Her employees may deny it but it is quite obvious—Vice President Leni Robredo has a public relations firm helping her achieve two immediate objectives.
First, Robredo needs all the public acceptance and sympathy she is able to generate to dilute the allegation of her rival, ex-Senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., that her victory in the May 2016 vice presidential election was tainted with cyber fraud under the auspices of the pro-Liberal Party (LP) Commission on Elections and its foreign confederate, Smartmatic.
To achieve that end, Robredo’s political cosmetologists are busy urging gullible Filipinos to hate the Marcos family. Their latest cosmetologist is Senator Bam Aquino.
Second, Robredo wants to be president in 2022. For this purpose, Robredo’s handlers have prepared a long-term plan, the first phase of which is already being implemented. The plan is anchored on Robredo’s privileges as a public official, and President Duterte’s misplaced trust in Robredo.
For starters, Robredo was lucky President Rodrigo Duterte appointed her to the housing portfolio of his Cabinet. This appointment gave Robredo an excuse, and at government expense at that, to go around the country ostensibly to ascertain the housing problems confronting the marginalized sectors of Philippine society. It also gave Robredo something to occupy herself with, other than spending time in her luxurious vice president’s mansion in New Manila, Quezon City doing nothing except wait for the president to die, to resign, to suffer permanent incapacity, or to be ousted from office—a waiting game, but with a serious salary paid by the Filipino taxpayers.
Despite Robredo’s membership in the Duterte cabinet, diehard LP supporters continue to denounce Duterte as a foul-mouthed butcher. For them, Robredo is the embodiment of the ideal president that Duterte isn’t. That’s strange, absurd even, because when Robredo accepted the housing portfolio under President Duterte, that acceptance includes her endorsement of Duterte as the president of the Philippines. After all, Robredo is now a cabinet secretary, and as such, she is an alter-ego and ally of the president.
If Robredo is uncomfortable with that arrangement, she should resign from her post in the Duterte cabinet posthaste, and identify herself with the political opposition. By deciding to stay in office, Robredo should openly support President Duterte, or at least avoid making press statements that may be misunderstood, and refrain from comporting herself in way that needlessly compromises the president.
Instead of doing what is expected from a member of the president’s cabinet, Robredo has undermined, and continues to undermine the Duterte presidency.
Take for instance Robredo’s recent, highly publicized taxpayer-paid visits to northern Luzon in the aftermath of Super Typhoon “Lawin.” According to her publicists, Robredo had to go there in her capacity as the housing chief to see for herself the extent of the destruction to the homes of underprivileged Filipinos. Really?
The task of inspecting the disaster zones left by the super typhoon principally belongs to President Duterte, the defense secretary, and the social welfare secretary. Housing officials led by Robredo should step in only when primary relief operations are completed. Temporary shelters for the immediate use of calamity victims are part of relief operations, and are the primary concern of the aforementioned departments, not the housing office headed by Robredo.
Even assuming for the sake of argument that Robredo has a legitimate reason to be in northern Luzon, her presence there is ill-timed. It was almost as if her presence there was deliberately scheduled by her handlers to attract public attention away from President Duterte and relief workers sent by the administration. Thus, what Robredo was really doing in northern Luzon is immaterial. Her presence there was calculated to suggest that Duterte is a weak president, an image the LP desperately wants to convey to the public.
Weeks ago, Robredo attended an international housing conference in South America where she had herself photographed with the outgoing United Nations secretary general. She was all smiles, oblivious to the fact that her boss, President Duterte, recently declared the UN chief a meddling and inutile diplomat. Robredo’s having posed with the UN chief was a veiled statement to the international community that President Duterte should not be taken seriously. It was also a message that she does not consider Duterte her boss.
As expected, however, Robredo’s home office offered the lame excuse that it was Robredo’s job to go to the conference, and the blanket denial that she was engaging in backroom anti-Duterte politics.
The ill-timed Robredo visit to northern Luzon and her anti-Duterte sojourn in South America may be the reasons why some Duterte supporters believe that Robredo is the odd person out in the Duterte cabinet, and that she should resign her post immediately. To ascertain if this suspicion is true, President Duterte ought to conduct a loyalty check among his cabinet members, Robredo included.
From all indications, it appears that Robredo is making full use of her being vice president and housing chief, and the separate funds that go with both offices, in her early, clandestine campaign for the presidency.
Although Robredo pretends to be neutral, she has not hesitated to take advantage of every situation that allows her to take a potshot at President Duterte. Most of the time, her potshots against the president are done with calculated stealth and duplicity.
Robredo’s quiet, underhanded quest for the presidency, buoyed no doubt by LP stragglers who long for a return to the corrupt, abusive years of their expired incumbency, is something to worry about. Like President Corazon Aquino and Senator Grace Poe, Robredo does not have the decades of experience in public service demanded of and expected from the highest officer of the land, but she has enough personal ambition to seek the presidency, not for public interest, but for personal pride and satisfaction.
LP partisans consider Robredo their glittering chance at regaining the presidency. They should take stock of Shakespeare’s warning that “not all that glitters is gold.”