SINCE resigning from the Cabinet, Vice President Leni Robredo has sought to portray herself as a unifying factor within the opposition to keep the administration in check.
“There are so many of us against the policies of the President. I hope I will be able to portray the role of unifying all the discordant voices,” Robredo told a foreign news agency earlier this month.
Last week, she took on that role by opposing President Rodrigo Duterte’s declaration that he would seek to make the declaration of Martial Law the prerogative of the executive, without the constitutional checks and balances from Congress or the Supreme Court.
Robredo said the threat to return to one-man rule by President Duterte would be “the worst Christmas gift to the Filipino people,” and called for vigilance against attempts to amend the Constitution to let this happen.
The message should resonate with all those who suffered first hand the abuses of Martial Law, as well as those who do not wish to see their individual liberties compromised again in the name of national discipline and progress.
Robredo’s statement, however, falls short of galvanizing opposition to Martial Law simply because the vice president herself is not a credible messenger, and lacks the gravitas to unite all the political forces that might be brought to bear against any of the administration’s excesses.
Robredo, after all, belongs to the discredited Liberal Party that lost the last election. There is a reason the Liberals—under the leadership of then President Benigno Aquino III and Interior secretary Manuel Roxas II—lost so miserably to a dark horse such as Duterte, and to date, none of its remaining officials have taken responsibility for this failure.
For most of the Liberal Party politicians, it was much easier to jump ship than to take responsibility for failure, and those who remained now speak and behave as if the Aquino administration was the model of good governance during its six years in power.
Clearly, it was not. After all, if President Aquino and his Liberal Party allies did such a great job during their years in power, certainly, the people would have resoundingly voted them back into office.
To date, neither Robredo nor any of the remaining Liberal Party politicians have taken responsibility for the corruption, mismanagement and hubris that marred the Aquino administration, beginning with the disaster they brought upon the country’s agriculture and its transportation system, and the real damage they did to the country’s democratic institutions.
These failures, like the excesses of Martial Law, cannot be glossed over, and any leader like Robredo who tries will ultimately be rejected as a pretender.