In the past two years, it was a walk in the park for Vice President Sara Duterte to get her budget request approved. Budget hearings, both in the Senate and the House of Representatives, had consistently passed within minutes.
She breezed through budget deliberations because of the parliamentary courtesy given by a Congress that has been dominated by Marcos-Duterte supporters. She received little to no scrutiny over her use of, and request for, hefty confidential funds — at least at the committee level — which was later stripped by lawmakers themselves.
But that was before she resigned from the Marcos Cabinet which signaled her break from the administration. (WATCH: Goodbye, Uniteam: VP Sara Duterte resigns from the Marcos Cabinet)
While she is no longer requesting for confidential funds, the proposed P2.037-billion budget of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) for 2025 is 8.05% higher than the current appropriation of P1.885 billion.
In a Facebook post on Saturday, August 17, the OVP said that the increase in the proposed budget will be used to serve more beneficiaries of its flagship programs.
“This proposal, once approved, will translate to an increase of 12.39% in the number of target beneficiaries for the OVP’s flagship programs,” OVP said.
The following are the flagship programs of the OVP as stated in its social media post.
- Libreng Sakay
- Medical and burial assistance
- Disaster operations
- Mag Negosyo Ta’ Day
- PagbaBAGo: A million trees campaign
- You can be VP
- RICE program
- PanSarap program
- Local and international engagements
In 2023, it was House Senior Deputy Speaker Sandro Marcos, the President’s son, who moved to terminate the budget deliberations for the OVP at the committee level after a mere five minutes, citing parliamentary courtesy and “tradition.”
Will this still be the case this year?
Manila 3rd District Representative Joel Chua urged his colleagues to no longer give “free passes” to the Vice President, saying that her budget should be scrutinized down to every peso.
“No more and never again shall the VP not be held to the same level of scrutiny as other public officials during budget hearings,” he said.
Inter-parliamentary courtesy is a time-honored tradition between the two chambers of Congress that dictates non-meddling in each other’s affairs. The OVP falls under the executive branch of government.
Budget deliberations during the time of former president Leni Robredo were also terminated within minutes as courtesy. However, it’s important to note that Robredo’s budget, especially her last year in office (P702 million), was significantly lower than Duterte’s budget of P2.3 billion in 2023.
Duterte is set to face the Senate for the OVP budget deliberations at the committee level on Tuesday, August 20. Meanwhile, she was supposed to defend her budget request before the House on August 15, but this was rescheduled to August 27.
Political analyst Arjan Aguirre said that lawmakers may use the budget hearings to politically attack Duterte and “seek further damage to her.”
“They may use the hearings to publicly malign or chastise her or her office by ‘politicizing’ those spendings made the previous year or the proposed budget items for the new fiscal year. This is really possible that is why I am also expecting VP Sara and her office are prepared to engage her rivals, in the House especially,” he said.
The Vice President will face House lawmakers after she criticized them for supposed inaction on pressing issues in the country. Worth watching whether they will give courtesy to the veep, or give her a tough time defending her budget request. – Rappler.com