Vice President Leni Robredo joined “Panata sa Bayan: The KBP Presidential Forum” via telephone on Feb. 4, 2022. ( Photos by JAY GANZON / Office of the Vice President)
MANILA, Philippines — “So many things” made Vice President Leni Robredo break her promise to her daughters that she would retire from politics after her term.
She explained her reasons on Sunday during the “Presidential Debate” hosted by CNN Philippines, the same network that hosted the “Vice Presidential Debate” back in 2016, where she said she had no intention of joining another election.
In Sunday’s debate, she was shown an old video clip of that appearance, along with Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, and both of them said they would no longer pursue higher office should they get elected as vice president.
According to Pia Hontiveros, CNN Philippines news anchor and debate moderator, they would have asked Bongbong Marcos the same question, he skipped the debate.
So it was only Robredo who had the opportunity to explain what made her change her mind.
“When I was here in 2016, I really had no intention of running. In fact, that was my promise to my kids — that 2016 would be the last elections for our family,” she said in Filipino.
“But from 2016 until 2021, we saw how the beliefs, the mindsets of so many Filipinos were hit by fake news, by disinformation,” she added.
Robredo did not mention any particular misleading information, but last year, she said that the reason for her candidacy was to prevent the return of the Marcoses to Malacañang.
She also spoke before about the historical revisionism that depicted the martial law years of then-President Ferdinand Marcos as the golden years of the country.
“And because disinformation-propaganda became dominant, there was the threat of a return to the kind of politics that was full of corruption — the kind of politics that led to plunder in the past, the kind of politics that was really dirty. This was the kind of politics that really brought all of us a lot of suffering,” Robredo said.
But even before the filing of certificates of candidacy last year, she stressed that she still really had no intention of running for president. She was then trying to get frontrunners to talk and team up in the so-called Unity Talks she initiated.
When the talks failed, Robredo said she had to place her own candidacy.
“What I tried to do, because of threat that this kind of politics. might return, was to get the contenders to unite so that I would not have to run,” she said.
“I tried to talk with almost everyone. I tried to convince everyone to set aside our misunderstandings or differences in plans so we could talk. But I was not successful. So I ran,” she added.
Three of the politicans whom Robredo talked to — Sen. Manny Pacquiao, Sen. Panfilo Lacson, and Manila Mayor Isko Moreno — were all present during the debates. All three also decided to run for president.
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