The prosecution in Vice President Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial pressed on Tuesday over how the Department of Education (DepEd) spent millions in confidential funds on a program meant to stop communist rebels from recruiting students, with a state auditor confirming the agency never identified which schools the effort supposedly protected.
House private prosecutor Lorna Kapunan questioned DepEd’s reported accomplishment in preventing recruitment by the New People’s Army (NPA) and allied leftist groups, asking whether the department had pinpointed the schools that benefited. Reviewing the agency’s own accomplishment report, she noted it listed “prevention of recruitment” as an actual outcome and asked how much was paid for it.
Witness Roderick Wamil, a former state auditor with the Commission on Audit’s Intelligence and Confidential Funds Audit Office, testified that DepEd reported spending P2.47 million to purchase information, P2 million for rewards, P2.805 million for supplies, and P2.1 million for incentives and travel tied to confidential operations, for a total of P9.375 million. Asked whether the department submitted documents naming the schools where it was successful, Wamil replied that based on DepEd’s submission, no particular schools were identified.
The exchange falls under Article I of the impeachment complaint, which accuses Duterte of misusing P612.5 million in confidential funds — roughly P500 million released to the Office of the Vice President and P112.5 million to DepEd during her time as education secretary from 2022 to 2024. According to the Manila Times, Wamil earlier testified that Duterte was the only vice president whose office received such appropriations during his decade at the audit office, as predecessors Jejomar Binay and Leni Robredo had none.
The DepEd confidential funds drew scrutiny well before the trial. In 2023, then-department spokesperson Michael Poa cited intelligence pointing to 16 Metro Manila public high schools allegedly involved in NPA recruitment to justify a P150-million confidential fund request, but declined to name the institutions. Poa now serves as one of Duterte’s defense counsels. The prosecution is expected to continue tracing the remaining quarters of the confidential fund disbursements as the trial proceeds.
