MANILA, Philippines – Vice President Sara Duterte and her entire office skipped the second round of budget deliberations for her agency, putting the status of her funding request for 2025 in limbo.
“We defer entirely to the discretion and judgment of the committee regarding our budget proposal for the upcoming year,” Duterte said in a letter submitted to the House on Tuesday, September 10.
While House appropriations committee vice chair Stella Quimbo said they would wait for an hour for Duterte or any representative from the OVP to arrive, it was clear that no one was coming.
In a statement released while the House hearing was ongoing, the OVP said that they will not attend the House hearing that day, citing the reasons cited by the Vice President in an interview released ahead of the House deliberations.
“Moreover, as stated in a letter addressed to the Speaker of the House of Representatives sent earlier today, the OVP has submitted all necessary documentation to the House of Representatives – Committee on Appropriations, including a detailed presentation on the proposed budget for fiscal year 2025,” the OVP added.
Duterte distributed a taped interview to the media, accusing Speaker Martin Romualdez and House appropriations chairman Zaldy Co of “controlling” the national budget, resulting in supposed reduction of approved funds for her offices in the past.
Rappler has reached out to Romualdez’s and Co’s offices for their reactions, but they have yet to reply.
Her absence from the proceedings comes two weeks after her public confrontation with lawmakers during the first round of budget briefing for the Office of the Vice President (OVP) prompted House members not to elevate yet her funding request to the plenary.
During that hearing, Duterte repeatedly dodged House member’s questions on her past confidential expenses, which totaled P775 million for OVP and the Department of Education from 2022 to 2023.
Instead, she interrupted the presiding officer, tried to have that presiding officer replaced, accused leftist lawmakers of having communist ties, and questioned House rules.
Numerous lawmakers subsequently called her a spoiled brat to the press, a tag that Duterte said was a political attack against her.
The OVP is seeking a budget of P2.037 billion for 2025, an increase from the P1.885 billion for the current year.
From 2022 to 2023, Duterte was granted parliamentary courtesy by the House, breezing through committee-level budget deliberations with no questions asked.
This year, the House did not give the Vice President a free pass, a move that came in the wake of her resignation from the administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., her 2022 ally. – Rappler.com