There was neither tension nor animosity in her first meeting with President Rodrigo Duterte since quitting his Cabinet, according to Vice President Ma. Leonor “Leni” Robredo, though she admitted they “disagreed on many things.”
“I am all with the President in his war against drugs, but I’m not okay with ‘Tokhang,’ and extrajudicial killings. I think there has to be some other way of doing this,” she said, referring to the government’s bloody war on drugs.
In a television interview aired on Thursday morning, Robredo spoke for the first time about her attendance in the first Legislative-Executive Development Advisory Council meeting in Malacañang on Monday.
READ: Duterte, Robredo ‘civil’ in Ledac meeting, says Abella
“It was very cordial, no tension. [It was] just work. The good thing is there was nothing personal in it, no personal animosity. The President was very respectful and cordial. We discussed nothing personal,” she said in the GMA News TV interview.
“If at all, we disagreed on many things, but this does not mean we can’t work together,” the former Camarines Sur congresswoman said in Filipino.
Robredo said she had always been vocal on the things she felt strongly about, including her opposition to the hero’s burial for the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos and the administration’s push for the death penalty and the lowering of the minimum age of criminal liability
Partly as a result of these differences, she resigned from her post as housing czar in December after she was asked via text message to stop from attending Cabinet meetings.
READ: Robredo returns to Malacañang
Robredo noted that she had long spoken out against the “blanket authority” apparently given by the administration to the police, leading to some rogue cops staging “tokhang for ransom” operations, in which they would extort from and kill innocent civilians.
One case involving the killing of a South Korean businessman in the premises of the police headquarters at Camp Crame has made headlines.
“This is the danger [if we] give blanket authority to an organization like the PNP (Philippine National Police), which I know has plenty of room to improve. If we give them blanket authority and you tell them you can do what you want, that opens up a lot of problems,” Robredo said.
She suggested that the government look into successful drug campaigns in other countries.
“It has been six months, but still there are many big drug laboratories being discovered. What I want to say is in the past six months, even with all the killings, it has not been a deterrent,” Robredo said.
Before winning the presidential elections, Duterte promised to eradicate crime and the drug menace in six months. He recently extended his self-imposed deadline until the end of his six-year term.
“Since it’s been six months and nothing is happening, maybe it’s better to rethink this and consider that we may be doing something wrong,” Robredo said.
But she said she supported a number of Duterte’s policies.
“I think the peace process is on the right track. We are opening doors to listen to divergent views, not only of Muslim Mindanao but others. We have good macroeconomic policies and social protections. We are also open to proposals, like the tax reform packages,” she said. RAM/rga