Vice President Leni Robredo and former Senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. (Photos from PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER)
The camp of former Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos took “strong exception” to the statement of Vice President Leni Robredo that she would not let the vice presidency be “stolen” from her.
“Such pronouncement is the height of hypocrisy,” Vic Rodriguez, legal spokesman of Marcos, said in a statement issued on Monday.
Rodriguez was referring to a statement Robredo read at a news conference earlier explaining her reason for quitting her post as chief of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC).
“The vice presidency has indeed been stolen and it was stolen by no less than Mrs. Robredo herself and the political party she continuously supports,” Rodriguez added, referring to the Liberal Party under which Robredo ran in the May 9 elections, along with presidential bet Manuel “Mar” Roxas II. “It was they who thwarted the will of the Filipino people by depriving them of their real choice for the vice presidency.”
Marcos lost the vice presidential race to Robredo but has filed a protest with the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET).
Robredo resigned from the Cabinet of President Rodrigo Duterte after he asked her, through a text message sent by Cabinet Secretary Leoncio “Jun” Evasco, to “desist” from attending Cabinet meetings starting Monday, “until further notice.”
At her news conference, Robredo explained that, much as she would have wanted to stay in the Cabinet, she found her position “untenable.”
“How will I be able to function kung hindi na ako makaka-attend ng meeting?” she said.
(“How will I be able to function if I would no longer be able to attend meetings.”)
She also said that she had received word that there was a plot to get her out of the vice presidency and that it had already started rolling. But she vowed to the public, particularly her supporters, that she would not let that happen.
“Ako po’y naririto para sa inyo,” she said. “Ako’y mananatili para sa inyo.”
(“I’m here for you. I’ll always be here for your.”)
In reaction, Rodriguez said: “Leni Robredo has just shown her true colors. Her departure from President Duterte’s Cabinet is long overdue given her very obvious adversarial attitude and opposite stance from his policies.”
“Whether she was fired or she resigned from her post is definitely not the business of former Senator Bongbong Marcos,” he added. “However we take strong exception to her statement on not letting the vice presidency to be ‘stolen’ from her and the will of the people to be ‘thwarted’.”
The rest of Rodriguez’s statement follows:
“Her statement on the vice presidency is yet another affront to the Supreme Court as she is undermining the integrity and independence of Presidential Electoral Tribunal by casting doubt this early on, on all its future actions and processes.
“Her departure from the Cabinet has nothing to do with the election protest but has everything to do with her political ambition and that of her party’s desperate and despicable act of getting back into power.
“Long before the May 2016 elections, we were the first ones to reveal the Liberal Party’s ‘Plan B’ which was to rob Senator Marcos of the Vice-Presidency, install Mrs. Robredo in his stead and eventually work for the ouster of President Duterte. It is obvious that ‘Plan B’ is now in full swing.
“She has shown her true colors indeed.”
During the campaign period, Robredo and Roxas had denied several times that the LP had a ‘Plan B.’
At her news conference, Robredo also mentioned the Marcos protest at the PET but declined to comment on it, saying was it was forbidden.
She said, however, that she was confident that, for as long as the PET procedures were in order, she would still come out the winner. –ATM
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