Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio’s outbursts during the hearing at the House of Representatives for the proposed P2.037-billion budget of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) next year should have merited an immediate deferment but the lawmakers sat through the session to see in full splendor just how gothic the vice president’s behavior really.
Apart from the mechanical responses possibly listed on her cellular phone that she dished out, she insulted the congressional panel by questioning its mandate and insisted that only questions on the proposed appropriations should be raised. She needs reading glasses as the invitation to her and others stated explicitly that questions on the proposed budget as well the disbursements of the previous OVP outlay will be raised. It is self-explanatory. As a resource person and head of the OVP, it is her duty to respond and not to question the function of the panel.
Where else would you find a vice president telling a legislative panel to limit their questions to what is contained on the proposed 2025 OVP budget? It is clear that Sara was not prepared to answer in a civil, decent and truthful fashion the very questions that taxpayers are asking. For instance, she refused to say anything about how the P125-million she secured from Malacanang’s Contingent Fund (CF) was spent in the dying days of 2022. Naturally, she would deign not refute how another P96.424 million was used up in the final 11 days of December 2022.
Instead, she willy-nilly retorted why ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro still sits on the panel after a Davao court convicted Castro of child abuse for rescuing 14 Lumad minors when the paramilitary Alamara boarded up their school and ordered their teachers to leave. Castro is the nemesis of Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio. She earned that honorable moniker after she secured documents from the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) about the P221.424-million that OVP spent in December 2022, an amount the OVP was technically not entitled to. For her sleuthing, Sara tagged France and other Makabayan lawmakers as “enemies of national security.” Those who oppose her, Sara pompously theorized in her version of the Sermon on the Mount, are the “enemies of peace.”
Castro and former Bayan Muna Rep. Satur Ocampo appealed the verdict and cited glaring errors in the decision that warrant a reversal. Was her diatribe relevant to the issue? It was not. Was her response out of order? It was and it must be stricken off the congressional record. The congressional panel was apparently more civil than necessary to clear up the matter of OVP disbursements, her wrong sense of priority exposed by the leases or purchases of property for seven satellite offices of the OVP. When questions were raised about her book “Isang Kaibigan,” to be funded by P10-million out of taxpayers’ money, Sara insulted Kabataan Rep. Raoul Manuel, saying he is the editor of the book. Many at the hearing room cringed.
Lawyer Joseph Welch and the unlamented Sen. Joseph McCarthy are now dead, but the question Welch fielded to McCarthy during his red-baiting US Senate inquiry when he lashed out at lawyer Fred Fisher as a Communist for being a member of the Lawyers’ Guild still rings a bell: “Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency? Sir, have you got no sense of decency?” Sara is segueing the McCarthy shtick by attacking those who question her, tagging them as “unfit” to sit at the panel hearing and slamming them as “crucifying” her.
A picture book that looks, smells and reads like Andy Runton’s “Owly: Just a Little Blue,” the second in a series of Owly children’s books that had an edition with text in 2020, should send Runton’s lawyers in the US investigating to see if the charge of plagiarism against Sara would stick. Authors are supposed to be intellectually honest and original. Is Sara’s work original? Is she honest? Yet, this is the same Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio who was quoted as saying honesty is not needed in politics. We hasten to add that she might have been an ardent adherent of Napoleon Bonaparte, who also said that “in politics, stupidity is not a handicap.” Indeed, in the Philippine electoral politics, it is a virtue as many of these creatures end up becoming senators and congressmen, even vice presidents.
And so it came to pass. The annoyed, disappointed and gobsmacked honorable congressmen and congresswomen finally gathered their wits and deferred the OVP budget hearing to September 10, 2024, denying Sara additional hours to harangue the lawmakers who were clearly dismayed by her antics, the lack of decorum and respect for the legislature, which happens to wield the power of the purse, particularly the bicameral that can surgically remove all the items that Sara wanted funded generously. She roared that because of the intransigent legislators, she would have the money to give away to poor and suffering Filipinos, duplicating the function of the Department of Social Work and Development (DSWD) and other charitable agencies. Sara should stick to being a spare tire. However, with her Aug. 27, 2024 performance, she needs some vulcanizing to make “tapal” to all the “butas” that she created for herself. If not, this entire tire should be replaced.
