It is apparent that Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio wants to share power with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. and she is putting pressure on Bongbong to hear her stand on foreign policy, domestic policy and fiscal policy, perhaps not only to restore the lost P650-million CIF for the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd) but to increase her share of the CIF several times over.
This, after she already put the Office of the President (OP) in a pickle after Executive Secretary Lucas Bersamin released P221.424 million from the auditable Contingent Fund (CF) of the Office of the President (OP) to poor Sara as she had to “suffer” an inherited budget that had no CIF and no money to purchase or lease seven satellite offices on her first day in office. Remember that the haughty Sara refused to meet with her predecessor, former Vice President Leni Robredo, precisely to discuss not only the transition but the money available for the final six months of 2022.
Dubbed as the “eagle of Davao,” Sara’s failure to explain what happened to the P221.424-million that she spent in the 11 dying days of December 2022 proved that she is the “pipit” of Davao’s Ecoland. Elected as vice president through the mysterious IP address 192.198.0.2, all she could mutter after his underlings failed to justify the expense was that those who oppose her CIF are the “enemies of peace,” the foes of law and order and the supporters of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), the New People’s Army (NPA) and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDF.)
Such flight of fancy shows Sara has problems with res cogitans and consequently res extensa, the two types of stuff into which Rene Descartes divided consciousness and physical reality, since she obviously could not summon stock legal knowledge to explain her unjustified expenses and find where the “missing assets” are. It proves as well that Duterte Jr. thinks she is entitled to CIF and her wasteful spending must not be questioned, even as the lawyer she brought to Mandaluyong from Davao City was supposed to be the best in the trade in recovering assets and producing documents to clear the annual accounting mess.
Sara could not pass muster the stern requirements of the COA, which had blasted her for the unexplained army of 11,000 ghost employees at the Davao City government and the P2.69-billion in CIF that she enjoyed during her heyday as mayor. Not single red centavo was left of the entire sum, like what happened with the billions in CIF that evaporated when Rodrigo Duterte was the mayor. Now that the COA and Congress are looking into plunder of CIF funds, the Dutertes are howling and claiming they are being harassed and persecuted. The reaction is standard fascist rhetoric, as if they have a right to squander public funds and the people, from the residents of Davao City to hardworking OFWs spread from Canada to Gaza, have no right to question the private appropriation of public funds.
Since she has intensified her war with Speaker Martin Romualdez, who was accused by SMNI commentator Jeffrey Celiz as having spent P1.8-billion for foreign travel after the House appropriations committee deleted the P500-million CIF for Sara’s office and the P150-million CIF for the Department of Education (DepEd), she will now need for funds to sustain her battle with Romualdez. The charge against Romualdez was taken seriously, and Celiz got detained by a House panel for refusing to divulge his “Senate source.” Of course, the Sara propagandists would cry foul but the fact is Celiz is not an accredited broadcaster and cannot hide behind the rumor that he and his partner, Lorraine Badoy Partosa, are journalists. The fact that Apollo Quiboloy, who leads a religious cult, now claims he does not own SMNI, indicates that he wants out of the mess. Quiboloy has already lost some assets to the FBI and he runs the risk of being fetched by federal agents to face the music in US courts.
Despite her fighting the Romualdez faction, Sara Duterte Jr. still entertains the idea that she can still wangle a deal with Bongbong to get back her CIF but when she provided an unsolicited statement on her opposition to rejoining the Rome Statute and accepting the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC), she ruffled some feathers in Malacanang. Sara does not have foreign policy chops and should know that it is not her job to advise Malacanang or the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA.) She must stick only to her pork chops.
Worse, by opposing the peace negotiations, Sara proved she is not a team player but is only her father’s daughter. Rody killed the peace process in 2017 in order not to be compelled to comply with the formal agreements already signed with the NDF. Rody created the NTF-ELCAC in 2018 to launch an all-out war he never won. Sara now argues that policy must prevail and be implemented in earnest by Bongbong, claiming that you cannot cut a deal with the devil. Facile mind, indeed, as the devil lives in quake-prone Davao City.