House leaders rebuked Vice President Sara Duterte on Thursday for using her staff as scapegoats while continuously evading to confront head-on the so-called highly irregular disbursement of the multimillion confidential funds of her office.

Speaker Martin Romualdez said it must be Duterte herself who should face lawmakers to answer mounting queries regarding the utilization of her secret funds if she really doesn’t intend to drag her officials on what she deemed “persecution” against her by the administration allies.

"Well, then she should show up and take the oath and talk and explain because all of her officers doesn’t seem to know…I think she is the only one who knows what happened to the funds, so she should explain," Romualdez said in the vernacular in an ambush interview in Albay.

“She should not give [the responsibility] to her officials in the OVP and the DepEd (Department of Education). I hope she talks,” the House chief added.

Majority Leader Manuel Jose “Mannix” Dalipe, meanwhile, called out Duterte for having the audacity to play the victim while letting her staff be the “scapegoats.”

“The Vice President should stop using her staff as human shields. It is about time she faces Congress, answers the questions, and stops blaming others for her failures and fear of accountability,” Dalipe pointed out.

“This is pure cowardice disguised as victimhood.”
The VP on Wednesday cried foul that officials from the Office of the Vice President (OVP) are being embroiled in the supposed political attack against her by political rivals who aimed to “malign” her.

The House of Representatives detained her longtime aide and chief of staff, lawyer Zuleika Lopez, for five days on Wednesday after being cited in contempt for causing “undue interference” in the investigation of the issues plaguing her confidential funds.

The House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability has repeatedly invited Duterte to attend its inquiry, but the VP remains steadfast in her refusal, asserting that it was a “well-funded” probe aimed at impeaching her.

Although Duterte attended the first hearing in September, she refused to take an oath, which is crucial in ensuring that a resource person is speaking the truth in legislative proceedings.
The House probe centers on the alleged irregularities in the use of P612.5 million in confidential funds allocated to the OVP (P500 million) and the DepEd (P112.5 million) in 2022 and 2023 during Duterte’s stint as its secretary.

The Commission on Audit flagged a significant portion of the secret funds and even disallowed P73.287 million of the P125 million that the OVP spent in merely 11 days during the last quarter of 2022, Duterte’s first year in office.

State auditor Gloria Camora previously confirmed that Duterte’s office submitted 787 acknowledgment receipts (ARs) with no names but signatures, 302 ARs that had unreadable names, and five ARs bearing the same name.

Lawmakers have questioned the authenticity of the ARs given the irregularities in the documents, which added to their suspicions that they were fabricated or hastily prepared to justify the use of the multimillion secret funds.
Dalipe told Duterte that “seeking the truth is not an attack” and that continuous evasion and attempts to shield her actions only indicate that she’s hiding something from the public.

“It is the duty of Congress to ensure that every peso of taxpayers’ money is used properly and for the benefit of the people. If there’s nothing to hide, there’s no reason to dodge questions,” Dalipe lamented.
Assistant Majority Leader Jil Bongalon joined his colleagues in pressing Duterte to face the House investigation.

“These allegations and accusations will finally be settled if the good Vice President will appear before the committee on good government and public accountability because like what happened yesterday, no less than the chief of staff of the OVP was saying that she did not have anything to do with the confidential fund issue,” Bongalon said.

During Wednesday’s hearing, Lopez vehemently denied having a hand in the disbursement of the secret funds, pointing to Duterte and Special Disbursing Officer Gina Acosta as the principal parties responsible for overseeing it.

Lawmakers, however, did not buy her alibi, citing her letter to CoA requesting to withhold compliance with a House subpoena aimed at reviewing the utilization of the confidential funds that Duterte received in 2022 and 2023.