The “anti-Sara” movement gravitates around the (dis)belief that P613 million in confidential funds had been misused in the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education in the years 2022 and 2023, respectively. It remains an “open issue” pending final determination by the Supreme Court on the number of cases filed. 

A pertinent portion of Rappler’s fact-check report states: “An unmodified or unqualified opinion means the financial statements are fairly presented as of audit date. It doesn’t mean that every government program, every fund usage, every compliance matter or overall performance is fully verified or faultless.”

Parenthetically, Rappler advanced this conclusion, viz: “Therefore, even if the OVP received unmodified opinions for CY 2022, 2023, and 2024, such a streak does not automatically equate to a guarantee of overall best practices across all aspects of governance. For context, the Commission on Audit also rendered clean audit opinions for consecutive years from previous terms of the OVP.”

In essence, CoA’s key findings reveal that it “disallowed P73.28 million of the P125 million confidential fund spent by the OVP in just 11 days in December 2022,” such disallowance being on account of the “non-submission of documents evidencing the success of information gathering and/or surveillance” and other requirements. Further to that, it reports of “some funds having been used for items like computers and printers without being specified as part of confidential operations.” 

If one revisits the congressional hearings held for the purpose of questioning VP Duterte on separate occasions over the confidential funds, it seems clear that all the questions dwelt on an “accounting matter” better left for the CoA to render an opinion rather than raised as a legal question for the Supreme Court to dispose of.  

When officialdom’s turn came to be rebuked for dipping into the coffers (i.e., plunder, embezzlement, corruption) in unprecedented proportions, how come such kleptocracy never reduce the endless allegations of corruption against Sara? The probes undertaken by the Senate, House of Representatives, and the Independent (de)Commission for Infrastructure produced a cocktail of probable facts and counterfactuals. 

By and large, the ICI failed the litmus test of unquestionable independence and abandoned the guiding tenets of transparency and accountability. Nearly everyone thinks it was entirely remiss of whatever bounden duty it claimed. It literally shunned livestreaming the entire proceedings and conveniently preferred to render a carefully scripted media statement. After all, it is largely dependent on “second-hand accounts” that were already unearthed earlier by committees and agencies through our legislators and bureaucrats.

The commission held its last hearings for 2025 on 15 and 16 December, focusing on alleged anomalous flood control projects but no one has yet gone to jail. How many executive sessions did it grant and what findings, if any, imbued with public interest were reported? By a unilateral action of its own, has the ICI caused the turnover of stolen monies by those it might have accused of bribery, malversation, or corruption? Has there really been a “big fish” charged criminally? 

In the end, the ICI probe just followed its normal course and never overshadowed the mandates reposed on the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee and whatever the House of Representatives’  counterpart committee is, the Ombudsman, the Anti-Money Laundering Council, the Department of Justice and the organic Department of Public Works and Highways. 

Instead, the reverse is true, namely, that it is the one overshadowed by the aforementioned institutions to the point that its work amounts to a redundancy. 

Since it navigates based on the congruence of objectives with the more duly mandated instrumentalities of government rather than on its own and distinct account, it has yet to highlight whatever solid accomplishments it may have achieved. Truth be told, its strides operationalize on correlation than on causation and there’s just a world of difference between these notions.

On choosing whom to grill, doesn’t it look quite surreal to have conveniently charged only those with a higher vulnerability? It was quite a ride, the poverty of its historicism notwithstanding.