by Diego Morra
After Gina Acosta and Sara’s own assistant chief of staff Lemuel Ortonio admitted in open court that nothing moves within the Office of the Vice President (OVP) without her knowledge, all surveillance and intelligence operations of the Vice Presidential Security and Protection Group (VPSPG) were conducted with her consent, all disbursements were authorized by her, including the payments for food, medicines, office equipment and rewards, and the extra expenses for the acquisition of office spaces for 13 satellite offices and three extension offices (which makes her the only vice president on the planet to have a constellation of offices despite her primary role as spare tire), it is now plainly clear that Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio must take the hot seat and clear up the tangled mess of lies that her operation produced.
All these expenses are disallowed not only by the Commission on Audit (COA) but also by common sense. Sara is not the President, although she can continue to pretend that she is one, and the OVP is not a designated agency concerned with national and domestic security that has to monitor what is happening nationwide and in other nations as well. But why does she act doolally and concerns herself with playing soldier? All because embedded in her mind is a firm belief that she was entitled to the defense portfolio and when she “lost” it, the demons in her mind saw a conspiracy. Moreover, Sara hates crowds, as she admitted, and the VPSPG was organized precisely to secure her from her adoring fans and succor her before she faints from her agoraphobia.
Sara is bureaucratic abuse personified, the bumbling elected official who started all the mess at the OVP and soiled the already murky management system at the Department of Education (DepEd), and systematically burdened the public coffers by her insistence that she be funded P500-million each year of confidential fund (CF) to cover activities that are not firmly within the ambit of OVP. Ortonio grudgingly admitted that Leni Robredo got zero budget for CF in six years, so why was it necessary for Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio to be treated differently and pampered with separate CFs for OVP and DepEd? The answer is that Sara demanded it and got it as if she were entitled to her own pork barrel. Why the huge budget? The OVP was simply the jumping board to Malacanang and Sara, obsessed with the delusion that she was groomed by whoever created her to be the next president, promoted the lie that the position was hers, by hook or by crook.
No one among the normally rational government officials told her that both the OVP and DepEd do not need confidential and intelligence funds and neither was she entitled to have a separate security unit with 473 personnel, all drawing salaries from the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP) and not from the OVP. Indeed, Sara was backed by sycophants and enablers and not one among them abided by basic ethical and moral standards to counsel her to land back on earth and act in a civil fashion, respect the law and be accountable for whatever she does considering her high position in the regime.
Yet, Sara has no truck with morality, honesty, sincerity and the beatitudes, believing in the scribe who wrote “The Prince” of Machiavelli rather than reading the room, sensing not the tempest she is trying to unleash if the Senate, for whatever reason, gives her a pass for the ocean of crimes she had committed. It is now 2026 and the senators who still feel they are indebted to the Dutertes should have their heads examined. They supported Rodrigo Duterte’s policy of murder to reduce crime for six years kaya bayad na silang lahat. Moreover, kung may utang man, hindi maaaring si Sara ang maningil. If they still think with their asses, they will absolve Sara.
With testimonies pointing to Sara as the ultimate director of the spending spree of the CF, the advancing of cash before the CF and operational funds are released in violation of COA rules (like the P150,000 from Ortonio), the appointment of unqualified special disbursing officers (SDOs) like Col. Raymond Dante Lachica and Col. Dennis Nolasco, the fixing of financial reports and acknowledgment receipts (ARs) that erased expenses for food, medicines and equipment not covered by the CF but retained the total of P125-million, the failure of both Ortonio and Acosta to check the veracity of the reports on payments of rewards and the confirmation that their informers were living, breathing humans and not ghosts who walk, it behooves the prosecution and the impeachment court to subpoena Sara to testify.
Sara will never appear on the hot seat for the simple reason that she dreads to be truthful, like Acosta and Ortonio, who apparently were coached and monitored to say what Sara wants them to say. Sara will never swear, with her hand on the Bible, Quran or Torah, to tell the unvarnished truth, and nothing but the unvarnished truth. With her inherited narcissism, her irrationality and her wanderlust working in full throttle, Sara just made it clear that the Senate proceedings were a sham, walang kakwenta-kwenta that she would not dignify summonses. That statement alone should prod senators to examine Sara’s mental state. Like a cornered dog, she barks and howls and threatens to bite before someone gives it a whack in the head. Sara does not want to be put on the spot to clear the crap laid before her by her minions, her trusted underlings and her highly-paid enablers. She is scared to death to face prosecutors Lorna Kapunan, Amando Virgil Ligutan, Mae Divinagracia as well as the House members who are also prosecuting her.
That would be the day. This will be the only chance for Sara to scupper her version of “mene, thekel, upharsin” on Belshazzar’s wall. Blame not only on her hubris but on her ignorance, the miscalculation that she can do as she pleases with P612.5-million in CF, the P448.2-million she hasn’t returned and the billions of DepEd cash she consigned to the freezer since she was certain that Marcos Jr. would quit and she would ascend to the throne. It would do well for Sara to listen again to the late Dolly Parton’s cover of “Stairway to Heaven” by the Led Zeppelin. It might as well be her political dirge. #
