Sara’s P625M scrutinized to the last peso, Marcos’ P21B, no questions

FOR several days now, the impeachment prosecution panel against Vice President Sara Duterte has been struggling — quite obviously, unsuccessfully — to portray her as abusing her so-called confidential and intelligence funds* totaling P612.5 million. These were released to the Education department when she headed it and to her office as vice president, upon President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s orders when she was still on good terms with him.

For two days, a state auditor replied to the prosecutors’ leading questions, only to be debunked by Sara’s defense team. Senators have been given voluminous documents on disbursement vouchers, and nearly 2,000 acknowledgment receipts.Whatever one thinks of the outcome, the institutional machinery of the Philippine government has been fully, publicly mobilized to find something — anything — wrong in Sara’s P612.5-million confidential funds. Even very expensive private lawyers have been recruited for this. (Who pays for them?)

This is such a clear case of this administration’s weaponization of constitutional procedures — here the impeachment process.

Contrast this to the fact that President Marcos Jr. from the time he assumed office in 2022 up to 2026 has been allocated P20.6 billion in intelligence, confidential and extraordinary funds, all of which — except of course for the remaining months of this year — he has spent. Taxpayers’ money amounting to P4.5 billion each year given to Marcos, with nobody allowed to scrutinize it, if indeed these were used for the security of the Republic.

There has been zero explanation as to how Marcos used it. Some may have even funded the notorious “maletas,” but no way we can determine that. Some may have been allocated as a slush fund to bribe the senator-judges to vote her guilty of the impeachment charges, we can’t say. No hearing. No subpoenaed witness. No boxes of documents opened for cross-examination. No finding, favorable or otherwise.

The contrast is not just stark; it is appalling. A sum amounting to just 3 percent of Marcos’ confidential, intelligence and extraordinary funds has consumed so much time and resources of the House of Representatives and now the Senate. Marcos’ huge funds have nothing but line entries in an annual Commission on Audit (COA) report.

Marcos in the last four years has spent to the last centavo his Confidential, Intelligence and Extraordinary Expenses. For instance, for 2025, out of the P4.6 billion budgeted for the year, P4.574 billion was spent — a utilization rate of 99.85 percent. Every other major category of the Office of the President’s (OP) spending that Congress and the public can actually scrutinize was left, by comparison, badly underspent. Only the money the public is barred from itemizing was fully used.

The COA’s annual financial reports show that Marcos’ confidential and intelligence funds of P4.6 billion yearly has been bigger than the combined allocation for the armed forces, the police and the national intelligence agency — agencies responsible for the country’s security.

Confidential and intelligence funds are, by design, exempt from itemized public disclosure. Disbursements are supposed to be liquidated through COA’s Intelligence and Confidential Fund Audit Unit, with documentary proof kept sealed rather than published. Budget officials have defended the size of the OP’s allocation on exactly that basis. Then-budget secretary Amenah Pangandaman — whom ex-lawmaker Zaldy Co claimed relayed to him Marcos’ order to insert P100 billion for flood control projects for 2025 — noted that the funds are reported to the Senate president and the House speaker, and audited by COA’s specialized unit, and Executive Secretary Ralph Recto has called the arrangement transparent because it flows through those channels. But why is Sara’s confidential funds being subjected to scrutiny, even televised, and the auditor violating the confidentiality of such confidential funds? Selective accountability indeed.

Marcos confidential and intelligence funds, spent every year for at least the last four years at nearly identical multibillion-peso levels, have been subject to no such examination.

Marcos in the last four years has spent to the last centavo his Confidential, Intelligence and Extraordinary Expenses. For instance, for 2025, out of the P4.6 billion budgeted for the year, P4.574 billion was spent — a utilization rate of 99.85 percent. Every other major category of the Office of the President’s (OP) spending that Congress and the public can actually scrutinize was left, by comparison, badly underspent. Only the money the public is barred from itemizing was fully used.

The COA’s annual financial reports show that Marcos’ confidential and intelligence funds of P4.6 billion yearly has been bigger than the combined allocation for the armed forces, the police and the national intelligence agency — agencies responsible for the country’s security.

Confidential and intelligence funds are, by design, exempt from itemized public disclosure. Disbursements are supposed to be liquidated through COA’s Intelligence and Confidential Fund Audit Unit, with documentary proof kept sealed rather than published. Budget officials have defended the size of the OP’s allocation on exactly that basis. Then-budget secretary Amenah Pangandaman — whom ex-lawmaker Zaldy Co claimed relayed to him Marcos’ order to insert P100 billion for flood control projects for 2025 — noted that the funds are reported to the Senate president and the House speaker, and audited by COA’s specialized unit, and Executive Secretary Ralph Recto has called the arrangement transparent because it flows through those channels. But why is Sara’s confidential funds being subjected to scrutiny, even televised, and the auditor violating the confidentiality of such confidential funds? Selective accountability indeed.

