VP abandoned the govt, Palace says

MALACAÑANG said Monday it was Vice President Sara Duterte who abandoned the government, disputing her claims that the administration turned its back on the Office of the Vice President (OVP).

"That is what they want to convey — that the Office of the Vice President and the vice president herself are seemingly pitiful," Palace Press Officer and Presidential Communications Office (PCO) Undersecretary Claire Castro said in a briefing in Filipino.

The official was reacting to Duterte's comments during a thanksgiving rally for overseas Filipino workers in Hong Kong over the weekend where the vice president claimed the government had left her office behind.

Castro emphasized that the vice president was given an opportunity to defend her proposed 2025 budget. Instead, she skipped the plenary deliberations of the OVP's 2025 budget at the House of Representatives, prompting lawmakers to cut the budget allocation.

"She was given the opportunity to defend and justify her proposed budget. No one prevented her from getting the necessary funds, as long as they were properly explained," she said.

"No one left her behind — perhaps she is the one who left the government," she added, hitting back at Duterte's remarks that she had been "scammed" into teaming up with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. in the 2022 elections.

Castro asserted that it should have been the other way around.

"The members of UniTeam did not think that VP Sara will spend P125 million confidential funds in just 11 days, they didn't think of that, and instead, she was given trust ... The president also did not think to continue with the bloody 'tokhang' and EJK (extrajudicial killings)," she said.

Duterte and Marcos were running mates in the national elections three years ago and were the faces for "unity."

Their relationship, however, had become strained and eventually broken after Duterte's use of confidential and intelligence funds had been questioned by Congress.

There was also suggestions that Marcos was behind Duterte's impeachment, a matter the president has vehemently denied.