Robredo eyes local post in 2025 midterm elections

Vice President Leni Robredo gives a post-election statement from her home in Magarao, Camarines Norte in the early hours of Tuesday, May 10, 2022. (File photo from VP Leni Media Bureau)

Former Vice President Leni Robredo may run for mayor of Naga City in Camarines Sur province in next year’s midterm elections, Liberal Party (LP) president and Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman said on Thursday.

In an ambush interview, Lagman said that Robredo had told him she would run for the local post to continue the programs of her late husband, former Naga Mayor and Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo, who was killed in a plane crash in 2012.

He added, however, that it was up to the former vice president to decide what to do should President Marcos offer her the post of education secretary, which was vacated on Wednesday by Vice President Sara Duterte. “That’s her call, we do not have control over it,” Lagman told reporters. “We do not expect that it would be offered to her, but if it is offered, we will study that intently as it is an opportunity for [her] to continue serving the country.”

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Robredo, who is part of the opposition LP, ran for the presidency in 2022 but came in second to Mr. Marcos. After stepping down from office, she formed the Angat Buhay Foundation, a nongovernmental organization that works with partners, volunteers, and supporters to empower Filipino communities, especially the marginalized.

Education crisis

Since Duterte stepped down, Robredo’s supporters have lobbied the President to appoint her to the Department of Education (DepEd).

During her vice presidency and while campaigning for the presidency, Robredo had pushed for the declaration of an “education crisis” in the country following the Philippines’ dismal showing in global tests.

In fact, on the day Duterte resigned from DepEd, a new report by the Programme for International Student Assessment (Pisa) said that Filipino students lagged behind in terms of creative thinking compared to their counterparts in other countries.

With a Pisa score of 14, the Philippines ranked 60th out of 62 countries and economies that participated in the assessment.

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In its 2022 cycle, the Pisa study measured 15-year-old students’ creative thinking, or the “ability to generate, evaluate and improve ideas to produce original and effective solutions, advance knowledge and create impactful expressions of imagination.”

The Philippines received a mean score of 14, well below the average of 33 points set by wealthy nations belonging to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. The top performers were Singapore, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Estonia and Finland.