Marcos confidential and intelligence funds, spent every year for at least the last four years at nearly identical multibillion-peso levels, have been subject to no such examination.

When asked why the House was not subjecting the OP’s P14-billion intelligence funds to the same scrutiny it applied to the OVP’s, the chairman of the House Committee on Good Government and Public Accountability, Manila Rep. Joel Chua, offered a telling explanation: State auditors had not flagged the OP’s spending, and unlike Duterte, “no one made an allegation against it.” That is close to circular — a fund draws no scrutiny because it has drawn no findings, and it draws no findings in part because it has drawn no scrutiny. A fund 35 times the size of the one now consuming the Senate’s calendar has, by that logic, simply never been tested the way the much smaller one was — on the justification that it is an article of impeachment. A clear case of weaponization of a constitutional process.

The confidential funds asymmetry is not the only red flag in the OP’s 2025 books. An analysis of the audited COA statements circulating among a group of concerned citizens — private individuals who took it upon themselves to comb through the report line by line — flags four additional patterns that, in their reading, point to serious weaknesses in how Marcos manages public money. Their findings are summarized, and checked here against the underlying COA figures.

Persistent and massive operating deficits. The citizen analysis notes that the OP posted a deficit of P1.1 billion in 2025, following a deficit of P1.3 billion in 2024. Two consecutive years of deficits exceeding P1 billion each, the analysis argues, point to serious and unresolved issues in the OP’s budget management rather than a one-year anomaly.

A huge gap between budget and actual execution. The OP’s total expenditure budget for 2025 was P18.6 billion, but actual expenditure came to only P10.1 billion — a difference of P8.5 billion. The citizen analysts argue that an unexecuted budget of that size suggests the OP’s project plans are unrealistic, that its procurement processes are chronically delayed or, they warn, that there may even be risks of funds being misapplied rather than genuinely unspent.

Long-term, unrecovered receivables. The analysis flags P28.6 million due from local government units; P23.7 million due from nongovernment organizations; and roughly P194 million in Other Receivables that have sat on the books for more than 10 years — in some cases more than 20 — and that the citizen auditors say are highly likely to be uncollectible at this point.

Long-unpaid employee obligations. Amounts ‘Due to Officers and Employees’ stood at P13.663 million, of which P1.066 million has been outstanding for more than three years. The citizen analysts note that employee salaries and benefits should, as a rule, not be delayed more than 30 days, and that amounts left unpaid for years point to serious flaws in the OP’s payroll or resignation-settlement processes — flaws that, they stress, fall squarely on the rights of the office’s own rank-and-file employees.

That this analysis is being done by private citizens rather than by the oversight committees of Congress only reinforces the asymmetry described above: the fund that is legally shielded from public itemization draws no scrutiny at all, while the fund that is fully disclosed is being picked apart, line by line, only because concerned citizens have chosen to do the work Congress has not.

The audited numbers in the OP’s own financial statements need no political framing to raise questions. An office that returns nearly half its operating budget unspent, that cannot account for millions of pesos in equipment, that carries decades-old uncollectible receivables on its books, and that nonetheless spends a confidential and intelligence fund 35 times larger than the one now consuming the Senate’s time and the country’s attention — without ever once drawing a hearing, a subpoena, or a finding of its own — is not the picture of prudent stewardship the Palace likes to project.

All of this reveals that this impeachment article against Sara is not just the most hypocritical of all, but the clearest case of selective accountability, which is how laws are weaponized.

I’m 100 percent sure, going by this administration’s track record, that if Marcos is ever impeached over the P21-billion confidential and intelligence funds he devoured, he’ll be found guilty in a few days’ trial.

*Confidential Expenses account represent the amounts paid for expenses related to surveillance activities in civilian government agencies that are intended to support the mandate or operations.

Intelligence Expenses account are the amounts paid for expenses related to intelligence information gathering activities of uniformed and military personnel, and intelligence practitioners that have direct impact to national security.

Extraordinary Expenses and Miscellaneous Expenses account are the amount paid for expenses incidental to the performance of official functions, like the above two expenses though aren’t subject to the liquidation requirements of the usual budgets.

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Sara’s P625M scrutinized to the last peso, Marcos’ P21B, no questions
Source: Breaking News PH