FIRING LINE: Impeachment in sight?

By Robert B. Roque, Jr.

Lately, the drama around Vice President Sara Duterte has been a recurring trade of barbed rants between her and her political allies-turned-adversaries.

Very few have noticed, but these only obscure the root issues of why her position of authority must be questioned.

Rep. Joel Chua and the House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability have presented a clear and coherent premise to have her answer for glaring inconsistencies in her office’s handling of confidential funds.

According to them, three damning points challenge her fitness for office and these are why some lawmakers tend to favor impeachment proceedings.

First, the P16 million allegedly spent by the OVP on 34 “safehouses” over just 11 days is grossly suspicious of funding misuse. According to the Committee, daily rental costs for these safehouses ranged from P250,000 to P1 million.

Fantastic as these figures may sound, documentation supporting these payments is dubious at best. It was found that the names of recipients in supposed receipts are illegible or reduced to initials, raising red flags over whether the funds were truly used as claimed.

Second, there’s the missing P15 million purportedly allocated for “youth leadership summits” through the Department of Education (DepEd), which was supposedly transferred to the Philippine Army.

The problem with this fund maneuver during Inday Sara’s time as DepEd secretary is that army officials categorically denied ever receiving these funds. The Commission on Audit (COA) had certified the release, yet with both the Army and local government units claiming no receipt, the question remains: where did the money go?

If it’s any indication that some hocus pocus has been going on in the VP’s office, COA outright disallowed P73 million from her confidential funds, part of a larger P125 million spent in under two weeks, citing the expenses as “irregular, unnecessary, excessive, extravagant, or illegal.”

Ordered to return the funds, Duterte’s office now faces questions about whether public resources are being managed with any semblance of responsibility.

For now, her office may continue to brush this off and continue on a strategy of misdirection by way of her snarky remarks against the First Family and the President’s closest allies. But these will not erase the public indictment on Duterte’s fiscal integrity and stewardship of public funds.

Nobody from Congress is pulling the trigger just yet, but soon enough, she may have to face the inevitable. Some reckoning will come.

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