Unraveling

Vice President Sara Duterte trended on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday evening. The hashtag #zerobudgetforOVP or Office of the Vice President was among the top trends.

By Wednesday morning, the hashtag #SaraDuterte was trending with 50,000 posts as X users expressed frustration and anger over the way she handled Tuesday’s six-hour hearing at the House of Representatives, which focused on the Office of the Vice President’s proposed P2-billion budget for 2025.

VP Sara would know for sure why she trended and while she may shrug it off, her handlers should know that trends on X hold a lot of importance as they give insights into what the public cares about, providing a real-time pulse on society.

Watching the hearing, one doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry and it would take more than one column piece to dissect the layers of pain that any nation-loving Filipino must have felt while watching the televised constitutionally mandated exercise by the House of Representatives.

The most painful and profoundly sad part of it all is the most obvious – our Vice President, the second highest official of the land, voted into office by 32 million Filipinos, not only refused to answer queries about the use of her office’s budget, but also threw a tantrum precisely because she was being questioned.

Her words, her body language and her overall presence exuded a kind of intense anger and irritation you might see only in say, your mother when you’ve done something so awfully wrong or your high school principal when you’ve violated the school’s rules and regulations.

In the case of the budget hearing, however, it was not the lawmakers – representing the public – who were in the wrong but VP Sara herself for refusing to answer the questions on how her office used its past budgets.

Her refusal was wrong on so many levels because one, she felt that she was exempt from being scrutinized, even if the budget she was asking for is funded by taxpayers’ money; and second, because she absolutely disregarded parliamentary courtesy.

Nobody, however, is exempt from scrutiny when it comes to taxpayers’ money, as Gabriela Women’s Party-list Rep. Arlene Brosas said during the hearing.

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