The House Quad Committee, the country’s oversight body over the actions of government officials, apparently feel helpless or just playing it soft with their friend VP Sara Duterte in carrying out their duty of preserving the "check and balance" guideline among government institutions and public officials.
Why, in the first place, did the Quad Committee call on the VP’s underlings to explain how she spent P612.5 million in confidential funds for the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd)?
From previous hearings, VP Sara Duterte was known to have spent P125 million in just 11 days in December 2022, and another P375 million of the P500 million allocated in 2023 and P112.5 million of DepEd’s P150 million in confidential funds when she was still the education secretary.
Human Shields
As reported by the Inquirer, “Majority Leader Manuel Jose Dalipe called out the Vice President for using her officials as ‘human shields’ in avoiding accountability for the alleged misuse of confidential funds… the Vice President has been hiding while letting her staff take the heat. This is pure cowardice disguised as victimhood.”
Viewers of the live-streamed hearing could only wonder with thoughts of “ay naku, bakit ba itong mga congressmen ay hindi pinilit si VP Sara to attend the hearing, kasi siya ang gumastos ng confidential funds?”
Other speculations on the handling of the hearing were rife among ‘"tv-zens" – “Are these representatives of the people actually still on loyalty-mood, or fear-mood with VP Sara’s father”? They are aware that the former president whose main legacy is his failed brutal “War on Drugs” which ended with more than 300,000 extra-judicial killings (EJKs). They also probably remember his use of the Anti-Terror Law, creating the NTF-ELCAC, which red-tagged activists and democratic organizations, bringing along likewise a bloody trail of killings, enforced disappearances, illegal arrests and detentions of activists with trumped-up charges, or cases of threats and harassments against suspected critics of government anti-people programs.
Are They Servant-Leaders?
The viewers could not help thinking too that the congressmen are quite aware that under this Bongbong-Sara administration, such atrocities committed under the former president are still ongoing. Indeed, the people’s representatives in the Quad Committee hearings should refrain from being bullied by any government official suspected of wasting the people’s money.
The Filipino people expect their Representatives to be smart, professional, independent-minded, and always conscious of their mandate to do what is right and just in their actions, and to protect the sound government principle of “check and balance” among government bodies. They are expected, most importantly, to be genuine SERVANT-LEADERS, for the Filipino people.
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