Duterte: No plot to unseat VP

“I would like to see it as a reassurance,” Vice President Leni Robredo said after President Duterte on Thursday said in Albay province that she would keep the vice presidency until the end of her six-year term.

Asked at the Meet Inquirer Multimedia forum about the President’s statement, Robredo, her face lightening up, said:  “Maraming salamat (Thank you very much).”

Robredo then said in jest: “I hope he says it not only in  Bicol but also also all over the country.”

After the groundbreaking for the construction of the long-delayed Bicol International Airport in Daraga, Albay, near Legazpi City, the President said Robredo would serve her full six-year term, playing down speculations that his administration was part of a supposed plot to unseat her.

“There is no such thing as removing of a Vice President,” Mr. Duterte told reporters. “I will assure Leni and the rest of the Bicol region that you will have her until the very end of her term,” he said.

The President offered Robredo, a Bicolana who ran under the Liberal Party and was not his running mate, the housing portfolio as part of a so-called rainbow coalition in his Cabinet, which included leftist leaders and retired police and military officials.

But the relationship between the two leaders started to turn sour after the Vice President spoke openly against his merciless drug war, which has claimed the lives of almost 6,000 drug suspects since he came to power five months ago.

Robredo, widow of the former Naga City Mayor and Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo, also voiced out her opposition to the President’s order allowing the burial of Ferdinand Marcos at the heroes’ cemetery in Taguig City.

On Dec. 4, Robredo announced her decision to quit as chair of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council after Mr. Duterte barred her from Cabinet meetings.

She has warned of a plot taking shape to remove her from the No. 2 post.

Robredo won by a narrow margin over former Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr., whose father was overthrown in a 1986 revolt. He has filed an election protest.

She did not give details of the alleged plot to “steal” the vice presidency, but said it was telling that Marcos accompanied Mr. Duterte on an official visit to China in October.

At the Inquirer forum, Robredo noted that she “would like to think” that she and the President, despite their opposing views on some issues, “had a very good working relationship.”

Back when she was still attending Cabinet meetings, she said the President would respond whenever she shared with him the lessons she learned  from her field visits as housing chair.

The Vice President said Mr. Duterte would often assure her that he would not personally take their differing opinions against her.

That was why, Robredo said, her being forced out of the Cabinet came as a surprise to her.

“I didn’t see it coming. I thought despite our political differences, we would be able to transcend them,” she said.

Mr. Duterte led the rites to mark the start of the P708-million construction of the Bicol International Airport (BIA) project in Barangay Alobo, in Daraga town.

Elizaldy Co of Sunwest Construction and Development Corp., contractor of the BIA Package 2A, said “the project would be completed by 2019.”

He said the airport consisted of 17 buildings, including those for administration, cargo terminal, air traffic control, crash fire rescue and air traffic control. The BIA will be equipped with night-landing and take-off facilities.

The government has already spent P1.6 billion for the acquisition of lands and the construction of a 2.1-kilometer runway. —WITH REPORTS  FROM MARLON RAMOS AND REUTERS