"Sara Duterte must be held accountable for misusing OVP and DepEd funds for operations that have nothing to do with improving the quality of education in the country."

“Sara Duterte must be held accountable for misusing OVP and DepEd funds for operations that have nothing to do with improving the quality of education in the country.”

CAGAYAN DE ORO — This week’s impeachment trial hearing exposed Vice President Sara Duterte’s failure to properly liquidate a substantial amount from the more than P600-million confidential and intelligence funds (CIFs) in the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd).

Unspecified confidential activities in their approved Physical and Financial Plans, inconsistent dates and undated acknowledgement receipts, no documentary evidence for payments, and not allowable expenditures were among the findings of witness Roderick Wamil, former state auditor of the Commission on Audit (COA)-Intelligence and Confidential Funds Audit Unit (ICFAU), when he audited the CIFs in both agencies. He stressed that these were not compliant to Joint Circular No. 2015-01 or the guidelines on the entitlement, release, use, reporting, and audit of CIFs.

State auditor Roderick Wamil peruses a document during the impeachment trial of Vice President Sara Duterte on August 4, 2026. Photo from the Senate

For a group of teachers, what angered them was the revelation of the use of public funds to surveil teachers and learners. “That P112.5 million could have gone a long way towards repairing damaged classrooms, providing additional teacher allowances, and addressing the lack of restrooms, chairs, and books, among others,” Ruby Bernardo, chairperson of the Alliance of Concerned Teachers (ACT) Philippines, said in Filipino.

Read:Education at a crossroads ahead of Marcos Jr.’s SONA

ACT Philippines cited earlier reports that only 192 new classrooms were completed out of the target of more than 6,000 in 2023 when Duterte was still the education secretary, as well as having only 208 classrooms repaired out of more than 7,000 classrooms in need of rehabilitation.

During the impeachment trial on August 4, the prosecution panel presented the approved Physical and Financial Plan of DepEd for the first three quarters of 2023. The document showed its specified programs, including counter-insurgency, abuse prevention and control, anti-illegal activities operations, and anti-terrorism and extremism, with a total of P112.5 million in confidential funds or P37.5 million for each quarter.

For counter-insurgency and anti-terrorism and extremism programs, among the target outcomes based on the plan were to prevent the recruitment of the New People’s Army (NPA) and other communist and leftist groups in schools and to intensify the background investigation of DepEd personnel and learners involved in terrorist organizations.

ACT denounced the use of public funds in such activities, stressing that counter-insurgency has never been a mandate of DepEd. “To impeach Sara Duterte is justified. She must be held accountable for misusing OVP and DepEd funds for operations that have nothing to do with improving the quality of education in the country,” Bernardo said.

Wamil, who was assigned in COA-ICFAU from 2014 to 2024, said that he only audited the DepEd during the leadership of Duterte as education secretary as this was the only time that the agency had confidential funds.

Liza Idiang, a public school head at Balongbalong Elementary School in Pitogo, Zamboanga del Sur, earlier told Bulatlat how alleged state surveillance affected the mental health of already-exhausted teachers.

Idiang, who also serves as the chairperson of ACT Zamboanga Peninsula Region, made this remark after individuals who introduced themselves as state agents visited her and other teachers’ residences and their school in the latter part of July, asking if they were planning a protest action for the State of the Nation Address (SONA).

Read: State surveillance adds to teachers’ multiple burden

Former ACT Teachers Party-list Rep. France Castro said during the Bantay Impeachment program of the People’s Alternative Media Network (Altermidya) that DepEd’s use of confidential funds in counter-insurgency raises questions, especially to an agency that governs basic and secondary education. “You would look for terrorists in elementary and high school?”

Based on the DepEd’s accomplishment reports presented by prosecution to the impeachment court, Wamil said that there were items that were not allowable expenditures for CIFs under the said joint circular, including payments of incentives for traveling relative to the confidential operations and the provision of food and medicines.

There were also payments of rewards, the witness added, but there were no documents submitted by DepEd to prove the success of information gathering and surveillance activities.

Castro echoed the remark of prosecution counsel Lorna Kapunan who said during that trial hearing on August 4 that Duterte’s spending on confidential funds was a “scam.” Those funds, the former lawmaker stressed, could be used instead to feed stunted children in the country. (DAA)

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