Vice President Sara Duterte on Sunday said she has no idea as to whether Office of the Vice President (OVP) chief of staff and undersecretary Zuleika Lopez will be attending the House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability’s next hearing scheduled on Monday, November 25.
Lopez is currently confined at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center (VMMC) in Quezon City after she fell ill early Saturday morning amid the House of Representatives’ order to transfer her to the Correctional Institution for Women.
“Hindi ko alam kay Atty. Lopez kasi hindi ako nakikinig sa discussion niya sa mga doctor niya tsaka sa mga abogado niya. Tsaka darating din ‘yun nanay niya bukas,” Duterte said in an ambush interview before she temporarily left the VMMC to visit her children.
(I don’t know if Atty. Lopez will attend the next hearing because I’m not listening to her discussions with her doctors and lawyers. Her mother will also arrive tomorrow.)
Duterte on Saturday also said Lopez has expressed her intent to resign from her OVP post.
Lopez was ordered detained at the lower chamber after she was cited in contempt for her supposed “undue interference” in the panel’s investigation into the budget use and confidential funds of the OVP and the Department of Education during Duterte’s stint as secretary.
Her detention is supposedly until November 25, the date of the committee’s next hearing.
On Wednesday’s hearing, Lopez said she had no knowledge of how the OVP utilizes, disburses, nor liquidates its confidential funds.
Congressmen involved in the probe have raised questions related to state auditors’ findings that the OVP’s use of confidential funds was accompanied by inconsistent acknowledgement receipts.
Duterte, in return, maintained that she did not misuse OVP funds and that the congressional inquiry is just a test case for impeachment. —RF, GMA Integrated News
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