Sara’s victimhood and endless drama

For four years, Vice President Sara Duterte has occupied the country’s second-highest office with vast resources at her disposal. Yet what does she have to show for it? She has offered no defining national reform initiative, no durable social project and no serious contribution to economic transformation. On health care, education and political reform, her record is thin. Her vice presidency generated a lot of noise but nothing related to nation-building.

Political persecution is no excuse. Leni Robredo was denied a generous budget, excluded from the Cabinet and attacked by Rodrigo Duterte’s propaganda machinery. Yet she built Angat Buhay through private partnerships, delivering programs in nutrition, health care, education, housing and livelihood. Robredo converted political marginalization into service. Sara converts scrutiny into grievance and non-stop whining.

Let me stay it straight – grievance, victimhood and drama is Sara Duterte’s stock-in-trade. And we are tired of it.

Her pattern began in June 2023 when she posted the cryptic insult “tambaloslos,” widely interpreted as a swipe against Martin Romualdez. In October, rather than explain her demand for confidential funds, she branded critics “enemies of peace.” Legitimate questions about taxpayers’ money were re-packaged as acts of hostility.

In March 2024, she claimed an organized demolition job against her family. In June, she resigned from the Cabinet without a clear explanation. In July, she skipped the SONA and appointed herself “the designated survivor” – a ludicrous joke implying catastrophe while national leaders gathered in Congress.

That month, she cried “political harassment” when 75 police officers were withdrawn from her security detail even if hundreds remained. In September, she turned OVP budget hearings into drama, refusing direct answers while accusing lawmakers of politicizing budget oversights.

Then came her two-hour meltdown on Oct. 18, 2024. Duterte called President Marcos incompetent, declared the country headed for hell and recounted imagining herself cutting off his head. She threatened to exhume Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s remains and throw them into the West Philippine Sea. It was gutter theater performed in crass fashion.

In November, she transformed the detention of her chief of staff, Zuleika Lopez, into a nationally televised standoff involving legislators, police and her security personnel. On Nov. 23, she announced that she had instructed someone to kill the President, the First Lady and then speaker Martin Romualdez should she herself be assassinated. Two days later, she dragged Ninoy Aquino’s murder into the feud by blaming the Marcos family without presenting evidence.

When impeachment followed in February 2025, she re-framed accountability as persecution. When her father was arrested the next month under an ICC warrant, she turned his transfer to The Hague into another drama, ignoring victims seeking justice. By June, she described her impeachment as a “crucifixion” and “bloodbath” – the language of martyrdom.

In February 2026, she announced her presidential ambition and apologized for supporting Marcos, converting another grievance into campaign fodder. By September, facing an arrest warrant arising from her own public statements, she again cried political harassment and declared that “I do not feel safe.”

A waste of national discourse

Every chapter of Sara’s drama anthology grabbed headlines and deepened political division. Yet, none of it affected food prices, created jobs, built classrooms, improved hospitals or strengthened institutions. National attention, congressional time, police resources and public money were diverted to controversies of her own making. And for what? To feed her victimhood narrative. These resources could have been channeled to pursue genuine reform.

Duterte criticizes the Marcos administration for being unproductive and unresponsive. But what solutions has she offered? Where is her economic program or reform agenda? She is the Vice President, for goodness’ sake – not a commentator broadcasting grievances from the sidelines.

I am not defending PBBM. He is no better. Both the President and Vice President lead without vision or direction. Why? Because they share the same motivation. That is, to legitimize their family wealth, consolidate power and to repair the family brand.

Squandered opportunity

Sara had a golden opportunity to demonstrate her mettle as education secretary. Instead, Philippine students remained near the bottom of the 2022 PISA rankings in mathematics, reading and science. She introduced the MATATAG curriculum and Catch-up Fridays, but resigned after two years without demonstrating measurable learning recovery. She failed to move the needle where it mattered – literacy, numeracy, classrooms and teacher support.

Yet her DepEd and OVP received P612.5 million in confidential funds – P500 million for the OVP and P112.5 million for DepEd. Neither office had previously carried such funds. It was not operational necessity; it was political accommodation.

The liquidation documents make a mockery of public accountability. Of the OVP’s P125-million confidential fund released in December 2022, P73.287 million – spent in just 11 days – was disallowed by the Commission on Audit. COA subsequently testified that another P375 million was disallowed. Receipts bore names as absurd as Mary Grace Piattos, Miggy Mango and Jay Kamote. Trial testimony linked supposed recipients to children and people long dead. Duterte denies wrongdoing and deserves due process. Taxpayers also deserve the truth.

As an economist, I hear the same frustration from colleagues in the academe, in various chambers of commerce and in the private sector. We are sick and tired of Sara’s drama, victimhood and incessant whining. She behaves like an entitled politician who cannot distinguish accountability from persecution.

A leader should add clarity to national discourse, offer solutions and unite the citizenry behind a credible vision. Sara Duterte does the opposite. Her contribution is grievance without policy, outrage without solutions and ambition without accomplishment.

That makes her more than unproductive. It makes her a national liability. Filipinos have endured enough tantrums and complaints. We are fed up with the drama.

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Email: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @aj_masigan