VP unfazed by Speaker’s impeachment threat

Vice President Leonor “Leni” Robredo. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO / NINO JESUS ORBETA

NAGA CITY — There was no visible sign that Vice President Leni Robredo was bothered by news about an impeachment case to be filed against her when she distributed cash donated by a private company to some of Bicol region’s poorest villages.

If the threat made by Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez to file an impeachment case against Robredo did bother her, the vice president did not show it.

“I have not heard what Speaker Alvarez said but I read [about it] on social media,” Robredo said.

“It is hard to comment since I do not know his basis. But several times our President repeated that he is sure I am not part of the destabilization plot,” she added.

Robredo said she could only speculate about the basis of Alvarez’s threat to file an impeachment case against her.

She said that if it were her supposed involvement in the impeachment case filed by Magdalo Rep. Gary Alejano against President Duterte, then Alvarez would be mistaken.

“They (Magdalo) themselves have said I was not part in the filing of the impeachment complaint (against Mr. Duterte),”  the vice president said.

She said if Alvarez’s basis to file an impeachment case against her would be her video message to the United Nations criticizing Mr. Duterte’s drug war, the Speaker would again be mistaken.

She said the video had been prepared in February.

“It was done a long time ago,” Robredo said. She said it had been shown only now in preparation for a human rights conference this month.

Robredo said the statement she gave to the United Nations was “very factual” based on stories related to her office.

She said she had written the Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) and the Philippine National Police to refer to them the stories of abuses that she narrated in her video statement “but our letter was not answered.”

Without a reply from either the DILG or PNP, Robredo said she did not know where to refer the cases of abuses that were brought to her office. “We had to do something,” she said. —JUAN ESCANDOR JR.