Vice President Leni Robredo oversaw the preparations last March for the formal launch of the Swab Cab, the Office of the Vice President’s latest initiative to help local governments in Metro Manila conduct efficient community-based testing for COVID-19 (Photo by CHARLIE VILLEGAS / OVP)
MANILA, Philippines — Vice President Leni Robredo hinted in a speech on Wednesday at missed opportunities five years into her term, saying the Office of the Vice President (OVP) could have pushed her own programs if she had a good working relationship with the administration.
Robredo pointed this out during her speech at the 5th Asian Philanthropic Development Conference.
She eventually realized, however, that her lack of a Cabinet post, due to strained relations with President Rodrigo Duterte, might have been a blessing in disguise, as it allowed the OVP to be creative in its programs.
“If you look at the Constitution, my only mandate is succession. And our office, the Office of the Vice President, has one of the smallest budget[s] in the entire bureaucracy. That would not have been a problem if I had good working relations with the president. Because if I had good working relations with the president, then perhaps I would be given a Cabinet portfolio,” Robredo said, answering questions from panel members.
“Other difficulties faced by my office pushed us to be creative. It pushed us to be innovative,” she said.
She cited a Filipino saying: “Mamaluktot kapag maikisi ang kumot.” That is, you curl up when the blanket is short.
“That was exactly what we did. Looking back in the five years, I felt like it was actually a blessing,” she said.
What was once a ceremonial position that was dependent on whether a sitting president would hand over jobs, Robredo said she believed she had turned the vice presidency into something more productive.
“It was actually a blessing that we were faced with those difficulties because it allowed us to explore other areas where we can still — we can expand our mandate, convert our office into a more advocacy-heavy one because it was purely ceremonial before, and it allowed us to collaborate with many different sectors,” Robredo said.
“I think the most meaningful part in all that we’ve done in the past five years — I’ve said it in my speech — was, in essence, our office became the center of gravity of many different moving parts,” she added. “We gave spaces for people to help and we felt like the ordinary Filipino really wants to take care of his fellow Filipinos. They just don’t know how. So our office provided for that space.”
Robredo was assigned by Duterte to the Cabinet twice — first as head of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) in 2016 and then as co-chairperson of the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs (ICAD) late 2019.
However, she had to let go of those posts quickly — the HUDCC just after almost five months and the ICAD after a mere 18 days.
READ: LOOK: Robredo formally resigns as HUDCC chair
READ: From drug czar to drug ‘char’: Robredo contemplates on brief ICAD stint
But even then, the OVP started to become known for its resourcefulness in providing assistance: While most of its small funding goes to medical aid for impoverished citizens, it forged partnerships with the private sector in several initiatives — including anti-poverty and livelihood programs.
The partnerships created by OVP proved really valuable during calamities — like the Taal Volcano eruption, the successive storms that hit the country in 2020, and of course, the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to its 2020 report, the OVP had allocated P505.3 million for its COVID-19 response — which included buying personal protective equipment; providing dormitories, shuttle services, hygiene kits, and cooked food for frontliners; and distributing testing kits.
Of the total allocation, P306.3 million came from the OVP budget and P199 million came from donations by private individuals and companies.
For its disaster response, the OVP allocated P35.06 million, of which P23.86 came from its own budget and P11.2 million from donations.
READ: 2020: A year OVP kept itself busy despite lack of funds, brickbats from Malacañang
By 2020, Robredo and her team were able to reinvent their projects, attuning them to more recent needs — like providing telemedicine services during the recent COVID-19 surge, setting up mobile COVID-19 testing facilities, and partnering with Manila to set up drive-through vaccination sites.