Sooner or later, Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio will have to go as people are getting bored with her antics, her refusal to answer questions during budget and her bonkers attempt to questions the very legitimacy of the budget hearings of the Office of the Vice President (OVP.)
There is a limit to the patience of Malacanang, the House of Representatives and the Senate in listening to Sara, who has been babied by her advisers as she cannot retort rationally to valid questions from ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro, Kabataan Rep. Raoul Manuel and Gabriela Women’s Party Rep. Arlene Brosas. Her demand that hearing officer Marikina Rep. Stella Quimbo be replaced hews for “crucifying” her closely to her dismissal of questions from Sen. Risa Hontiveros as “political harassment.” Eventually, this government will get rid of Sara, and the people will applaud.
The Lower House discovered her unexplained disbursement of P221.424 million from the Contingent Fund (CF) of Malacanang in 2022, when Sara had zero appropriation for confidential intelligence fund (CIF) and thus, she is accountable for every single penny of the Palace money. The Commission on Audit (COA) has demanded that Sara return P69-million of the P73-million covered by a notice of disallowance (ND.) Strange but true, there were three different types of rewards doled out by Sara. One type is described as P10-million in cash rewards, another is comprised of “various products” worth P34.657-million and yet another is tagged as “medicines” costing P24.93 million.
Rewards in kind are rather new, with whistleblowers and informants now dispensing with cash for their “valuable services.” COA said that P3.5 million of the disallowed P73 million was used to pay for “tables, chairs, desktop computers and printers without specifying that they were intended for the confidential operations/activities undertaken by the OVP.” COA also revealed that the OVP’s list of 105 activities attended or conducted by the OVP within that 11-day time frame “did not indicate the particular accomplishments for the successful information gathering and/or surveillance activities that are directly related to the specific confidential activities undertaken by the agency.”
There were at least 132 surveillance operations bankrolled by taxpayers, and only heaven knows whether these operations resulted in ferreting out the enemies of the state lurking in Mandaluyong, Buhangin District in Davao City, or identifying prospective assassins gunning after the scalp of anyone surnamed Duterte (save for the psychologist Nuelle Duterte), or finding the malevolent critics who do not want Sara to succeed as an outstanding public servant. Sara is obsessed with having her own “command center,” and such a center commands a heavy toll on public funds. There is nothing in her job description that requires her to have a “command center” or compels her to follow the commander-in-chief. In fact, her fraught ties with the Palace broke when she resigned from the DepEd, to the relief of teachers and other personnel.
ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro minces no words when she said that the COA report on OVP is enough ground to file articles of impeachment against Sara after that tumultuous Aug. 27 House hearing during which a belligerent Sara refused to answer questions and allow the House panel to just approve the OVP budget that it likes, whether it be pegged to the 2022 budget of former Vice President Leni Robredo or an eviscerated appropriation that may be 40% or 50% lower than the P2.037-billion proposed budget for next year. Even with that amount, Sara still has plenty of resources to wage a campaign against the Marcos Jr. administration until 2028. Shiploads of squid for Tita Pusit.
But wait, it turned out that there were irregularities in the purchases of laptops for DepEd, unrecorded payments for illustrators who did the artwork for “Isang Kaibigan,” a picture book that resembles “Owly 2: Just a Little Blue” of author Andy Runton, the unexplained disbursement of P112.5-million from the CIF of DepEd, officials said, which again covers surveillance work in the field of education, the search for guerrillas in public schools and the defense of national security against the inroads of protesting parents and guardians. Thanks to the discernment of new DepEd officials, there will no longer be a CIF for the department, teaching aids will be back on classroom walls and DepEd will dispense with counter-insurgency campaigns championed by Sara.
It is good to know that confusion will not be the order of the day at the DepEd, which is supposed to be funded to the tune of P793-billion next year. No more arguments about blank walls, stripped-down curricular and extra-curricular activities but more consultations among parents, teachers and pupils. More liberty rather than choking impositions that deprive teachers of creativity in instructing children, no more ad hoc policies rooted in mistaken assessments of the problems of the educational system. In the end, the school system will be liberated from Sara and her big, empty that she needs only P100-billion on top of the 2022 DepEd budget to fix all the structural, infrastructure and logistics issues hobbling the department. It echoes much of the brag of Donald Trump: “I alone can fix it.” Just too much of nothing.
