Robredo eased out ‘to keep LP in the dark of secret plans’

Vice President Leni Robredo. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/ MARIANNE BERMUDEZ

Vice President Leni Robredo vowed on Tuesday to pursue her antipoverty programs despite monetary constraints, a day after being forced to quit from her Cabinet post in what opposition colleagues charged was part of a plan to keep her in the dark about the administration’s “secret plans.”

Traveling to southern Compostela Valley in Mindanao, Robredo spoke to teachers, farmers and women and checked on a housing project for survivors of Typhoon “Pablo.” She sought to assure them she would continue her work by linking up with the private sector that shared her advocacy.

“I was looking at our budget when I came in. I said, why does it appear like it’s just ceremonial. I told myself I can’t work for six years without completing a project,” Robredo, 52, said.

“Even if we have no budget, our office would find a way to address your needs by asking for help not only from the government, national government agencies, but also private partners,” she stressed.

Robredo said her office launched in October a flagship program aimed at fighting poverty, adopting over 50 municipalities, mostly poor ones, throughout the country. The towns she visited received help under the program.

The Vice President was also scheduled to travel farther north to Caraga Region, a busy day for the second highest official of the land who had been unceremoniously eased out as head of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council.

Presidential spokesperson Ernesto Abella insisted that while Mr. Duterte allowed quiet dissent in his Cabinet, he preferred that they spoke in one voice publicly.

Congruent

Mr. Duterte “felt uncomfortable with her engagement with certain political actions,” Abella said, without elaborating. He said that if the vice president was the alter ego of the president “then their messaging should be congruent.”

When Cabinet members come to a consensus, “our position should be clear that we also make the same statements outside.”

However, Abella did not explain why Robredo was singled out, when other Left-oriented Cabinet secretaries also questioned the president’s alliance with the Marcos family that led to the hero’s burial for the dictator Ferdinand Marcos last month. The vice president had likewise hit out at Mr. Duterte’s anticrime war, which has left thousands dead since July.

Robredo is the interim chair of the Liberal Party (LP), the ruling party during the previous administration, at least until it elects new officers next year. She has been pressed to lead the opposition now that she is out of the President’s Cabinet.

Robredo’s allies in Congress charged on Tuesday that President Duterte eased her out to limit her access to issues of national security importance, including an alleged plan to declare Martial Law.

“I think the Vice President was eased out from Cabinet to bar her from access to plans in the Cabinet and national security meetings,” said Rep. Edcel Lagman, an opposition leader at the House of Representatives.—WITH A REPORT FROM DJ YAP