Robredo to millennials: Fight for country without using violence

Vice President Leni Robredo on Friday exhorted the “millennial” generation to fight for the interests of the nation without resorting to violence, saying brutality and bloodshed had no place in a democracy.

In a speech at the Peace Congress of the EDSA Ortigas Consortium of Schools, Robredo said millennials — a term used to refer to people born between the early 1980s and 2000s — were in the best position to fight for the greater good, in spite of accusations they were self-absorbed and enslaved by technology.

“I believe that millennials like you care. I believe that modern technology puts you in the perfect position to protect the greater good,” she told her audience of students at the La Salle Greenhills in Mandaluyong City.

“Most importantly, I believe that you are ready to fight this fight, to answer the urgent call for nation-building, no matter how young you are,” Robredo said.

But the Vice President, now a leading opposition figure after quitting President Rodrigo Duterte’s Cabinet in December, said she did not mean literal fighting.

“In protecting the Filipino people and the interests of our nation, we must not resort to the brutality of warfare,” she said.

“Our democracy has no room for political intimidation or violence. Progress can always be achieved peacefully,” said Robredo, who has often spoken out against the government’s bloody war on drugs, which has claimed thousands of lives.

She said the right response was still peace.

“Peace may not give us quick answers, but it requires us to think carefully before we act. Peace urges us to consider the welfare of our world, to respect the fundamental rights of every human being, and to find solutions that will work in the long term,” she said.

Robredo, an interim chair of the Liberal Party, asked the millennials to shun violence.

“Violence is the quick fix that we must prevent and condemn. Violence is a way of cutting corners, where complex problems are met with simplistic but ineffective solutions,” she said. CDG/rga

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