{"id":6684,"date":"2026-09-01T12:04:46","date_gmt":"2026-09-01T11:04:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/balitangklik.com\/?p=6684"},"modified":"2026-09-01T12:04:46","modified_gmt":"2026-09-01T11:04:46","slug":"saras-plunderous-credit-grabbing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/balitangklik.com\/?p=6684","title":{"rendered":"Sara\u2019s plunderous credit-grabbing"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Diego Morra<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In her desire to justify her plunderous spending, Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio committed the worst form of profitable credit-grabbing by way of declaring that the Department of Education (DepEd) bankrolled eight youth summits in Zamboanga del Sur and 53 other activities, with 9,248 participants, to prevent minors from being recruited by the New People\u2019s Army (NPA) and other armed groups, for which she spent P15.54-million of her confidential fund (CF.)<\/p>\n

Laudable, indeed, for Sara as DepEd chief, to poke her finger into counter-insurgency programs bankrolled by the 1st Tabak Division of the Philippine Army (PA), local government units (LGUs) in the province and other agencies, including the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), a creation of Rodrigo Duterte. Yes, this is the credit-grabbing Duterte vice at work again, only that Col. Manaos Boransing shattered it with his testimony before the Senate impeachment court that confirmed the DepEd secured a certification from the PA purportedly at the instance of a retired general working for Sara stating that it collaborated with the PA to conduct the year-long activities.<\/p>\n

This simplest form of certification was the recycled to justify the P15.54-million that DepEd spent to sponsor all those events and prove to the Commission on Audit (COA) that the money was put to good use, only that it wasn\u2019t. Sara\u2019s ruse bombed, just as her claim that she started and completed housing projects that the National Housing Authority (NHA) constructed starting in 2023. Sara had nothing to do with these projects, Social Housing Finance Corp. (SHFC) chief Federico Laxa revealed. When the PA learned about the DepEd misrepresentation in 2024, military officers told Congress Sara\u2019s claim was a lie. Two PA officers testified to this and the DepEd could not controvert the military assertion. Even then, the PA\u2019s certification confirmed DepEd\u2019s collaboration and never said all those activities were bankrolled by the P15.54-million that the Sara camp claimed it had spent for the gamut of activities sponsored by the military. This is another smoking gun, a piece of credit-grabbing, misrepresentation and deception.<\/p>\n

Sara is not only an expert in credit-grabbing; she is also a world-class exponent of injustice and a violator of worker rights, as when she fired DepEd undersecretary Gloria Jumamil Mercado for not following the instruction of Sara\u2019s trusted lieutenant, a lawyer, to quickly award a computerization project to a favored party. Mercado was ousted on the day Sara came to know about the matter. Mercado kept the envelopes containing money that Sara\u2019s minions at the DepEd gave her for several months and gave them to Congress investigators. Mercado also had certifications that the money was given to charity.<\/p>\n

Curiously, Sara\u2019s counsel Michael Wesley Poa also admitted receiving money from Sara monthly even as he had a regular salary from the DepEd. Kumambyo si Poa at sinabing naalala na niya na ang salapi ay \u201creimbursements\u201d sa mga bagay na binili ni Sara. Si Poa pala ang personal na ATM ng kagalang-galang na Sara. Other DepEd officials admitted receiving money from Sara every month but they could not explain it as her personal assistance to them or funds meant to encourage them to speed up work on DepEd projects. Poa was also the legal genius who claimed that bulk of the P6-billion deposited, encashed and withdrawn from the bank accounts of Sara, her joint account with her husband and the joint accounts with Rodrigo were listed in the \u201cothers\u201d category for accounting and auditing purposes. The P6-billion is not petty cash or something akin to de minimis items not subject to taxation.<\/p>\n

At any rate, Boransing\u2019s testimony wrecks the position of the Sara camp that all the CF disbursements were above board, even if there was no proof that the thousands of purported informants of Sara received money, food, medicines and equipment from Col. Raymund Dante Lachica, who was not a bonded special disbursing officer (SDO) that Sara had entrusted with handling her P500-million CF. Sara should lose a lot of hair over the Boransing testimony since, as head of DepEd, she is responsible for wasteful disbursements, ghost expenses and fake activities that have drained billions of pesos from the national budget.<\/p>\n

The 20th day of the impeachment trial illustrated the Sara camp\u2019s unabashed display of financial impunity, the kind of criminal proclivity that have justified the unjustified wastage of P2.697-billion in CF for Davao City when she was mayor, the kind of CF not enjoyed by executives of wealthier cities in the country, and the kind of illicit finance that subsidized the activities of the Duterte private army, the hitmen of the Duterte Death Squads (DDS) later exported to Metro Manila, and the early political organizing for Sara\u2019s 2028 presidential campaign.<\/p>\n

As more and more pieces of damning evidence accumulate, Sara would have to dig deeper into her sack of magic tricks to convince the Filipino people that she is, like Caesar\u2019s wife, beyond reproach. With her nefandous management system, her opaque transactions and disappearing surveillance reports, repetitive financial plans and manufactured data to suit her misused CF, Sara is now right smack between Scylla and Charybdis, or between the stake and the gallows. She would not be seeing Dolly Parton\u2019s rainbow after putting up, not with the rain, but with the deluge. Apr\u00e8s moi, le deluge, thus said France\u2019s Louis XV. France\u2019s lazy kings were called \u201croi fain\u00e9ant.\u201d The queens? \u201cReine fain\u00e9ant.\u201d Fits Sara to a T.#<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Diego Morra   In her desire to justify her plunderous spending, Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio committed the worst form of profitable credit-grabbing by way of declaring that the Department of Education (DepEd) bankrolled eight youth summits in Zamboanga del Sur and 53 other activities, with 9,248 participants, to prevent minors from being recruited by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2279,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-editoryal"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t