Rights alliance KARAPATAN demanded full accountability from Vice President and former Education Secretary Sara Duterte for the alleged diversion of ₱612.5 million in confidential funds to bankroll counterinsurgency operations, including surveillance and background checks on teachers and students, disclosures from her ongoing impeachment trial showed.
The group said the revelations expose not only corruption but the weaponization of education resources against democratic rights.
“Duterte’s use of confidential funds for counterinsurgency is a direct assault on the people’s rights,” KARAPATAN secretary general Cristina Palabay said, citing overcrowded classrooms, shortages of teachers and learning materials, and rising education costs left unaddressed while millions were funneled into surveillance and red-tagging programs.
Documentary evidence presented before the Senate impeachment court reportedly showed allocations for counterinsurgency, anti-terrorism, and extremism programs under DepEd.
“Schools should be safe spaces for learning and critical thinking, not extensions of the state’s counterinsurgency apparatus,” Palabay stressed.
KARAPATAN warned that the misuse of confidential funds reflects systemic abuse of discretionary pools cloaked in secrecy.
The alliance reiterated its call for the abolition of Confidential and Intelligence Funds (CIFs) across all civilian agencies, saying billions continue to be allocated to surveillance while social services remain underfunded.
“Holding Sara Duterte accountable is only the first step. Equally urgent is dismantling the system that allows confidential and intelligence funds to be abused with impunity,” the group said, adding that public funds “belong in classrooms, hospitals, and communities, not in secret funds that finance repression.” # (ZIA LUNA)
