The House of Representatives has found its first whistleblower against Sara Duterte, and her name is Gloria Jumamil Mercado.

She is no ordinary informant presented by the House, and the allegations made by Mercado against the Duterte-led Department of Education (DepEd) — from a deputy supposedly trying to rig bidding procedures, to the Vice President herself showering her subordinates with wads of cash — spell trouble for the country’s second highest official.

In a counter-offensive, Sara Duterte has, however, relentlessly accused her enemies in Congress of plotting her impeachment.

Duterte and her most loyal supporters have also worked double time to challenge the credibility of Mercado, but the latter’s exposé — however accurate or not — opens the floodgates to a deeper investigation into the irregularities in the agency which the Vice President no longer has control over.

Mercado the bureaucrat

Mercado, a native of Northern Samar, boasts of solid credentials in what she described to be more than four decades of service in government. If anything, this indicates she has the capability to obtain the trust of numerous presidents and survive numerous administrations.

Under former president Benigno Aquino III, she was the senior vice president and dean of the Development Academy of the Philippines, a government-owned and controlled corporation that offers human resource development and leadership programs to people in government. This was how she supposedly met VP Sara, who even had Mercado as her thesis adviser for her master’s degree.

When Rodrigo Duterte took over Malacañang, Mercado became executive director of the Office of the Cabinet Secretary under the leadership of Jun Evasco, and even served as head of the Philippine delegation to the United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP22) in 2016.

In the latter half of Duterte’s presidency, she became an undersecretary at the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process, and commissioner of the National Commission of Senior Citizens.

According to Mercado, she studied economics in college and obtained a master’s degree in national security administration. She is also a doctorate degree holder in Chinese studies, and is a faculty member of the Ateneo Chinese Studies program.

She was the inaugural commander of the Naval Forces Reserve in Eastern Visayas, helping in early relief operations after the onslaught of Super Typhoon Yolanda (Haiyan) in 2013, and was promoted to the rank of commodore in the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in 2017.

Mercado may not be a household name, but she has worked or rubbed elbows with the country’s most established politicians, such as Senator Loren Legarda, former senators Panfilo Lacson and Manny Pacquiao, and even former vice president Leni Robredo.

“As someone who sat with her for a year in class and interacted both in our professional and personal lives, I vouch for her integrity as a public servant of 39 years,” Legarda said of Mercado in 2017 when the latter was confirmed for her appointment as AFP commodore. “She climbed the bureaucracy. She earned her position.”

Mercado as among Sara’s deputies

According to the career official, when Sara Duterte became vice president, the latter asked President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to appoint Mercado as undersecretary of the education department.

She assumed office in August 2022, and half a year later, became the concurrent head of the procuring entity in DepEd. “I think it’s [because of] trust,” Mercado said of her additional assignment in February 2023 during the congressional inquiry on September 25.

Mercado would lose that post eight months later, and would be asked to resign from DepEd altogether. She pointed to one moment, which she believes was the cause of her abrupt exit.

In early October, she claimed that during lunch, in the presence of one other agency official and two consultants, Reynold Munsayac — the Vice President’s loyal ally who joined her in DepEd as assistant secretary — suggested that bidders of the DepEd Computerization Program “discuss among themselves” to make sure that continuing funds from 2022 would not be wasted.

Munsayac disputed this narration of events, saying it would be unwise for him to issue an illegal order in public, in the presence of people he did not know. But in Mercado’s recollection, she “firmly asserted that the procurement must be implemented and conducted in strict adherence with the rules.”

In the latter half of October, Mercado was supposedly summoned by the Vice President’s chief of staff Zuleika Lopez, asking her to resign on that very same day. It was an instruction that pained Mercado. Left with no choice, she opted for voluntary retirement, as she was already past 60 at the time.

“The timing of my meeting with Ms. Zuleika struck me as more than coincidental, it gave me the impression that my candid response to Attorney Munsayac’s suggestion was the real reason behind the push to relieve me of my office. It was as if l had become an unwelcome obstacle in the procurement process, despite simply doing my job as the HOPE and undersecretary,” Mercado said in her signed affidavit. “HOPE” stands for head of procuring entity.

The story of the envelopes

The other key issue raised by Mercado in her affidavit was one she struggled to label what it really was.

Mercado said that from February to September 2023, she had received nine envelopes — each one with the label “HOPE” — from then-assistant secretary Sunshine Fajarda, who supposedly told her the cash gift came straight from Duterte’s office.

The former undersecretary also supposedly learned that Fajarda’s husband Edward, a special disbursement officer, inquired about bank accounts of several individuals in DepEd field offices, supposedly upon instructions from Duterte’s office. Later, they would “receive sums on top of their regular salaries.”

