Robredo’s new task: Unify opposition

Vice President Leni Robredo at the Meet Inquirer Multimedia forum. ARNOLD ALMACENN/PHILIPPINE DAILY INQUIRER

The unifying force, the unifying voice.

This is how Vice President Leni Robredo described herself as the leader of the opposition to President Duterte.

Her job: bringing together the voices of dissent to compel Mr. Duterte to listen to what people are saying about his controversial policies.

“I think there’s not one person bringing all of us together and so I think that would be who I want to be in the next few days: to be the unifying voice of all those who have expressed either disgust or opposition to the policies of this administration,” Robredo said at the Meet the Inquirer Multimedia forum on Thursday.

After Robredo resigned as housing secretary on Monday, her supporters and analysts said her inevitable next role was that of opposition leader.

But they also wondered whether she would embrace that role, as she had always been reluctant to go into politics until the pressure had become too heavy to ignore.

Cases in point: her last-minute decision to run for the House of Representatives from  Naga  in 2013 and her torturous acquiescence to run as the Liberal Party’s vice presidential standard-bearer in this year’s national election.

Confident but humble

But at the Inquirer forum on Thursday, Robredo showed confidence, though with humility, in announcing that she was taking on the role of opposition leader.

“I think it is very important that I will be very vocal in the issues that I feel so passionate about and talk to more people who feel the same,” she said.

The Vice President observed that people have been expressing anger, but have been helpless because of the absence of a leader.

“I think the challenge now is how do we encourage people to come out and not to be afraid to voice their opposition. To me, it is important that I show that I’m not afraid. It is important to me that for the things I truly believe in, it is worth all the risk. It is worth the sacrifice that we are taking,” she said.

Robredo is not discounting the possibility that she might join the people on the streets to voice their anger.

Unacceptable policies

But she said what was more important to her was making  Mr. Duterte understand why she and the people were opposing his unacceptable policies.

Among those policies are the burial of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos at Libingan ng mga Bayani, reimposition of capital punishment, lowering of the age of criminal liability, and the bloody war on illegal drugs that has cost the lives of nearly 6,000 people in just five months.

Robredo said resigning from the Cabinet, difficult as it was for her, had given her “more elbow room” to be the unifying force in the opposition to Mr. Duterte’s controversial policies.

“I really want to pursue [being a unifying force] because now there are many opposing, but it seems all the voices opposing [certain policies] are discordant. It really needs a unified stand for the President to listen to us,” Robredo said.

She said she believed Mr. Duterte had the capacity to listen to and consider dissent.

“Yes, the President listens. We have seen the President change his mind so many times already and that is both a good and a bad thing in the sense, I think, that when he realizes how important some things are to us, he can change his mind. And I think we should capitalize on that. Let us make him hear, let us show him how much we feel about a particular subject so that he will listen to us,” she said.

No noisy opposition

Robredo said the quick approval of the bill that would bring back the death penalty on the House committee on justice happened “because there was no noisy opposition [to the measure].”

“I recognize the fact that we need to change that now,” she said.

Robredo stressed the need for vigilance, given the swift pace of events in the country these days.

“Every day, something is happening,” she said.

The Vice President cited Mr. Duterte’s dismissal of the National Bureau of Investigation’s finding that Albuera, Leyte,  Mayor Rolando Espinosa Sr. was murdered by policemen.

“The day the investigation report came out, the President gave a statement that seemed to be relegating the report to the background and assuring those cops that they would be beyond the reach of the law,” Robredo said.

“It is scary because what does that imply? We don’t have rule of law?” she said.

Constructive opposition

The Vice President said she  wanted to be a constructive oppositionist, stressing that she would remain supportive of administration policies that she felt were for the benefit and interest of the people, despite having drawn the line on a number of issues.

She said she remained supportive of the passage of a freedom of information law and ending contractualization.

Robredo emphasized that being in the opposition “is not equivalent to ousting the President” because taking Mr. Duterte out of office “is not the answer” to the country’s problems.

“If you ask me, I have no dreams of becoming President. I think if we would have another upheaval, our situation would only become worse. What we only want is [for the President] to listen to us. What we want is for him to recognize why we don’t like certain [policies]. Dissent should not be equated to ouster,” Robredo said.