Vice President Leni Robredo should know the basic norm in our political system. Her foremost duty is to defend, not necessarily the President, but the sovereignty and interest of the republic where she represents and styles herself as the second in command. That she is on board a ship called Republic of the Philippines should have seeped into her consciousness.
Maybe, there are political differences between her and President Duterte. But it seems Robredo does not know that the line is drawn on matters affecting our national interest. Crossing that line could automatically put her role as belonging to the opposition. The problem is that she chose to be an empty-headed troll of the US and its co-imperialist European powers. Reports had it that Robredo was feeling “hopeless and helpless” about the extrajudicial killings of drug addicts and syndicates financing their operations before the members of the European Parliament.
Sadly, Robredo fails to recall that it is the same European powers, together with the US, that have systematically and repeatedly bombed towns and cities, all for their sin of rejecting their version of freedom and democracy. For that, Robredo now holds the distinction of being stupid and illogical. When she realized the backlash of her uncalled-for comment before her host in Germany to secure the passage of a resolution calling for an end to the alleged extrajudicial killings of drug addicts in this country, she suddenly denied having said anything.
Everybody knows that the Liberal Party collaborated with the Friedrich Naumann Foundation to pass that resolution which amounts to undue interference in our internal affairs. When asked, she said, “(she) never saw or spoke or communicated with a single EU official or representative while in Germany.” However, in another interview, she admitted having been invited by the EU convention that looks into the extrajudicial killings brought about by the drug war. According to her, the interview took place at the side session of the annual meeting of the Commission on Narcotics Drugs in Vienna. For all her denial, one could not comprehend why she was there, and Rappler, an unlicensed media outfit clandestinely operating in the Philippines, stated that she merely stated facts. That, in effect, is tantamount to telling the government —what is wrong with what she did?
Aside from contributing to the malicious propaganda against the government, Robredo did the job of authenticating the lies to justify the desire of the European Union to interfere in our internal affairs by institutionalizing the International Criminal Court (ICC). In that, Robredo practically played right into the hands of an organization not authorized to examine matters as extrajudicial killings without the approval of the United Nations Security Council. The European parliamentarians do not even represent the 28 member-states of the European Union but coyly dubbed the meeting as an international gathering of political parties, and their affiliates like the LP, to project their colonialist ideology that created the ICC and try leaders of countries they once exploited, oppressed and enslaved.
Discerning political observers say the assiduous effort of Robredo to discredit the credibility of the government is more of a desperate attempt to cover the threat that hovers above her head as alleged vice president. First, should the President succeed in eliminating the plague of drug addiction, which incidentally proliferated during the years of the BS Aquino administration, she could become politically irrelevant. Note that the charge of extrajudicial killings does not contribute anything positive, except to destroy the reputation of President Duterte. In other words, it does not offer anything constructive or helpful to the people.
Second, Robredo has to double her effort to rebuild her image. The formal recounting of the ballots revealed that she stands on a much more precarious position. Even if the counting of the ballots is not finished to determine who really won in that foreign-manipulated election, the tampering, the destruction, and the erasures in the ballots all show that Robredo is the product of a fraudulent election. And yet, she allows herself to be blessed over in public, as if to convince our people she is not only honest but holy.
All these have to be taken into consideration because the issues of human rights and other imperialist-denominated freedom have been outmoded by events pointing to this Yellow cabal as the cause of inequality and poverty in our country. The US has lost much of its political and moral moorings, and that has a far ranging effect on our people, particularly on how they will size up the stereotype propaganda with the opposition using the same old clichés about freedom and mantras of dictatorship. They refuse to point to the US, though, as the most corrupt and barbaric in its treatment of political prisoners.
The tables have already been turned against the opposition. Today the chants about freedom and democracy no longer generate political enthusiasm as they did in 1986. The US as the self-anointed champion of freedom is now looked upon as a threat by most countries to their independence because of its policy of aggression, euphemistically called “American unilateralism and exceptionalism.” Talking about American political moral standards has become a source of embarrassment and the political leaders who seek to be identified with that ideology have now become a pariah.
President Duterte may be a political maverick, but whether we like it or not, he symbolizes the changing wind that is now sweeping to set aside the hegemony of Pax Americana. Duterte is the opposite of the antiquated political style of Robredo who keeps on crowing the old cry of human rights, freedom and democracy. Our people today are wary. They have a premonition that the first thing Robredo will do if given a chance to govern is to deliver our elected but independent-minded leaders to their new cage set up by the European and American colonizers. Like President Trump, Robredo is reminiscing the old glory of becoming once again at the helm of the political leadership entranced by their usual mantra that no longer rings a bell.