Mercado expressed discomfort receiving the envelopes, and claimed she did not open them until after she had left DepEd. She said she wanted to return the envelopes, but her request for an exit call was not granted. Mercado knew it contained cash, but didn’t know how much until she decided to donate the money to a non-government organization (NGO), which gave her receipts as proof of the donation.

Each envelope contained P50,000. In total, Duterte’s office gifted her P450,000 over a nine-month period.

She declined to call it bribe money, saying it’s not part of her vocabulary. But she acknowledged the allowance “could be” meant to influence her decision as procurement head.

After Mercado testified before the House, and while the hearing — which Duterte refused to attend — was ongoing, the Vice President called for a surprise press conference, and gamely responded to the allegations raised by Mercado.

“I think she should have been accused of that. She should have a paper. Like me, when I’m accused, when I’m answering, I give the paper. Gloria Mercado is a disgruntled former employee of the Department of Education,” Duterte dared her former undersecretary.

The House hearing was still ongoing after Duterte concluded her media briefing. Mercado was asked by Deputy Majority Leader Jude Acidre to respond to the Vice President’s remarks.

Her response? Show, not tell. She reached for her bag, brought out a pouch, and released the envelopes.

This could have earned her a contempt citation for lying, as she initially said she did not have the envelopes with her, but it didn’t matter, because lawmakers were evidently on her side, and she knew how to seize the moment. A congressional inquiry is a form of political theater, and the most riveting roles are those of personalities who understand what to say and when.

“[Each envelope] says ‘HOPE’ and the amount is there. That’s painful, you’re just an ordinary worker and yet the Vice President is attacking you,” Mercado lamented, as she turned over the envelopes to the committee. She also committed to submit the receipts from the NGO of her donation.

Challenges to Mercado’s credibility

The attacks against Mercado, as expected, have intensified online in the wake of her House appearance, with Duterte-linked personalities and pages leading the charge.

They amplify the Vice President’s rebuttal that Mercado was let go, not because of her unwillingness to take part in the alleged bid rigging, but because she solicited P16 million from the private sector, delayed the appointment of the executive director in the Teacher Education Council, and favored an individual to get an executive assistant post at DeEd’s central office.

“Mercado is also known for her habit of defaming colleagues at work, including fellow high-ranking officials of the DepEd. Mercado even personally tried to discredit three DepEd officials to me,” Duterte said in a statement on September 26.

Mercado asserted that the hiring of the teacher from Central Visayas in her staff was aboveboard, with approval of the regional director.

She also denied soliciting millions of pesos from private companies that are supposedly willing to issue affidavits to support her. Duterte had released the purported solicitation letters, but Mercado said no cash was involved there, only equipment that would be turned over to DepEd.

During that September 25 hearing, it would appear though that Mercado left out in her affidavit a crucial detail that she revealed only after Duterte responded to her allegations in a press briefing: that the Vice President’s chief of staff explained to her why she was being asked to tender her resignation.

Duterte’s supporters have also unearthed a 2017 graft complaint filed against Mercado for her alleged excessive expenditures that stemmed from numerous unauthorized trips during her time in DAP. The status of this complaint is not publicly available, and not all complaints progress into a court case. During the hearing, Mercado claimed she faced only one case at the Ombudsman, when she refused to sign a rice importation order when she was deputy Cabinet secretary under the Duterte administration.

Veteran lawyer and academician Tony La Viña, who worked closely with Mercado in the past, has vouched for her integrity.

“Gloria is brilliant, committed, and completely trustworthy. I believe in her testimony. In fact, without violating confidentiality, I was aware of this particular issue and why she resigned from DepEd,” he said in a Facebook post.

Only the start

The good government committee, the House panel in charge of investigating Duterte’s budget utilization, believes it is just scratching the surface of the Vice President’s alleged misuse of public funds.

Committee chairman Joel Chua even had the confidence to say that the funds Duterte potentially misused — P73 million in disallowed confidential expenses and another P164 million flagged by state auditors — “easily surpass the threshold for the crime of plunder,” a word that lawmakers don’t easily throw into the air.

Mercado is expected to figure in future hearings. After all, she claimed that she signed at least two checks worth P37.5 million each, related to DepEd’s confidential funds. The agency under Duterte’s leadership had P150 million in secret funds in 2023.

Chua wouldn’t confirm if Mercado reached out to the House first, or if the committee made the first move, but disclosed that another lawmaker served as broker so the former undersecretary could testify.

Mercado said she did not like how DepEd officials were floating the idea that her departure from DepEd was punishment for favoring procurement suppliers.

“I just want to say that this is a very difficult thing to do and I apologize to my children who didn’t like me to join this session,” Mercado — who wants to protect her name at the homestretch of her career — said at the start of her opening statement during the September 27 proceedings.

She may or may not like it, but from this point forward, her career will be defined not by her decades of service to the government, but by her life-changing decision to speak up on the alleged improprieties of the Vice President. – Rappler.com