It may strike some quarters with disbelief, the scene and scheme that unfolded where Vice President Sara Duterte was confronted by 17 interpellators at the House of Representatives “scrutinizing,” nay, questioning, everything about her current agency budget and even of prior years.

The bias-driven, emotionally charged, out-of-depth exchanges only resulted in what Wittgenstein calls the “budget of confusions,” more so if such exercise leaves a “legislative footprint” or “legislative template” on congressional history and on future budget briefings.

Gauged from the “answer-fits-all-questions” strategy of VP Sara to the views and queries raised by the hostile interpellators armed with their respective “scripts,” it would seem that the consequent unceremonious deferment of her agency budget is an unhealthy indication of a naked power play.

Each interpellator with his or her own set of questions, if taken together, simply reflected the same old issues already disposed of in the previous years, as rightly pointed out by former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

A monumental error invoked by one House member was that of a “continuing appropriation,” the reason for justifying his line of questioning and frame of thought to which the presiding chair cluelessly acquiesced. Otherwise correctly defined, the notion no longer applied as there are no confidential or intelligence funds in the 2025 Office of the Vice President budget and, therefore, nothing to hinge the questions on.

Worse, the cliché that “as representatives of the people,” they, the House members, had the constitutional duty or were well within their rights to scrutinize every item in the agency budget was over-stressed. By attempting to “gaslight” VP Sara, it looked as if they had garnered higher scores in the voting chart — but they were kaput!

What VP Sara articulated before the committee will be long remembered, viz.: “I will forgo the opportunity to defend the 2025 Office of the Vice President budget proposal by question and answer and I will leave it to the House of Representatives to decide on the proposal as presented.”

This was reinforced when she stated as well, viz.: “You can find all the answers in the audio-visual presentation, in our submission of documents to the Secretariat, in the PowerPoint presentation, and in the opening statement. I leave it to the House to decide on the proposal.”

The unorthodox defense of her agency’s budget dissertation is without equal, and may well qualify as a creative template that sets a legislative precedent. Theoretically, it could approximate the right of any House member to expressly not yield to interpellation after he or she had rendered a privilege speech, albeit VP Sara is no member of Congress but nonetheless holds a higher position in the whole bureaucracy.

At least to dilute unfounded allegations raised by a couple of interpellators or so, VP Sara pointed out that the OVP had cooperated with the cases in the Supreme Court and with all the audit actions of the Commission on Audit which should have been enough to debunk the ascription that her liquidated funds were “illegal.” In other words, it was not for those questioning House members to be more popish than the Pope. Sadly, one even unflatteringly likened VP Sara to a squid squirting black ink when cornered.

To add insult to injury, another interpellator demanded that his question be answered only with a “yes” or a “no” as to whether or not the good Vice President believed that they, the House members, could scrutinize any agency budget. That congressman ended up with a roundabout discussion of his worldview; practically having supplied the answer to his own question to placate his failure to elicit a different answer from VP Sara.

The deferment of VP Sara’s budget proposal to this month appeared loosely anchored on their general frustration to subject her to undue scrutiny, a failed opportunity to demolish her with ambiguous allegations that left them instead climbing up a slippery slope.

Why impeach Sara on shaky grounds?