SPREADING lies is no longer effective under the present circumstances, says the militant legislators, in reference to Vice President Sara Duerte’s most recent statement accusing the Makabayan bloc of forging an alliance with the administration in an apparent effort to pin her down.
“We, the Makabayan bloc, denounce Vice President Sara Duterte’s latest attempt to deflect the public’s attention from the pressing issue of her misuse of confidential funds by fabricating a supposed Makabayan-Romualdez-Marcos alliance. It is imperative to set the record straight: no such alliance exists,” reads part of the statement.
According to the Makabayan bloc, VP Sara’s supposed “revelation” is just another squid tactic to evade from answering congressional queries on how she spent government funds during her stint as Secretary of the Department of Education (DepEd).
“Rather than resorting to these squid tactics, Vice President Duterte should directly and truthfully respond to the questions to be raised during the interpellations on her office’s next budget briefing scheduled for September 10. She is expected to attend and explain to the committee how public funds were used.”
“The Commission on Audit’s (COA) Notice of Disallowance has already highlighted the alarming misuse of PHP 125 million in confidential funds by the Vice President’s office in December 2022. The state auditor demands the return of PHP 73 million due to this egregious spending within just 11 days, purportedly for “surveillance” activities across 132 areas.”
The militant congressmen also took note of more pressing issues that Duterte has to answer covering the years of her stint as Education Secretary.
“On top of this, the COA’s audit report on DepEd for 2023, the last full year of Vice President Sara Duterte as head of the agency, showed notices of suspension amounting to P10.1 billion; notices of disallowance totaling P2.2 billion, and notices of charges worth P7.38 million due to ‘noncompliance with existing laws and regulations’ in its implementation of department projects.”
“COA also reported the accumulation of unliquidated cash advances that were either not authorized or had no specific purpose amounting to nearly P7 billion in violation of COA rules.”
Makabayan bloc likewise dared the Vice President to prepare better excuses on how she spent every peso of the confidential and intelligence fund transferred by the Office to the President to the education department.
“Vice President Duterte must answer the extreme under utilization of the Department of Education budget while she had 100% utilization of confidential funds.”
Citing COA records, the Makabayan bloc claimed that DepEd under Duterte’s watch was only able to repair 208 of 7,550 classrooms and three out of 88 targeted Last Mile Schools – on top of the zero-accomplishment rate for its computerization project, just because “the central office failed to complete the procurement process for 2023.”
Previously, news broke out about the delayed delivery of laptops for teachers and the possible rigging of bids for the DepEd computerization program where the government may have lost close to P1.6 billion during the re-bidding. There is also the P5.6 billion DepEd feeding program issue, where nutribuns delivered were stale, moldy and insect-infested, while some of the milk were already spoiled.
“Vice President Duterte’s refusal to answer legitimate questions regarding her budget spending demonstrates a disregard for the principles of transparency, accountability, and the constitutional duties she swore to uphold. The misuse of public funds of the OVP and DepEd is an impeachable offense, particularly given the severe lack of funding for social services.”
Meanwhile, the House-based militant group took a swipe at Duterte for the “magtrabaho muna” remark to the lawmakers who are “diligently doing our jobs, that is why we are scrutinizing the budget of every department and agency to ensure that the taxpayers’ money is well spent.”
“It is ironic for someone to tell lawmakers ‘magtrabaho muna’ when she has a zero accomplishment rate for the DepEd computerization program, only 3% of her target classrooms built, P9.6B worth of laptops delayed for years and her nutribuns for feeding kids stale or moldy.”
“So, enough with VP Duterte’s squid tactics, we demand accountability. It is the right of the people to know how their money was spent, and it is our duty to ensure that public officials do not betray their trust as this becomes an impeachable offense,” Makabayan bloc concluded. (ANGEL F. JOSE)
