by Diego Morra
Sara Zimmerman Duterte has no right to lecture any government functionary about professionalism after she abused her own office to issue death threats in the wee hours of the morning and after authorizing the release of funds of both the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd) to military officers who were not designated special disbursing officers (SDOs.)
There was no professionalism in the monthly payoffs to DepEd officials, including lawyer Michael Poa, who admitted receiving cash monthly while raising the excuse that the funds were for his reimbursement (is Sara a compulsive buyer that she would purchase something without any cash in her pocket that she has to rely on Poa to pay for sundry items?) Of course, it doesn’t wash, like the excuse that the republic should cut Sara some slack for not including in her SALNs the P6.77-billion that passed through her accounts, and her joint accounts with her father Rodrigo, and her husband Manases Carpio. The simple justification was that the funds were lodged in the “others” category, which is just as worse as the money was merely “passing through.”
There was no professionalism at all when a career DepEd official, Gloria Jumamil Mercado, was summarily dismissed on the cusp of her retirement for not “obeying suggestions” on the purchase of computers. Mercado provided Sara’s “cash envelopes” to the Lower House, along with testimony on where the money went. There was no professionalism when Sara claimed that Mercado earned money on a deal to develop a project to enhance communication between and teachers nationwide. The project, it turned out, cost the DepEd nothing. Mercado provided Sara’s “cash envelopes” to the Lower House, along with testimony on where the money went. Mercado did what her job description and the law wanted her to do: Be truthful.
Was Sara being professional when she ordered Gina Acosta, her SDO at the OVP, to give millions of pesos from the so-called Confident Fund (she was not entitled to it in 2022) to Col. Lachica, the head of OVP security, who was not qualified to be an SDO? Was Sara being professional when she also ordered Edward Fajarda, the DepEd SDO, to give to Sara’s security men all the cash designated as CF, ostensibly to “pay” unknown and unknowable “informers”? Certainly, Sara was not being professional for signing the OVP and DepEd disbursement reports containing dubious acknowledgment receipts, attesting to their veracity, which the Commission on Audit (COA) could not authenticate and perforce disallowed. By attesting to their truthfulness, Sara was responsible for passing off unmitigated lies as the truth.
Pulong Duterte also joined the rhetorical mayhem by demanding that Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. name the officials whom he tagged as pro-China. The younger apparently felt alluded to when Teodoro suggested that officials who cannot support government’s position on the July 2016 ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) favoring the country against China’s claims over maritime features in the South China Sea (SCS) should resign. With the Pulong-Sara discordant duet raging in cyberspace, wage simply both of them and their Senate buddies as the pro-China chorus in officialdom. Their demand that Ferdinand Marcos Jr. resign suddenly boomeranged. Their sideshow now threatens to hit them hard.
By her statements against Presidential Spokesperson Claire Castro and her feeble attempt to say that she has no personal animosity with Marcos Jr., the Filipino people now have a fairly rational assessment of Sara. She has to fight her demons and presumed enemies that have been pushing her into her political Scylla and Charybdis. Of course, no one of sound mind, not non compos mentis, would believe that the Dutertes did not plan the break with the Marcos camp. Since 2023, talk of Marcos’s quitting or being forced to resign was already rife, and it started when Sara failed to land the defense portfolio, and “let her lead” posters were splashed in Metro Manila. Teodoro is now in their crosshairs. Her tiff with Castro is a proxy war since Sara, not known to be diligent or politically savvy, lacks the moral ascendancy to train her cannons disgorging bilge water on Malacanang.
One of Sara’s comical criticisms against Marcos Jr. is that he should not concentrate on Davao City to promote a housing program that he had implemented, claiming that the project started in 2024 was actually a Duterte project, only for her claim to be debunked. Marcos Jr. was also wrong in concentrating on Davao City’s flood control projects, for which the current regime had allocated P7.8-billion in three years while government is investigating what happened to the P51-billion released for Davao City infra projects in the last three years of the previous administration. At every turn, Sara’s missiles do not land, demolishing her status as a fervent critic and pretense to be the apotheosis of an honest, sensible and law- abiding public servant. The Good Book quoted Jesus Christ as saying that what goes into the mouth is not unclean. What comes out of it like threats, expletives and lies are unclean. How do you reconcile her behavior and her language with her Jewish heritage?
After making a swift journey in several countries and making a grand revelation that she can get contract killers for a pittance at P5,000 to kill her husband’s paramour if he, indeed, has one. She failed to accomplish that “noble deed” to eliminate dear daddy’s mistresses (according to presidential wannabe Baste Duterte, there were 13 of them) but scored a significant achievement in erasing any doubt about her predilection for violence. She has become all mouth and no trousers, rising above herself and getting into a proper pickle. Sara is in a real Scylla and Carybdis, her impeachment trial gaining steam and her defense team, now reinforced by her father-in-law, Atty. Lucas Carpio, trying to establish a coherent legal theory to destroy a fortress of evidence. There is a British expression for this: Be on a hiding to nothing.#
