On Aug. 30, even as social media was still abuzz and aghast at Vice President Sara Duterte’s startling behavior at the budget deliberations in the House of Representatives, she was reported as leading her office’s nationwide distribution of bags under its “Pagbabago” (Change) program.

The photograph that accompanied the Philippine News Agency report, taken at a madrasah in Caloocan City, showed Duterte looking fetching in a hijab with a child similarly attired. Each bag was reported as containing school supplies such as two notebooks, two pens, three pencils, a box of crayons, a sharpener, etc. There was no mention of the now-controversial children’s book authored by herself, “Isang Kaibigan” (A Friend), which is supposedly intended to be part of each bag’s contents. 

The general public first got wind of “Isang Kaibigan” in the Aug. 21 hearing at the Senate, where Duterte lit into Sen. Risa Hontiveros for “politicizing” the proposed P2.4-billion budget of the Office of the Vice President for 2025. Hontiveros had inquired about the book’s printing cost of P10 million, to which Duterte did not take kindly; she repeatedly accused the senator of “pamumulitika” and refused to answer questions. But in the end, Duterte’s conduct unbecoming notwithstanding, the Senate approved the OVP’s proposed appropriation for plenary action, anyway.

How time flies

Over at the House on Aug. 27, an example of how time flies was amply demonstrated. It was only a year ago that it took less than 15 minutes for the OVP’s proposed budget for 2024 to be deemed submitted to the plenary, with the activist Makabayan bloc quite literally shut up by the muting of their mic.

This time around, the hearing on the OVP’s proposed budget for 2025 ran up to five hours, marked by Duterte’s antagonistic stance toward her would-be interpellators. There was no Senior Deputy Majority Leader Sandro Marcos to move to halt the deliberations on grounds of “tradition” and ”parliamentary courtesy,” and no select group of lawmakers to promptly carry his motion. In the end, the House committee on appropriations deferred the deliberations and scheduled the continuation of proceedings on Sept. 10, leaving the OVP’s proposed budget high and dry.

The seismic shift comes after the Vice President’s break from her UniTeam partner, President Marcos Jr.—a break so complete that she has sought forgiveness from the members of the cult Kingdom of Jesus Christ for convincing them to vote for him in 2022. The break appears to have cast her out in the cold, a condition that she acknowledged when, in the course of insisting on “forgoing the opportunity” to explain her office’s proposed budget in Q&A fashion, she caustically remarked to the presiding officer about “all of you [lawmakers] there and me alone here.” (Not exactly true: She had a few House members, including one of her besties, ex-President and Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, defending her from questioning on the P125-million confidential funds that she famously spent in 11 days in 2022 when she was still concurrent education secretary.)

The presiding officer happened to be Marikina Rep. Stella Quimbo, who in a not so distant past ably defended the OVP’s request for confidential funds—and drew both appreciation (from Duterte) and flak (from appalled sectors) for it. This time around the senior vice chair of the House committee on appropriations occasionally appeared flustered at Duterte’s combative language and demeanor, coming across as slow to react to the latter’s displayed contempt for the behavioral demands of the proceedings. When the Vice President impatiently called for someone else to serve as presiding officer of the hearing, Madame Chair was hard put to put the budget proponent in her place. 

Much later, responding to reporters’ request for comment, Senate President Francis Escudero wryly described Duterte as clearly unaccustomed to being questioned on official matters. Indeed, a review of similar occasions in the House would show that she had officers assigned to answer questions in her behalf or to prod or cue her whenever she faltered in her own responses. But now, sitting on the metaphorical hot seat in the chamber that housed her father’s supermajority when he was president, she was derisive and defensive, could not be bothered to abide by parliamentary rules, and would not countenance questioning by those she called “communist” and “child abuse convict.” 

The sponsor of the OVP’s proposed budget, Lanao del Sur Rep. Zia Alonto Adiong, sat quietly during the hearing. Later the otherwise articulate lawmaker expressed frustration at the 5-hour exchange and remarked that it would now be “a lot difficult” to push the proposed appropriation in plenary. The lawyer Michael Poa, who formerly spoke for the Department of Education where he was undersecretary and now speaks for the OVP, sat by himself behind his boss as she held the fort of her disdain during the proceedings. He was later reported as saying that he was arranging a meeting between the Vice President and “Cong Adiong.” 

Earlier, Poa denied to the Inquirer that “Isang Kaibigan” was intended as campaign material for the 2028 presidential election; he said it was meant to “encourage reading” among young Filipinos. But for all the book’s projected benefits for the youth, it doesn’t look like promising reading: Critics including the Filipino American novelist Ninotchka Rosca describe it as unoriginal and erroneous in parts. The author has promised to quickly follow up the children’s book on friendship with another, this time on betrayal. It’s unclear if the second book will also require a multimillion-peso allocation for printing.

At one point the Vice President said she came alone to the hearing so only she would be held in detention in the event that she is cited for contempt. But the proceedings were not an investigation but deliberations on how taxpayer money is intended to be spent. Perhaps she was thinking of her father’s former spokesperson who was deemed by lawmakers to have lied about his absence at a hearing in the inquiry into pogos (or Philippine offshore gaming operators), to which he has been linked. Harry Roque was held at the House for 24 hours for what he calls an “honest mistake,” and he has taken to calling himself, straight-faced, a “political detainee.” 

Reversal of fortunes

The temptation is great to view these occurrences as simply a matter of the shoe being on the other foot, a spectacle involving those who now find themselves on the opposite end of power and cry persecution at losing its perks and entitlements. It’s an interesting study of a reversal of fortunes that often accompanies a change in administration, or transactional politics gone sideways. Still, the events are free-flowing and focus has to be maintained to ensure significant results. Think of what public backlash can accomplish apart from preventing the allocation of confidential funds to agencies that have no need for them.

Meanwhile, Filipinos young and old are reading about and being regaled by memes on the Vice President’s impolitic exchange with members of Congress, as well as Roque’s laughable attempt to rally forces to his “cause.” Comic relief may be helpful up to a certain point; in the long resistance against the Marcos dictatorship, it helped keep despondency at bay and spirits alive. But efforts should continue to be directed at identifying and keeping the issues crystal: How will a P2.5-billion budget be spent effectively for the people’s welfare? Confidential funds are now excluded from the OVP’s budget—by virtue of public backlash—but what will happen to the money found by the Commission on Audit to have been spent on irrelevant matters? Or, in Roque’s case, what exactly constitute his links to the pogos for which a former Cabinet member is said to have lobbied?

“Filipino audiences have a penchant for soap operas and gossip, especially when it involves public figures—who they are dating and how they are spending their money,” BBC reported on Aug. 9 in the course of covering how the very public feud between the gymnast Carlos Yulo and his mother was stealing the thunder from his historic twin golds in the Paris Olympics.

It’s dismaying for “Filipino audiences” to be thus characterized, with such a “penchant” pinned exclusively on them. But in the online frenzy over the spectacle of the moment—whether it concerns the Vice President’s programs that apparently include her budding writing career or Roque’s intriguing land holdings—it’s urgent for Filipinos to be informed, aware, and able to see beyond the performative.