President Rodrigo Duterte has fired Vice President Leni Robredo as co-chairperson of the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs (ICAD), just 18 days after he appointed her to that post. The firing—like her hiring in the first place, given the circumstances—was ill-advised, ultimately reflecting poorly on the administration and its decision-making process.
The President’s mouthpiece heaped the blame on the vice president and the opposition Liberal Party to which she belongs, for the “termination of services” but no amount of spin could erase the nagging question on everybody’s mind: If the President could not trust the vice president from the start, why on earth did he appoint her in the first place to such a sensitive position?
“This is in response to the suggestion of Liberal Party president, Senator Francis Pangilinan, to just fire the vice president from her post. This is also in response to the taunt and dare of VP Robredo for the President to just tell her that he wants her out,” the President’s spokesman, Salvador Panelo, said.
He added that the President’s decision to appoint Robredo to ICAD was “a chance where both this administration and the political opposition could have unified in fighting the social ill that has destroyed the lives of many and imperiled thousands others.”
“Unfortunately, she wasted such opportunity and used the same as a platform to attack the methods undertaken by this administration. Such [a] tack was even motivated by hubris to prove their past arguments against the anti-illegal drug operations were correct. It at once crumbled as her request for police data validated the falsity of their arguments that the extrajudicial killings are state-sponsored,” the Palace official said.
Panelo said the functions of ICAD are spelled out in Executive Order No. 15, and Robredo only had to seek an audience with the President if she wanted a clarification on the scope and limits of her task.
“As always, she talked—not with her appointing authority—but right in front of the cameras asking the President on her supposed mandate,” he said.
In a radio program Sunday morning, however, Robredo said she sent a letter to President Duterte seeking a clarification as to the extent of her mandate Tuesday last week but has yet to receive a reply.
“Many were saying I am exceeding my mandate. I do not wish to be accused of encroaching on something that is not my assignment. So I wrote the President, and I have yet to receive a reply. I am just waiting for his reply,” Robredo said.
We now know what the President’s reply was.
Sadly, from the get-go, the President’s men failed to live up to their promise to give Robredo a free hand to try out new ideas, with his allies and even co-members of the ICAD sniping at her. The President also reneged on his offer to make her a Cabinet member, accusing her wrongly of inviting UN human rights investigators to look into his bloody war on drugs, and saying he couldn’t trust her anyway, because she belonged to the political opposition.
This last point again begs the question: Why appoint her in the first place?
In truth, the President appointed Robredo as ICAD co-chair on Oct. 31 because he was irked by her remarks that the drug war was not working and should be reexamined. That, in itself, was reason enough not to push through with the job offer. After all, the President knew from the start that the vice president was part of the opposition when he appointed her and offered her a Cabinet rank—so to use that against her after she had come onboard seemed disingenuous at best.
The President’s men can say otherwise, but those who dare to speak truth to power would have to say that the entire affair was a mistake and an unmitigated embarrassment—more so to the terminator than the terminated.