AT the Senate impeachment trial, private prosecutor Benjamin Tolosa Jr. described Michael Poa as “ang abogadong walang alam,” referring to his repeated claim that he knew nothing about the confidential funds of the Department of Education (DepEd). Lead defense counsel Sheila Sison protested and demanded that the phrase be struck from the record. Presiding senator-judge Francis Escudero granted the request, ruling it discourteous. The label may have sounded harsh. But it may now be revealing.
Poa has presented himself as someone who was close enough to Vice President Sara Duterte to receive her instructions, report directly to her, and speak for her office, yet distant enough from the department’s confidential funds to know virtually nothing about their actual use.
There is a legitimate meaning to personal knowledge itself. A chief of staff need not know the identities of informants or the operational details of confidential activities. Some information may properly be restricted to officials with a need to know. Confidentiality, however, does not mean that everyone in the chain of authority is entitled to know nothing.
Poa’s claim appears to be broader. He was not merely a junior staff member passing messages between offices. He served as Duterte’s chief of staff and spokesman at the DepEd. He reported directly to her, regularly received her instructions, and was identified during the proceedings as having served as officer-in-charge of the finance office and head of the procuring entity.
What does a chief of staff do?
The position is not ornamental. A chief of staff translates the leader’s priorities into concrete plans. He coordinates offices and personnel, monitors deadlines and implementation, manages information flowing to and from the leader, prepares briefings and meetings, screens issues requiring the leader’s attention, resolves conflicts, anticipates administrative and political risks, and follows through to ensure that decisions are properly implemented. When authorized, he represents the leader in dealings with other officials and institutions.
In short, the chief of staff is the hub of the executive office. He is the person expected to know how the office works, who is responsible for what, where decisions are lodged, what risks are developing, and whether the organization is operating within the law. He does not need to know every operational detail. But he must know enough to perform the function for which the position exists: coordination, oversight and accountability.
This is why Poa’s professed ignorance is so difficult to reconcile with his position. He was tasked by Duterte to prepare the DepEd’s response to the Commission on Audit’s (COA) findings concerning the confidential funds. He sought documents from the special disbursing officer, Edward Fajarda, and was shown at least one acknowledgment receipt. Yet he maintained that he had no personal knowledge of how the money was actually used.
That answer may be defensible if it means he did not personally witness every payment or know every supposed informant. It becomes indefensible, however, if it means he did not know the basic accountability structure: how much money was involved, who had custody of it, who disbursed it, what the general purpose was, what safeguards existed, and whether the documents supporting the explanation were credible and sufficient.
A chief of staff should not be reduced to a person who receives a questionable package after an audit has already exposed a problem, looks at one sample receipt, and then helps construct an explanation for the auditor. That is not institutional oversight. That is administrative improvisation after the fact.
The problem becomes more serious because the explanation submitted to COA reportedly relied on certifications from military officers concerning activities that those officers later said were not funded by DepEd and were not intended to justify confidential-fund payments. Poa subsequently described portions of his own explanation as an “interpretation,” “impression” or “theory.”
This is not a minor semantic problem. An official response to COA is not an exercise in creative writing. It is supposed to rest on records, responsible certifications and verifiable facts. If the person preparing the response did not know how the funds were spent, and the documents he attached did not establish the alleged connection between informants, information, rewards, and successful operations, then the response was not an accountability document. It was an attempt to make the paperwork say more than the evidence could support.
There are only a few ways to understand Poa’s position.
Perhaps Duterte’s office was so compartmentalized that her chief of staff was deliberately excluded from an operation. If so, Poa was a chief of staff in name but not in substance. He occupied a position close to the secretary but was denied the information necessary to coordinate and supervise the department.
Perhaps he was not excluded, but simply failed to ask the questions that his position required him to ask. If so, his ignorance is not an achievement. It is evidence of deficient diligence. A public official cannot convert a failure to inquire into a defense against accountability.
Or perhaps he knew more than he now wishes to acknowledge. That is ultimately a question of credibility, and credibility is tested not by titles but by consistency, documents, and the logic of one’s conduct.
This does not automatically establish criminal liability. But it does expose an institutional failure.
If the chief of staff genuinely knew nothing, then the DepEd was structurally hollow. If he should have known but did not bother, then he failed in his duty. If he knew and now claims ignorance, then he is lying to the court and to the public.
None of these possibilities reflects well on the position of chief of staff. The public does not need chiefs of staff who are visible when credit is available, useful when a message must be delivered, and suddenly invisible when money must be explained. It needs officials who understand that proximity to power carries a corresponding duty to ask questions, preserve records, and prevent the misuse of public resources.
A chief of staff is supposed to make government work. In this case, Poa’s account suggests that we believe an extraordinary claim by a chief of staff who knew nothing.
The author is a professor at UPLB-Sesam and vice chairman of the board of PTVNI.
