"Is Robredo up to the task?"
After a couple of weeks of verbal skirmishes between VP Leni Robredo and the Office of the President, President Duterte finally appointed VP Robredo as Co-Chair of the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs with full executive authority to manage the anti-drug war. This is in spite of the fact that the President has always derided the leadership and executive abilities of VP Robredo in the past.
What caused the change? There are many ways to look at this sudden move. One is what the VP’s allies are saying and that it is a trap designed to fail. Robredo should not fall for this trap. Another is what the President’s Spokesman is saying that the VP might indeed have a trick or two up her sleeve on how to solve the drug problem and if she succeeds, it will be good for the country. Whether the VP can believe this is, of course, another matter. Whether one is a critic of the current anti-drug program or not, the appointment can be an opportunity for all the critics of the government to pull their resources together and help the VP wage a new approach to the problem.
Still another is that it is also a chance for the VP to take the appointment as a challenge to show and demonstrate her capability in tackling complex problems, something that she has to do if she wants to be President. The move could also be interpreted as a way of quieting foreign critics of the President when it comes to the issue of extrajudicial killings. The move can show that he is flexible and open to change. This issue of EJK is one that refuses to die and this is understandable considering the number of people that have already died.
Notwithstanding, 82 percent of the population still supports the government’s anti-drug campaign. This, of course, does not necessarily mean that what the government is doing is right. There has to be a time when the government should take a pause to assess or review what has happened so far to see if there is a need to tweak the program as the VP is suggesting. Maybe this appointment of the VP is an indication of the willingness on the part of the President to try other methods.
When the appointment came, one of the advisers of the VP said that VP Robredo has had no time to read the appointment because of a very busy schedule. It seems that her priority at the moment is to forward some kind of recommendation to the Office of the President before doing anything. Apart from that, we will have to wait for the next move of the VP.
I had thought Robredo would refuse the appointment. For one, she may be thinking that there is nothing to gain by her wading into a situation that has generated so much controversy locally and more importantly, internationally. The other thing is that there seems to be no position as Co-Chair of the ICAD. There is only the Chairman with the rank of Undersecretary in the person of PDEA Director General Aaron Aquino who has gone on record to say that VP Robredo is devoid of any law enforcement experience. This could be easily remedied with an Executive Order but it is hard to see how she can get the other government agencies engaged in the anti-drug war to see things her way considering that most if not all of these agencies are primed to the thinking of the President. Still, miracles, as they say, do happen and the VP Robredo might go for it and take the challenge.
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The series of earthquakes that struck Mindanao and caused so much destruction and misery is showing the difficulty of providing and distributing relief goods especially in mountainous terrains. The TV footages of people lining up the roads asking for assistance is depressing. It gives the wrong impression that the government is incapable or unable to distribute enough aid as efficiently as it should. Figures that are coming out from the affected areas is showing that there is a lot more infrastructure damage than initially reported. A lot of school buildings have either been destroyed or heavily damaged which is an indication of the quality of construction. Since the 1990 Northern Luzon 7.7 earthquake, building construction was supposed to have been strengthened but this does not seem so in the affected areas. Watching some of the relief operations live on TV, brings back memories of the 1990 earthquake that devastated Baguio City and the Cordilleras. But the difference between what I am reading and seeing on TV and the Baguio quake is that in 1990, the whole might of the US 13th Air Force was available to help. There were many US helicopters crisscrossing the whole of the Cordillera Region delivering relief goods and evacuating wounded people. As the Provincial Commander of Benguet, I remember giving a briefing to President Corazon Aquino outside Mansion House while the ground was shaking because of the aftershocks that went on for months. In Mindanao, there is bound to be shortcomings. For one, our Armed Forces do not have that many helicopters capable of covering all affected area all at once. But even with meager resources, help will eventually come. With earthquakes, relief work will take weeks and reconstruction even much longer.