Should we tell Vice President Sara Duterte to follow House rules?

LEGAZPI, Albay – Manila 3rd District Rep. Joel Chua asked if lawmakers still need to remind Vice President Sara Duterte to follow the rules as she insisted on staying in the House of Representatives on Thursday night despite repeated requests go to her.

At a press briefing on Friday in Batasang Pambansa, Chua said he hoped Duterte would heed her request to step down as public servants should be reasonable people.

Duterte was at the Batasang Pambansa complex on Thursday evening to visit her chief of staff, Undersecretary Zuleika Lopez, who is currently in custody on the House floor after a committee charged her with contempt of court.

Duterte arrived at 7:40 p.m. House Secretary General Reginald Velasco said the vice president remained with Lopez until visiting hours ended at 10 p.m.

After that, Velasco said, Duterte spent the night at the office of her brother, Davao City 1st District Representative Paolo Duterte. It was eventually revealed that the vice president and her staff had locked themselves in Rep. Duterte’s office even after the House had to cut power due to a long-standing energy conservation policy.

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“Need I say that the vice president must follow the law? Our vice president is a lawyer, she is the second highest official in the country. We took an oath that said we would follow the rules of the country,” Chua said.

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“So I think the vice president is a reasonable person and I think she knows what she needs to do and what the rules are,” he added.

As for what action he will take if Duterte insists on staying, Chua said he will have to discuss it with the House sergeant-at-arms, retired Police Maj. Gen. Napoleon Taas.

“We are reasonable people, right? We are all public servants here,” he said.

“So our job as public servants is to follow the law and implement it. But if we don’t follow the law ourselves, how can we enforce it?” he asked.

Taas said he will not stop asking Duterte to leave the House of Representatives chambers as she is his “mysta” or classmate at the Philippine Military Academy (PMA).

“You didn’t ask, but our vice president is an honorary member of my PMA class of 1984. That’s why we call each other “mysta”. Therefore, I will not tire of appealing to my mista,” he said.

“Because in my experience, and even for those who graduate, groups within the PMA, if the appeal was made from one mysta to another, we concede. So I still hope and intend to do it,” he added.

Lopez was charged with contempt of court after lawmakers found she inappropriately interfered with the commission’s hearings.

READ: The House of Representatives intends to charge Lopez, the executive director of OVP, with contempt.

In the letter, Lopez asked the Commission on Audit (COA) to refrain from providing the House of Representatives with its audit observations on OVP’s Confidential Funds (CF) expenditures.

ACT Teachers Party spokesman France Castro, who proposed citing Lopez for contempt, believes the OVP official was ordering the issuance of a certificate of authenticity that would have prevented the House from scrutinizing OVP transactions.

Even before Castro’s proposal, lawmakers were already frustrated with Lopez as she insisted there were matters within the OVP that she was not privy to, despite being the vice president’s chief of staff.

Deputy Speaker David Suarez asked Lopez how she insisted on not knowing about OVP’s financial dealings when she was the one writing the responses to letters and subpoenas on the matter, including the OVP’s response to the COA memo on audit observations.

READ: Solons questions Lopez about her claims that she doesn’t know about the OVP fund’s secret dealings