Did Sara breach House protocols?

Leaders of the House of Representatives called out Vice President Sara Duterte on Friday for breaching protocol following her surprise visit to her long-time aide and current chief of staff, lawyer Zuleika Lopez, who is detained at the chamber after being cited in contempt.

House Sergeant-at-Arms Napoleon Taas confirmed to reporters that Duterte arrived at the House at nearly 8 p.m. on Thursday. Given the VP’s busy schedule, the House permitted her entry beyond the visiting deadline of 5 p.m.

Duterte was allowed to meet with Lopez until 10 p.m. after which Taas said they expected her to leave the Batasan Complex. However, he said the VP went straight to the office of her brother, Davao Rep. Paolo Duterte, to “change.”

“I personally appealed to the protocol and for the security of the Vice President at Room 304 if they could leave the premises as there’s a practice during long weekends to turn off the power in all our buildings,” Taas said in a briefing on Friday.

Despite the appeal, he said Duterte and her entourage “stayed locked” in the room and spent the night there, causing the House to implement a lockdown and staffers to work overtime. The VP and her team only came out at 11 a.m. on Friday to visit Lopez again.

In a joint statement, House leaders — Senior Deputy Speaker Aurelio Gonzales, Deputy Speaker David Suarez, and Majority Leader Manuel Jose Dalipe — lamented that Duterte’s actions were beyond disrespectful to the House and its employees, who were merely abiding by the rules and protocols to ensure security and order.

Rules violated

“(The House rules) should not be violated no matter who the person is. When they are not followed, it is as if we have broken the respect for the institution that serves the people,” the statement read.

It added, “This is not a place to abuse or make personal space, no matter who you are. If there is no respect for simple rules, how can we trust that they will be able to respect the greater responsibilities that the people have entrusted to them?”

The House Committee on Good and Public Accountability held Lopez in contempt and ordered her detention on Wednesday for committing “undue interference” when she asked the Commission on Audit (CoA) to withhold compliance with a subpoena issued by the House Committee on Appropriations to review the utilization of P500 million in confidential and intelligence funds that Duterte’s office received in 2022 and 2023.

Lopez admitted to writing a letter to the CoA pending their response to the audit observation memorandum but contended that it was not her intention to undermine Congress’ power of the purse or its oversight function. She said Duterte was aware of the letter.

As a result of the contempt order, Lopez will be confined at the House premises until the committee holds its next hearing on Monday, 25 November.

Panel chairperson Joel Chua disclosed that Duterte had requested to join Lopez in her detention but the lawmakers thumbed down the request as it went against House rules that only the immediate family shall be the allowed to accompany the detained person.

Moreover, Chua pointed out that allowing the VP to stay in the House premises for a couple of days will not only jeopardize her safety but will entail a number of security personnel.

“She’s high profile [and] it will require so much security… I don’t know if we have enough security here,” Chua said.

Doing their jobs

“I hope the respect and leniency we give to our Vice President will be reciprocated by her respect for us. The people such as the sergeant at arms and the House personnel are only doing their jobs according to the guidelines,” Chua said.

According to Chua, they made some concessions for the VP and Lopez except for the stay in Representative Duterte’s office to prevent a “bad precedent.”

“We did not allow that. Otherwise, what will happen is those with connections to congressmen will do the same thing. We don’t want to give favors and we want everyone to be detained here equally,” he said.

“There is nothing wrong with cooperating with us; we will provide everything as long as it is within the bounds of law. All we ask is that they obey,” he added.

Duterte had cried “persecution” by the administration’s allies, and of her staff as well.

Lawmakers, however, countered that if the VP really intended to keep her officials out of the issue, she should appear before them to answer the mounting questions on how she utilized the multimillion-peso secret funds of her office and the Department of Education, which she headed for nearly two years.

“It is surprising and disappointing that the Vice President had time to visit and spend the night in Congress but she did not have time to appear before the committee to explain how millions in confidential funds were spent. The people are the taxpayers who are the source of these funds,” House Deputy Minority Leader France Castro, a staunch critic of Duterte, said.

Although Duterte attended the first hearing in September, where she refused to take an oath, she maintained that she will no longer appear in the subsequent hearings, calling the probe “well-funded” and a “coordinated political attack” aimed at impeaching her.

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 confirmed to lawmakers 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 suspicion that they were fabricated or hastily prepared to justify the use of the multimillion-peso secret funds.

The Vice President reportedly has asked the House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability to allow her to visit her chief-of-staff.

“I would like to inform you in advance that I intend to visit Atty. Lopez daily, for the full period of her detention, within the bounds of the guidelines pertaining to persons under custody of the Office of the Sergeant-At-Arms (OSAA),” read Duterte’s letter to House committee on good government and public accountability chairperson Rep. Joel Chua.

Meanwhile, senators are considering the possibility of increasing the proposed budget for the Office of the Vice President for the upcoming fiscal year, Senator Joel Villanueva disclosed Friday.

Villanueva, who earlier expressed opposition to the reduction of the OVP’s proposed budget, said members of the upper chamber are currently discussing the agency’s supposed augmentation.

“We are looking at increasing the proposed budget. This is for discussion. I could not disclose what our colleagues want about it,” Villanueva said in a chance interview.