Vice President Sara Duterte said she will not seek confidential funds for next year, under the government’s P6.35 trillion national budget for 2025.
“For the Office of the Vice President, no, wala kaming proposal ng confidential funds for [next year],” Duterte, quoted by a GMA News report, said.
Duterte had also previously let go of the P500 million confidential and intelligence funds (CIF) under the proposed 2024 national budget.
During the plenary deliberations on the 2024 proposed budget of the Department of Education (DepEd), Senator Pia Cayetano said that Duterte also had let go of the agency’s P150 million confidential funds.
Earlier, Duterte announced resigned as DepEd chief and vice chairperson of the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC).
In a statement announcing her resignation, Duterte said her resignation as DepEd was not due to weakness but out of concern for teachers and students.
Earlier, Duterte has asked the Supreme Court (SC) to dismiss the three petitions assailing the constitutionality of the transfer of the amount of P125 million by the Office of the President (OP) to the Office of the Vice President (OVP) for use as confidential funds in December 2022.
In a 16-page consolidated comment, Duterte through her counsel, former Solicitor General Estelito Mendoza, argued there is no “justiciable controversy” in the petitions that would warrant the Court’s exercise of its power of adjudication.
Mendoza served as solicitor general from 1972 until 1986 during the term of the late President Ferdinand Marcos, father of the sitting President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
According to Mendoza, the petitions do not allege that Duterte exercised “grave abuse of discretion, much less any discretion” in the release of the Contingent Funds for use as confidential funds of the OVP.
“Indeed, the mandate of the Honorable Court does not include the duty to answer all of life’s questions. No question, no matter how interesting or compelling, can be answered by this Court if it cannot be shown that there is an actual and antagonistic assertion of rights by one party against the other in a controversy wherein judicial intervention is unavoidable,” Mendoza said.
The former Solicitor General argued the need for a case or actual controversy before the Court could exercise its judicial power as mandated under Article VIII (Judicial Department), Section 1 of the Constitution.
The said provision states: “Judicial power includes the duty of the courts of justice to settle actual controversies involving rights which are legally demandable and enforceable, and to determine whether or not there has been a grave abuse of discretion amounting to lack or excess of jurisdiction on the party of any branch or instrumentality of the government.”
The allegations of the petitioners, according to Mendoza, do not show actual controversy involving rights, which are legally demandable and enforceable as required by the Constitution.