Unless delegated by the President, the position of the Vice President of the Philippines is largely ceremonial, with no executive powers but, of course, where Sara Duterte (we have to be constantly reminded she is still the Vice President) is concerned, she chose to have a more substantial, other than merely ceremonial, role in government.
First she angled for the defense portfolio. Not clinching that, she accepted the President’s offer to head the Department of Education, an extremely noble if challenging task which, if she only half-tried to do her best, could have given her image the luster needed to be considered genuinely worthy to be the next leader of this country.
But no, because she could not get her way in many things, including a bigger budget for confidential funds as VP and for her department, Duterte quit her job as education secretary on 24 June 2024, two years after she assumed the post.
What did she leave behind as DepEd secretary?
For one, the dismal performance of Filipino schoolchildren, based on the 2022 Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) results. The PISA that year showed that Filipino learners continued to lag behind in Mathematics, Science, and Reading, and overall results ranked the Philippines sixth lowest among 81 countries.
Let’s take a look at the classroom shortage. DepEd has long been inadequate in addressing this critical problem, but under Duterte it was even more magnified.
When she started her term as Education czarina, the classroom shortage throughout the country came to some 91,000 rooms. After only a year in office, the crisis worsened, with the shortage ballooning to nearly 160,000 classrooms.
Addressing that crisis didn’t seem to be a priority for the VP. She was able to address the shortage with only 3,673 classrooms in 2023, and for all the P17 billion that her department got in budgetary funds in 2024, DepEd could only build some 6,806 classrooms.
On 19 June 2024, she resigned as education secretary but remained as VP. She did not categorically cite any particular reason for her split from the Marcos Cabinet.
But not a few observers noted that the cracks in the Marcos-Duterte alliance were evident a few months into the Marcos presidency. This became markedly obvious with the current dispensation reversing many of his predecessor’s, the VP’s father Rodrigo Duterte’s, policies, particularly the latter’s undiluted pro-China stance, a position apparently backed by the Vice President.
On a trip to Australia to address the Filipino community, she gave a speech in Melbourne where she blasted the President’s allowing Typhon missiles from the US into the country, a move that irked China no end, with the Chinese demanding that these be returned to Washington.
Apparently addressing the President, Duterte asked, “Where will you use these missiles; where is the war in the country? The Philippines should not take sides, you should always stay in the middle,” a position that China has been demanding.
Philippine defense and armed forces officials have addressed this basis for the VP’s (and China)’s whining, asserting that no country should or could dictate how the Philippine government decides on matters related to its defense.
Which brings us to ask: whose side is she on?
A more pointed reaction was issued by Philippine Coast Guard spokesperson (particularly on matters regarding the Philippines’ conflict with China in the West Philippines Sea) Commodore Jay Tarriela who cited former President Duterte’s foreign policy of being a “friend to all, enemy to none,” now likewise being parroted by his daughter.
Tarriela noted the former president’s visits to China at least five times, even as he avoided stepping on US soil for all of his six years in office.
Also, the PCG official underscored former president Duterte’s unabashed admiration for China and President Xi Jinping, while Filipino fishermen were being aggressively harassed by Chinese coast guard and militia vessels, “our marine resources subjected to exploitative practices, and our public vessels intimidated” numerous times.
Meanwhile, not once has the Vice President been heard to condemn the Chinese aggression, nor offer words of support for either Filipino fishermen or Filipino men in uniform manning Philippine vessels who have been battered, power-hosed, rammed, and/or physically attacked by Chinese naval personnel.
You may have your personal reasons for vehemently detesting the President, but where the country and its interests are concerned, indeed, on whose side are you on, Madam Vice President… of the Philippines?