Nothing is as it seems with the Office of the Vice President (OVP) these days. In a recent House congressional inquiry in aid of legislation concerning the alleged fund misuse by the OVP for the years 2022 and 2023, Vice President Sara Duterte refused to take an oath to tell the truth in the hearing. This led some lawmakers to point out that taking the oath is “not just a mere legal formality but a commitment to honesty. Any refusal to do so undermines trust in public statements, and refusing to testify under oath sends a signal that there is something to avoid,” said Rep. Jay Khonghun.
Strong words indeed from one of the young lawmakers in Congress, defining a character heretofore unheard of from the second-highest public official in the land—the capacity to question the time-honored process in legislative inquiries in aid of legislation, to administer the oath to tell the truth either as a witness or a resource person on a particular subject matter.
Such an act by the second-highest official in the land, refusing to take the oath, raises warning bells that the country has a vice president who is not averse to bending the rules when it suits her or protects her vested interests. Her flawed reasoning during the inquiry—that as a resource person invited to the House inquiry, she is not required to take the oath and that only witnesses are supposed to do so—speaks either of her inability to understand the responsibility and accountability of being asked to explain how she had used the money of the OVP, or she simply cannot reveal the truth; hence her refusal.
As the vice president of the country, and one who is understandably very popular with the masses at the moment, Sara should have been advised by her advisers that the smart and credible way to counter what she alleges are political attacks against her and her plan to run in 2028 is to take the oath during the inquiry and explain, and perhaps even elucidate, point by point how wisely her office had spent the OVP’s confidential and intelligence fund (CIF) of 73.28 million pesos back in 2022, which was flagged by the Commission on Audit (COA), and the 375 million pesos in 2023, which was also flagged by the COA. It would have been a piece of cake for her to explain how those CIF monies were spent and who benefited from it. Backed by her popularity with the masses and her taking the oath to tell the truth, the public might even have believed her. But somehow that aura of trust Sara has been projecting throughout her political career may finally have been pierced when she failed to take the oath during the House inquiry.
Obviously, after refusing to take the oath, any statement the vice president subsequently makes during the hearing will no longer be given the benefit of the doubt and may simply be dismissed as inconsequential and not relevant to the hearing since she had earlier refused to make a commitment to tell the truth.
Of course, on the other side of the coin is the possibility that the vice president cannot really explain how her office spent 125 million pesos worth of CIF in just a span of 11 days. That would have to be about 11 million pesos for each of the eleven days. Go figure.
A more disturbing aspect of the personality of the vice president as a public official is her apparent lack of concern with respect to her accountability to the people. It should have been made clear to Vice President Duterte that the CIF funds entrusted to her office and spent by her office are the people’s money, and they have every right to know where it went when it was under her care and management. When COA flagged the OVP’s CIF funds for 2022 and 2023, it already means that something was not followed or observed in the way it was spent—rules were not complied with or cast aside in favor of some other way of utilizing said funds. Whatever the case may be, the vice president as an accountable officer could have immediately informed the public that there is nothing to worry about because all those monies were spent properly and to the benefit of the people.
She could have easily done that even before the congressional inquiry began, but she did not. In fact, when she was asked to defend her budget under the OVP, and lawmakers began asking her how she had been spending her funds for the past years, she suddenly announced that she would no longer defend her budget and would accede to whatever amount would be given her office.
That is really disturbing behavior coming from such a high public official in the country, and no matter how one looks at the vice president now, she certainly is hiding something from the prying eyes of the public.
