The issue about the Office of the Vice President’s (OVP) confidential funds is the alleged misuse of public funds and not the use of aliases of Filipino heroes during the Spanish colonial period, the spokespersons of the House prosecution team said Thursday.
They made the statement after Senator-judge Robin Padilla tried giving the prosecution panel a history lesson during Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial on Wednesday, pointing out that even Filipino revolutionaries used aliases to protect their own identities.
“I think those national heroes whose aliases were referenced would probably be rolling in their graves after their nom de guerre were mentioned in the same context as the allegation of misuse of confidential funds,” prosecution spokesman Lanao del Sur Rep. Zia Alonto Adiong said at a press briefing.
He said the issue is not about patriotism but rather an audit problem, that the Office of the Vice President and the Department of Education, when the Vice President sat as secretary, now has a problem with the Commission on Audit (COA).
He pointed out that the real identities in the acknowledgment receipts used to support the disbursements can be secured and later checked by state auditors without being disclosed to the public.
“This is an auditing problem. No amount of confidential activity can ever weaken the constitutional mandate of the Commission on Audit (COA) in finding out what happened to the money of the people,” Alonto Adiong said.
Deputy Speaker Paolo Ortega V made the distinction more directly: heroes used aliases in furtherance of their struggle for our country and our people, and not to deceive people or abuse public money.
“Yung mga bayani po natin, yung ating mga hero, e nagkaroon po at gumamit po at binansagan po ng mga ganitong pangalan dahil pinaglalaban po nila yung bansa (Our heroes have and used aliases because they fought for our country),” he stressed.
For her part, Deputy Speaker Janette Garin said that while the use of aliases may be necessary to protect real informants and people involved in sensitive operations, the use of fake names does not make an operation’s purpose, result, and audit trail disappear.
The impeachment trial has examined acknowledgment receipts bearing dubious names, including Mary Grace Piattos, Pusa, Pagong and Ngitngit.
“Ang tanong: saan ba ginamit. Kapag alias ang output, kung alias ang isang programa, isa lang ang ibig sabihin doon: ghost ang naging paggastos ng confidential fund (The question is: where was it used? If the output and program are aliases, it only means one thing: the expenditure for the confidential fund is a ghost),” Garin said. (PNA)