KARAPATAN condemns Vice President Sara Duterte’s desperate stunts, and the constant badgering of ACT Teachers Partylist Rep. France Castro that she does during the process, as the former tries to weasel her way out of the Congressional investigation on her anomalous use of hundreds of millions of pesos worth of Confidential and Intelligence Funds (CIF) of the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd) which she used to head.
“The Vice President has no one to blame but herself. Her refusal to face the House of Representatives’ Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability and sufficiently respond to questions on the inconsistencies and questions on her offices’ liquidation reports of the CIFs remains a grave concern of the public,” said KARAPATAN secretary general Cristina Palabay.
“Duterte is training her guns on people like ACT Teachers Partylist Rep. France Castro, after the latter moved to cite OVP chief of staff Zuleika Lopez in contempt for trying to prevent the House Committee on Good Government from having access to documents regarding the disbursement of the OVP’s CIF that had been flagged by the Commission on Audit,” Palabay added.
“But we must not forget that this is all a grand display by Sara Duterte to distract the people from delving into her questionable use of her CIF,” said Palabay. “To paraphrase former Sen. Leila de Lima, ‘kung makawaldas, wagas, pag pinagpapaliwanag, maraming angas.’”
KARAPATAN said that as the details surface on the apparent misuse of millions of confidential and intelligence funds under question, there should be enough to trigger criminal complaints and/or impeachment proceedings against Sara Duterte and her co-conspirators.
“We support efforts to pursue accountability on the VP’s use of confidential and intelligence funds. At the same time, we demand the abolition of the CIFs, which are not just used by corrupt officials but are detrimental to the lives and rights of the people,” Palabay concluded.