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Friday, March 29, 2024

One-way relationship

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It’s like “Fatal Attraction,” I think. One party claims there is a thriving relationship, even if everyone else—especially the other person supposedly involved—seems to believe it was just a one-night stand.

Vice President Leni Robredo, who admits that she has not seen or heard from President Rodrigo Duterte in the last three months, said she enjoys a “good working relationship” with him. I don’t know about you, but this claim sounds a lot like fake news (or at least a fake relationship) to me.

The last time that Duterte and Robredo actually worked together was in December last year, the same month that the President relayed to Robredo his desire that she should no longer attend Cabinet meetings as chairman of the Housing and Urban Development and Coordinating Council. Robredo resigned because she had no other choice and that was the end of the official working relationship, as far as anyone can tell.

According to Robredo’s own reckoning, the last time she and Duterte met and talked was during the graduation ceremonies of the Philippine National Police Academy last March. That was also the time when Duterte was supposed to have offered to host a private dinner with the vice president in Malacanan Palace —a dinner that has not yet happened three months later.

Asked if she had received any calls or exchanged any text messages with the President, Robredo said no. The President, she said, doesn’t seem to carry a cellular phone that he answers himself.

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Seriously, is this any kind of relationship, working or otherwise? Or has Robredo merely deluded herself into believing that she is still working in Duterte’s administration, even if she has not once been appointed caretaker of the government while Duterte is away on some foreign trip?

I don’t think Robredo has lost her marbles like Senator Antonio Trillanes, who considers his meltdown during a recent BBC interview as one of the greatest moments of his public life. But I believe the Vice President is trying to pull a fast one on the rest of us by saying that she is actually working—and working with Duterte.

It’s just like when she wanted us to believe recently that she went rummaging through other people’s garbage in Boston in order to furnish the apartment of her daughter Aika, who has been enrolled in the uber-expensive Harvard University. I honestly don’t know if Robredo was trying to convince us that she had no money because she had to pay millions of pesos to send her daughter to one of the priciest of Ivy League schools; I figure that if she can send her daughter there, she must have enough to buy her some cheap new furniture.

Or that time when Robredo announced that the millions being demanded from her by the Commission on Elections in order to pay for her counter-protest against former Senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. Robredo claimed that she had to borrow money from her relatives—apparently so she could continue with the pretense that she was poor.

But if Robredo is trying to convince us that she is still working, even if she is merely waiting to replace Duterte if something happens to him, then she should not say that it is with the administration. In the language of theater, she is Duterte’s understudy and can only hope that the regular actor somehow fails to perform his role in the play; until that time comes, she will only be waiting in the wings, preparing for an opportunity that may actually never come.

I’m convinced that Robredo was virtually fired from Duterte’s Cabinet last year because the president found out that she was working at cross-purposes with him. Robredo cannot now claim that she is working for the president, when he has already made it perfectly clear that he will not have anything to do with her whatsoever.

The working relationship that Leni claims with Duterte is only in her mind. That’s where, in all likelihood, it will remain.

* * *

Speaking of Duterte’s relationship with Robredo, the President once again made mention of it yesterday, during the anniversary of the Presidential Security Group. Duterte pointed to Robredo as his only constitutional successor, should anything happen to him and he is prevented from performing his official functions.

That’s what Duterte said. But I think the President was once again playing the mind games he has already become famous for.

Duterte took the opportunity to make light of reports that have resurfaced of him being stricken ill last week, after he was once again out of the public eye. He joked about Ely Pamatong, the perennial nuisance presidential candidate who made a video saying that he was taking over Duterte’s post because the president failed to show up for the Independence Day ceremonies at Manila’s Rizal Park.

To me, what Duterte was actually saying was that Robredo should wait until something really bad happens to him before she can take over. In the meantime, he will continue doing exactly what he’s been doing —including making Robredo and her backers salivate at the prospect of him not showing up for work for good every time he doesn’t appear in public for a couple of days.

Now, that’s their real relationship: It will only be consummated if Duterte dies.

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