Elephant in the courtroom
The confidential and intelligence fund allocations were not just budget items. They were tools for coalition management.
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The confidential and intelligence fund allocations were not just budget items. They were tools for coalition management.
When Atty. Roderick Wamil, a former auditor in the Commission on Audit’s Intelligence and Confidential Funds Audit Office, testified before the Senate impeachment court, he did more than explain the rules on secret funds.
His testimony brought one uncomfortable figure into full view: P612.5 million in confidential and intelligence funds allocated to the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education from late 2022 to 2023.
So far, the trial has focused on the paper trail: missing receipts, questionable reward payouts, vague liquidation reports, and names like “Mary Grace Piattos.” These questions matter, but they are not enough.
The bigger question is this: Why were such large secret funds given to Vice President Sara Duterte and to the education department she led soon after the 2022 elections? There would have been no Article 1 in the Articles of Impeachment if these funds had not been allocated in the first place.
The answer requires looking beyond audit rules and into political survival. Bruce Bueno de Mesquita’s Selectorate Theory helps explain the logic. Leaders do not stay in power by pleasing everyone equally.
They stay in power by keeping the right people loyal — the smaller circle of allies and power centers whose support can make or break a government. Loyalty is often sustained through access, appointments, influence and control over public resources.
This is not an abstract theory in the Philippines. It reflects how governing coalitions are often built and sustained. Lawmakers rely on projects and district spending to maintain local support. Local officials use contracts and access to funds to reward allies. Presidents hold coalitions together through appointments, budget allocations, policy concessions and other forms of political patronage.
That context matters after the 2022 elections. From the outside, the Marcos-Duterte alliance looked dominant. In reality, it was a coalition between two powerful dynasties that needed each other to win and had reasons to distrust each other after victory.
Sara Duterte reportedly wanted the Department of National Defense, a post closer to the security establishment. President Marcos instead gave that position to Gilberto “Gibo” Teodoro, while Duterte was appointed Secretary of Education.
That appointment created a political problem. Confidential and intelligence funds would have been easier to justify in a defense or security agency. In DepEd, the fit was far less obvious: its core mandate is education, not security.
When secret funds appeared under both the OVP and DepEd, the issue was therefore not only whether the spending followed the rules. It was also whether the funds were being used to solve a political problem created by the coalition itself.
Seen this way, the confidential and intelligence fund allocations were not just budget items. They were tools for coalition management. By giving the Vice President access to large, flexible and less visible funds, the administration may have been compensating her for not getting the defense portfolio, keeping the Duterte bloc in the alliance, and giving her office resources to maintain its own political network.
That is why the impeachment trial is about more than missing invoices or whether “Mary Grace Piattos” is a real person. It shows what happens when a political bargain breaks down. Once the alliance stops serving both sides, old arrangements become evidence, not glue. If the trial focuses only on how the money was spent, and not why it was handed out, it misses the deeper problem: public funds can become private political currency when coalition survival matters more than accountability.
So why were the Vice President and the Department of Education given confidential and intelligence funds? The most convincing answer is a political one. These funds helped keep a powerful Vice President, and the political camp she represented, tied to the Marcos coalition after she did not get the defense post she wanted.
The OVP and DepEd became channels for giving her discretionary resources. That is the elephant in the room. The controversy is not only about liquidation documents; it is about how public money can be redirected to hold political alliances together — and how quickly that arrangement becomes indefensible once the alliance falls apart.
