MANILA – Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio has called on members of the House of Representatives to also investigate President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s use of confidential and intelligence funds.
According to the Vice President, House members should not single out the probe into the Office of the Vice President (OVP) if they intend to pass laws on the use of confidential funds.
“If you are in aid of legislation and want to legislate about confidential funds, you do not target one office and terrorize and torment the employees of that office. What you do is you do a sampling, a random sampling of the offices who have confidential funds,” she said.
“Why not call the Office of the President who has billions and billions of confidential funds if you want to legislate about the confidential funds? So that shows that they’re singling out the Office of the Vice President. And I really feel that it’s very disrespectful to the Office of the Vice President,” she added.
Based on the Commission on Audit (COA) Annual Financial Report, the OP under President Marcos spent the highest amount of confidential expenses in 2023.
The OP spent P2.25 billion and P2.31 billion on confidential and intelligence funds, respectively, in 2023, totaling to P4.56 billion.
House members on Wednesday filed measures requiring disclosure of audit findings on confidential funds once flagged by state auditors as well as bills limiting the allocation and disbursement of confidential and intelligence funds (CIF).
Duterte-Carpio explained that she is not being evasive on the questions regarding her offices’ confidential fund use, but she is not answering simply because the topic “pertains to national security and the lives of the people involved in intelligence operations.”
“In fact, two quarters of the Department of Education are already cleared by the Commission and Audit, but it is still being questioned inside the committee in the House of Representatives. So that is the reason why I am not answering questions from the House of Representatives, plus the fact that, as I said, it is an attack. It is a political attack,” she said./PN
