No one dared

Yesterday, prosecution lawyer Lorna Kapunan finally managed to get a witness to walk through the expenses incurred by Vice President Sara Duterte justified as confidential in nature: for wheelchairs, Christmas parties, a Youth Campaign on Patriotism by the Knights of Rizal Supreme Council, and consultations, among others, with disbursements to interesting names that have been featured over and over in the papers. It’s no surprise that the defense team of the Vice President tried every means to bog down the proceedings, by refusing to stipulate documents and even dodging organizational meetings with the prosecution. The actual spending and the carelessness surrounding it are simply too damning.

These revelations have to do with the P500 million confidential funds allocated by Congress for the Vice President with a minimum of scrutiny along with an additional P112.5 million in similar funds allocated to the Department of Education which the Vice President held. The Commission on Audit has issued notices of disallowance: for P73.28 million from late 2022 (spent, if you recall, in 11 days), P375 million from three 2023 quarterly advances amounting to P125 million each, for a grand total of P448 million in potential liabilities.

Before being elected to national office, then Mayor Sara Duterte (from 2016-2022) had spent P2.697 billion in confidential expenses; the longer she was in office, the bigger the sums: from P144 million in 2016, to P293 million in 2017, then P420 million in 2018, and then around P460 million annually from 2019-2022. These amounts dwarfed the spending of local governments such as Quezon City, Manila, Makati, or Cebu during the same period.

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When Kapunan characterized the Vice President’s handling of confidential funds as a “scam,” the defense demanded the term be stricken off the record. Whether the Cambridge dictionary definition (“a dishonest and illegal plan or trick meant to cheat people out of money, goods, or private data through lies and fake promises”) fits the bill or not, the defense now has to somehow defend the spending as not being what ordinary people might consider as deserving of being classified as “confidential” in nature, when these are “lump sum budget allocations given to government agencies for sensitive surveillance and information gathering activities.”

Normally, the spending of confidential funds, “because these expenses involve national security and peace and order … are exempt from standard, highly public auditing procedures, [and operate] under stricter confidentiality rules.” What the prosecution has shown is that confidential funds were used as a convenient slush fund to fund by the Vice President, apparently under the overconfident assumption that a minimum of compliance would suffice since no one would dare take a close look at how or what she spent the money on.

I’ve seen it suggested that what the Vice President did was fall for a trap; that the President’s side of the then-ruling coalition, knowing their shotgun marriage would split apart sooner rather than later, gifted the Vice President with a huge fund, knowing it would be spent quickly and carelessly. After all, the use–and abuse—of confidential funds was already a trademark of her style of executive management.

To be sure, there were instances where the funds were used to provide rewards, but as Roderick Wamil, a former auditor said, “So, based on the acknowledgment receipts they submitted, rewards were paid in cash, medicines, and various goods. However, none of those reward payments had any supporting document attached showing the success of the information-gathering or surveillance activity conducted on the basis of the information provided by the informer.”

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As our editorial pointed out, when the President’s sister tried to get the Vice President off the hook, Wamil wouldn’t budge: “That is not entirely correct, Your Honor, because under the Joint Circular, it shall be the responsibility of the head of the agency first to approve the cash advance; second, to oversee the agency-wide utilization; and third, to ensure compliance with the Joint Circular.”

The story is actually a simple one. In the good old days, no one would have dared to question how the Great Eagle Father spent public money, whether as mayor of Davao or president of the Philippines; his daughter inherited this impunity and assumed it would also extend to her once she held national office. The aliases–the lawyers being careful to note the regulations neither forbid nor encourage their use—are simply telltale signs of how the whole thing was well, if not a scam, then a racket? Ah, but it would be up to the prosecution to suggest, and then prove, that it was “a dishonest, fraudulent, or criminal enterprise—such as extortion or a scam—run for easy profit.”

No one dared to ask for so long, it became a continuing act of daring to try to see how silly the aliases could be, and creative the uses could be, and maybe even how boldly the picking up and hauling around of big, bulging bags of money could be–thinking it would always be confidential–or else.

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Email: mlquezon3@gmail.com; Twitter: @mlq3