Nilustay ng bruha

What or how would you feel if a third or a fourth of your annual income was given away by Sara Duterte to somebody you did not know from Adam, somebody the government itself has said it has no record of having been born, married, lived nor having died in the Philippines. And plainly, somebody who did not exist at all?

Mapapamura ka, di ba? Pera mo, nawalang parang bula (Your money disappeared like bubbles). In Greek mythology like the Odyssey, only an impakta can do such a miracle. Nilustay ng bruha! (Waylaid by a witch), you can say.

You are a call center agent, a bank branch manager or a store manager. You make P67,000 a month or P2,191 a day. Because you make that much, the government collects 25 percent of your salary – as taxes. P8,500 tax a month, to be exact. Or P102,000 a year. Your tax money, your hard-earned money, given to complete strangers or to a ghost by a public official.

Every day, you commute to work. You brave two hours of traffic commuting from home to work and another two hours commuting back home. That’s four hours of your life wasted – daily. You leave home when your kids are still asleep. You go home and your kids are already asleep. It’s backbreaking work.

With your P67,000 monthly salary, you allot P5,000 to P8,000 for your electricity bill; P5,000 for your cellular load and WiFi, another P12,000 for your transportation to go to work; P15,000 for meals at work, P10,000 for your grocery bill and P5,000 for your medical or maintenance medicines. That’s P55,000. Now, P67,000 minus P55,000 is P12,000 – and you still haven’t paid your rent. And rent is P15,000 a month. No more money to watch Odyssey or pay for your kids’ tuition and baon in school.

And yet at the end of the year, the government collects P102,000 from you as income tax, a 25 percent rate for your income bracket. That’s P8,500 tax a month on income. You work to death to keep your family sane and intact. To pay the government the tax it wants because you are a good citizen.

Then you hear on TV or radio, a certain Sara Duterte gave away all your tax, your hard earned money to somebody whose name rhymes with potato chips, a slice of pork, a piece of cheese, a popular fish, a cellular phone, a bake shop, a root crop, a loose vagina.

Per records of the Senate impeachment court, the following got oodles of our tax money, our money from Sara Duterte:

Mary Grace Piattos, P70,000; Pia Piattos-Lim P140,000; Ralph Josh Bacon P150,000; Feonna Villegas P500,000; Beth Revilla P50,000; Clarisse Hontiveros P500,000; Diane Maple Lapid P150,000; John A. Lapid Jr. P350,000; Beverly Claire Pampano P130,000; Matthew N. Keso P250,000; Nova Santos P50,000; Salah Casim P180,000; Renan Piattos P110,000; Xiaome Ocho P100,000; Jay Kamote P200,000; Miggy Mango P50,000; Connor Adrian Contis P50,000; Honeylet Camille Sy P350,000; Kristine Applegate Estrada P50,000; Denise Tanya Escudero P120,000. A prince of darkness, Andy Lim, received P50,000. A one-eyed buccaneer, Alejandro Pikit, got P50,000.

Per records of the Senate impeachment court, Sara Duterte wasted or misappropriated P612.5 million of taxpayer’s money in December 2022 to August 2023.

On Dec. 20, 2022, VP Sara received P125 million in confidential funds. She was to spend it until Dec. 31, 2022. Ever efficient, she did. From January 2023 to August 2023, she received another P375 million – representing the first three quarters of 2023. That’s a total of P500 million in just nine months. Money good for four quarters or one whole year, Sara spent in just a matter of days. And she presented thousands of acknowledgement receipts (ARs) to prove the spending.

In the Office of the Vice President, Sara spent P125 million in just 11 days during a Christmas season when most days of December are holidays, meaning, in all probability the money was spent in just – one day. She malversed or misspent P500 million of Department of Education money when she was the secretary.

At OVP, of 1,922 names she claimed received our tax money, 1,287, or 67 percent, are people who do not exist at all, per records of the Philippine Statistics Authority. At DepEd, of 677 names she claimed received our tax money, 398 – 59 percent – do not exist at all. That’s a total of 1,685 people who Sara claims she gave our tax money to, who do not exist. They do not have birth, marriage or death records. In street lingua, puro ek-ek lang. Bola lang. In English, bulls**t.

If 1,685 alleged recipients of our money given away by Sara do not exist, where did the money go? That’s a total of P612.5 million. Who got the money? Did the money go to Sara’s pockets?  Did she steal it?

In the sublime rules of governance in this country, just because a government official like Sara is lying about the whereabouts of people’s money does not automatically mean she stole the money.

If Sara did not steal the money, can she at least explain in plain and understandable language where or how she spent the money? Cannot, cannot, is her answer. Why? It’s confidential. It’s for intelligence. And that is no joke, no joke. Really.

The Commission on Audit disallowed P73.287 million of Sara’s DepEd confidential funds for the last quarter of 2022. COA has demanded that Sara return the P73.287 million disallowed. If she refuses to return the P73.287 million (she refuses), that’s plunder because plunder is stealing a minimum of P50 million.

COA also disallowed all the P375 million released to Sara for the first three quarters of 2023. Sara is appealing the COA order.

Most of the missing DepEd money was supposed to be for Sara’s “counterinsurgency programs.” Yet, says COA’s Roderick Wamil, a lawyer-CPA testifying before the impeachment court, “wala po silang sinabmit (submit) na any document evidencing success po.”

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