Sara Duterte, I believe, is sick of a narcissistic personality disorder, as others in her family are. That is as much as many viewers have analyzed in her Grand Meltdown before a live coverage of the House appropriations committee hearing last August 27. Jaws dropped massively. She simply collapsed in the weight of her imagined ego.
What caused it?
Days prior, three of her biggest lies in the conduct of her governance had been exposed. Narcissists have an unreasonably high sense of their own importance. They want people to admire them. Sara’s lies, however, were too big to be ignored. When she went to the House, she knew it would put her to shame.
Her game plan fit the narcissist’s playbook to a T: she will control the interpellations so that she can dodge the most threatening questions. Once in control of the process, she can throw squid tactics so as to transfer blame. Ergo, she can come out unscathed from being shamed.
What she failed to realize was that the game plan would put her outside the bounds of parliamentary decorum. Narcissists, however, do not care about being accused of nastiness (that is being polite; the behavior was one of bitchiness). What was important to her was the fear she ignited among legislators – that she must be treated with privilege and special treatment, or else (“I warn you!”).
Bodyguards
The first lie was her army of bodyguards. She said she was now unprotected. She cried political harassment. But as the saying goes, “the truth is often surrounded by a bodyguard of lies.” At the senate hearing on her budget, Colonel Raymund Dante Lachica of the Vice Presidential Security Protection Group (VPSPG) was asked how many bodyguards were left after the recall of the 75 cops. His answer: 337 personnel from the Armed Forces of the Philippines (her full entitlement was 365, he said).
It was still an inordinate number. Sara Duterte was exceedingly and amply protected like a Middle Eastern shaykhah. Her first lie was caught.
Children’s book
The second lie was exposed during the same senate hearing when Senator Risa Hontiveros focused on the publication of her book “Isang Kaibigan,” said to have been authored by Sara herself.
Hontiveros’s questioning opened a can of worms instead. The publication cost for 200,000 copies was P10M. That means each book of 16 pages each would cost P50. A children’s book publisher was consulted who offered to publish it at the cost of only P10-20 per book. That means Sara’s quote was overpriced, with a possible profit of at most P6M for what could be funds diversion.”
That wasn’t all. There on the final page was the official portrait of Sara Duterte in green terno. It said, “isa syang kaibigan” (she is a friend). In her confused state of mind that saw no boundaries between the self and the official, she herself intimated that the book would be distributed to school children “whose parents could be voters.”
No doubt, this wasn’t just a children’s book. She was pulling our leg and she did it without scruples. It was a campaign material, and printed at the cost of our money. The red flag was waiving profusely.
The Philippines has a good complement of experts on children’s books. Immediately, many analyzed the Sara book. The finding was shocking. The experts claimed it was plagiarized, not verbatim et literatim, but from the same plot of a book published in the United States, “Owly” by Andy Runton (Top Shelf Productions, publisher).
Sara didn’t author the book she intends will invest her with political popularity at our expense. Her second lie was caught.
P125M confidential fund
The exposition of her third lie came very quietly with little public fanfare. This August 8, 2024, the Commission on Audit came out with a report of the P125M that Sara asked at the beginning of her term in 2022 – confidential funds free from audit.
However free from audit, confidential funds have to be liquidated. Unfortunately, it was her liquidation that gave her away. The House appropriations committee sent a Subpoena duces tecum to COA on August 16, 2024 and which COA had complied on August 21, 2024 on the use of confidential funds by the OVP.
Of P125M, she spent P35M for purchase of supplies, including some P3.5M for chairs, tables, and computers. Then she spent P40M for provision of medical and food aid. The money was spent in only 11 days. Here’s the major twist: all of these are items not allowed by the COA’s Joint Circular with the Department of Budget and Management No. 2015-01.
So where did the money go? Thinking it was a confidential fund, Sara probably thought the taxpayer would never know how she spent it. That is her third lie. Thanks to COA, it has issued a Notice of Disallowance that now requires her to return P73.287M to the government. Because clearly, she went against the law.
Other reasons for the disallowance included non-submission of documents evidencing success for the information and surveillance activities and the use of medical supplies to reward informers.
Sara knew the Notice of Disallowance. She mentioned that her office had received a copy of it. She knew it would be taken up at the hearing. But she did not want it discussed. It will be her biggest shame so far. And so the game plan was to appear at the House like a pampered Cruella de Vil, that symbol of dastardly greed and vanity. The purpose? To avoid being cornered for her lies in the use of taxpayers’ money.
She managed to ask a little help from her one-handful of supporters in the House – Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, Isidro Ungab of Davao city, Claude Bautista of Davao Occidental, and Ducielle Cardema of the Duterte Youth party list. Add Ronald Cardema, the chair of the National Youth Commission, seen sitting behind Sara. The following day, Cardema was fired from the NYC, which Malacañang should have done a long time ago.
Of course the plan backfired. The House of Representatives or the Senate is not the Davao city Sangguniang Panglungsod, opposition-less and deferential to every Duterte whim and caprice. Overnight, Sara became a disaster, somebody to be disliked and avoided.
What do we do with her? The first thing she needs is long-term psychotherapy. The second is to ban her from public office. Narcissists mess up democratic principles and we have seen many examples of that even in our own backyard.
The sick person needs a doctor. Public office as a public trust is not the doctor.
The views in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of VERA Files.
