MANILA – President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. is optimistic that the impeachment of Vice President Sara Duterte-Carpio will not have any negative impact on the Philippine economy.
According to the Chief Executive, he sees the country’s economy to continue moving as long as all the plans and strategies about investment and the structural changes will be done.
“I doubt (if the Vice President’s impeachment will affect our economy). Hindi naman siguro. Wala ako makikitang effect,” President Marcos said in a presser at Malacañang Palace.
“Basta’t patuloy lahat ng ating pinaplano, lahat ng ating mga strategy tungkol sa investment, tungkol sa mga bagong structural changes na lagi kong pinaguusapan. ‘Yun lang naman ang tinitingnan ng investor eh,” he added.
The House of Representatives on Wednesday impeached Duterte-Carpio, with 215 lawmakers endorsing the verified complaint against her and which was transmitted to the Senate for the impeachment trial.
The senators, however, did not tackle the transmittal of the Articles of Impeachment on the last session day. Senate President Francis Escudero said they might take up the impeachment on June 2.
The impeachment complaint stemmed from the House good government and public accountability panel’s inquiry on the use of confidential funds by the Office of the Vice President (OVP) and the Department of Education (DepEd) under Duterte-Carpio’s leadership.
The inquiry found that the two offices submitted acknowledgement receipts with wrong dates, signatories with no birth records, unnamed signatories and non-readable names of signatories to liquidate disbursed confidential funds to the Commission of Audit (COA).
It also found that the COA issued a notice of disallowance on the OVP’s use of P73 million confidential funds within 11 days in 2022. At least P69 million of the P73 million disallowed involved the following: P10 million for reward payment; P34.857 million for payment of reward (various goods); and P24.93 million for payment of reward (medicines).
The COA said the OVP did not submit documents showing the success of information gathering and/or surveillance activities to support the acknowledgment receipts for around P69 million of payments of rewards in cash, various goods, and medicines.
Likewise, COA said that P3.5 million of the disallowed P73 million “were used for payment for tables, chairs, desktop computers and printers without specifying that they were intended for the confidential operations/activities undertaken by the OVP, non-compliant with the requirement of Item 4.8.4 of the Joint Circular governing use of confidential fund.”/PN
