Vice President Leni Robredo delivers a speech during the Defending Democracy Summit: Isang Pagtitipon at Paninindigan Para sa Demokrasya held at the UP Diliman in Quezon City last June 12, 2017. (Photo by OVP)
“Defending our democracy is our biggest fight today,” Vice President Leni Robredo said on Monday.
Hours after leading Independence Day ceremonies at Manila’s Rizal Park in lieu of President Duterte, she spoke at the Defend Democracy Summit, attended mostly by opposition politicians.
Extraordinary times
“We are already seeing our institutions being eroded. They are already weakening,” Robredo said in her keynote speech at the University of the Philippines’ School of Economics in Quezon City.
“We must move swiftly, effectively to ensure they are strong enough for our children, our children’s children. These are extraordinary times. If we’re not able to lay aside our differences and talk to one another, we will be fighting enemies within as well as without,” she said.
Disillusion
Among those who attended the event were Senators Risa Hontiveros, Kiko Pangilinan, Bam Aquino and Antonio Trillanes IV, former Commission on Human Rights Chair Etta Rosales, Representatives Gary Alejano and Kit Belmonte, former Solicitor General Florin Hilbay, and singers Agot Isidro and Leah Navarro.
Robredo acknowledged the challenge of general disillusion with democracy amid the failure to deal with the suffering of the poor and the availability of freedom only to the “ultrarich.”
“Exactly 119 years after, is it not saddening that our people are still fighting for the same things? To be included, to speak freely and be heard, to be remembered, to live without fear?” she said. “All I know is what I can see and what I hear. Our people can no longer wait to almost reach the real promises of democracy.”
She insisted that “only democracy will bring about true progress in our country.”
Roots of discontent
Robredo stressed that “the roots of discontent have been caused by weak institutions that allow an entrenched minority to monopolize economic and political power.”
“A documentation of why nations fail shows that countries that have allowed democracy to thrive and built strong, inclusive institutions are countries where people thrive better. We need that desperately now; or people deserve to thrive better,” she said.
Hope and unity
Robredo said that in these “extraordinary times,” everyone should “set aside the narrative of divisiveness, hate, anger, and attacks that we experience in our nation today… [and] change the narrative with hope, unity, and positive conversations.”
“Let us not us think of democracy as a concept, but as a means to lessen the suffering of our people. Let us not defend democracy for democracy’s sake, but for the emancipation of the last, the least, and the lost.”