If the quad investigation into the financial hanky-panky Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio were a boxing match, Sara should have been knocked out dozens of times. If it were a baseball game, the mercy rule apply to save her from further ignominy.
By the same token, no matter how big her “hakot” crowd is, Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio cannot overturn the mountain of evidence already collected from the Commission on Audit (COA), the Department of Budget and Management (DBM), the Office of the Executive Secretary (OES), the Office of the Vice President (OVP), the Department of Education (DepEd) and the thousands of acknowledgment receipts (ARs) that Sara’s underlings signed and accomplished in mad dash to prove her mysterious rewards and stolen sponsorship of youth leadership summits were “aboveground.”
As Danilo Ramos of the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas (KMP) and also an aspirant for the Senate under the Makabayan Coalition said, the only time Sara Duterte was able to act rationally during budget deliberations was in 2022, when her subordinates breezed through the questions of friendly lawmakers. Here is a unique case of a vice president who cannot answer basic questions and lawmakers allowed her to pass legislative muster. However, Sara is not good at doing her homework, and so the dubious ARs, the absence of official receipts, the failure to show that the recipients of her largesse were breathing, living, thinking citizens, the manufactured signatures, the aliases that pass for names of real people and so on.
Call it sheer ignorance or arrant nonsense but the legal scholar in Sara is arguing that her sworn statement will qualify as a replacement for her direct testimony. Has any prosecutor ever elicited a reply from an affidavit? A legal filing is not expected to reply to voire dire questioning and so Sara is wasting everybody’s time by insisting her affidavit would suffice. Why is Sara so scared of facing a congressional panel? In her only appearance at the congressional hearing, zhe tangled with ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro, whom she wanted to kicked out of the panel, Gabriela Rep. Arlene Brosas and Kabataan Rep. Raoul Manuel, Rep. Jinky Luistro and Marikina Rep. Stella Quimbo, who once defended the OVP budget.
Ramos notes that from the initial irrational replies of Sara Duterte, she has actually regressed to crafting grand conspiracy theories to deflect, divert and spew unlimited squid ink on those who demanded that she clarify whatever happened to the hundreds of millions of pesos that she wasted in paying off “informants,” buying or leasing opulent offices, 13 of them classified as satellite offices and three as extension offices. Naturally, Congress failed to provide her with the funds for OVP offices in Beijing, Tel Aviv, Berlin and Washington, D.C. Critics have said that the more credible evidence uncovered against her, the more virulent her reaction.
Now, all the gloves are off as Sara now firmly believes the entire government is out to destroy her “reputation” as Congress and the Senate find her to be grievously responsible for the funds that had disappeared. So, instead of just hissing, she is now directly cursing the Marcoses (save for Imee, and we wonder why) and accusing Liza Cacho Araneta Marcos or corruption. The congressmen and congresswomen who grill her are also corrupt since they are all quislings of Speaker Ferdinand Martin Romualdez. The COA auditors are also corrupt because they are zeroing in on her financial mismanagement and fiscal irresponsibility.
Instead of proving her critics wrong, Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio is confirming everything that is wrong with her. She cannot disprove the facts and she cannot produce the money, gym bag upon gym bag, which the Fajarda couple have been disbursing all across the nation. “We call for immediate impeachment proceedings against her for corruption and betrayal of public trust. The Vice President’s repeated refusal to face the Congressional investigation, compounded by her harassment of ACT Teachers Partylist Rep. France Castro, demonstrates an alarming disregard for transparency and accountability. Instead of addressing the serious discrepancies flagged by the COA and revealed during the House hearings, Duterte has resorted to theatrics and political diversions to evade responsibility,” Ramos argued.
“Sara cannot cry politics to justify plunder,” added Ramos. “The misuse of public funds is a crime, and no amount of grandstanding or finger-pointing can absolve her. Her actions betray the trust of the Filipino people and make a mockery of the institutions she is supposed to serve.” Ramos said as far as farmers are concerned, Sara Duterte is guilty of plunder and betrayal of public trust. The farmer-leader stressed that the Filipino people also want the CIF to be abolished since it is the source of plundered cash. Moreover, there is the clamor for an end to unprogrammed appropriations (UA), the pork barrel for politicians seeking reelection. But first things first, impeach Sara to start the ball rolling.
