Sara, OVP team no-show at House budget hearing
Not a single representative of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) showed up for its budget hearing at the House of Representatives on Friday.
Palawan Rep. Jose Alvarez, vice chair of the House committee on appropriations, said he advised the OVP to skip the hearing after it stated in a letter that an assistant secretary would be defending the agency’s budget.
Alvarez also said he was able to secure a commitment from the OVP for Vice President Sara Duterte to attend the hearing on Tuesday, Sept. 16.
“We saw that their (assistant) chief-of-staff, Lemuel Ortonio, was not an undersecretary-level officer,” Alvarez said.
“Knowing that and consistent with the tradition of the House that it’s either the head of agency or at the very least, an undersecretary who should defend the budget of the agency […] I advised them to refrain from attending if Undersecretary Zuleika Lopez is not present,” he added.
Unanswered questions
The absence of Duterte and her office’s key officials prompted ACT Teachers party list Rep. Antonio Tinio to suggest not to extend parliamentary courtesy to the OVP—again.
“Yes it’s a tradition but […] we should do away with that tradition. Why? Because first, our history shows that the so-called presumption of regularity cannot suffice because the norm has to be that government officials should always be ready to explain things, especially on the budget,” Tinio said.
He said the Vice President should be made to answer questions on the OVP’s budget.
“There are questions that should be answered—in the case of the Vice President, who is Mary Grace Piattos? What happened to the confidential funds, and the new questions now—what is the purpose of the OVP funds when she has just been making trips abroad,” Tinio said.
Piattos, along with other unusual names, were not found in the Philippine Statistics Authority database for live births, marriages, and deaths.
Not the first time
This was not the first time that the Vice President or OVP officials skipped budget hearings.
In 2024, she appeared before the House committee during deliberations of her office’s P2.037 billion 2025 budget. House lawmakers, however, decided to cut it after Duterte refused to directly answer questions at the Aug. 27 hearing and skipped the subsequent discussions on Sept. 10.
During the Aug. 27 hearing, Duterte stated: “I would like to forego the opportunity to defend the budget in a question-and-answer format. I will leave it up to the House to decide on the budget submitted.”
When discussions on the 2025 budget moved to the plenary level, no one from the OVP attended to assist the budget sponsor even after 17 hours of waiting, forcing lawmakers to defer discussions once again.
The last time that Duterte appeared at the House was when she had blockaded herself in the office of her brother, Davao Rep. Paolo Duterte, on Nov. 23, 2024.
Online rant
At the time, her chief of staff Zuleika Lopez was serving a contempt citation at the House, but was suddenly ordered transferred to the Mandaluyong Women’s Correctional Facility because Duterte insisted on staying at the Batasan even beyond working hours.
It was then that she made her Zoom livestream where she cussed out President Marcos, first lady Liza Araneta-Marcos, and Speaker Martin Romualdez, and said she had hired a hitman to have them killed if something were to happen to her. —WITH A REPORT FROM KRIXIA SUBINGSUBING
