served as vice president.
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