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A busy
Wednesday for Vice President Leni Robredo today, as she started her day with
delivering a keynote message in the AIM Breakfast Forum – Brewing@AIM at the
Asian Institute of Management, Makati City.
VP Leni Robredo on Monday
urged the nation to be vigilant and resist any attempts to bring the
Philippines back under dictatorship after resigning from the Cabinet of
President Duterte.
Robredo resigned as housing
secretary, but she will stay on as Vice President.
“This is not a time for
fear. It is a time for conviction. It is a time for courage,” she said in a
televised address to the nation.
Robredo was the second high
official to quit Mr. Duterte’s administration. Last week, Maria Serena Diokno
quit as chair of the National Historical Commission of the Philippines over Mr.
Duterte’s decision to allow the burial of dictator Ferdinand Marcos at Libingan
ng mga Bayani.
Robredo openly opposed the
burial, but also criticized Mr. Duterte’s brutal war on illegal drugs and his
crude remarks about women.
In her resignation letter
sent to Malacañang on Monday morning, Robredo told Mr. Duterte that she
“exerted all effort to put aside our differences, maintain a professional
working relationship and work effectively despite the constraints.”
But she said Mr. Duterte’s
order banning her from Cabinet meetings had made it impossible for her to do
her job at the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC).
After her address to the
nation, Robredo faced a news conference to say she believed she was pushed out
of the Cabinet not because of her performance as housing secretary but because
of her opposition to Marcos’ burial at the heroes’ cemetery and because there
were people around Mr. Duterte who did not want her in the vice presidency.
But she assured her
supporters that she would not allow anyone to “steal the vice presidency.”
She suggested that the
Duterte administration may be supporting former Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong”
Marcos Jr., her closest opponent in May’s vice presidential election who has
challenged her victory in the Presidential Electoral Tribunal.
Marcos is the son and
namesake of the late dictator, whose family supported Mr. Duterte’s campaign
for Malacañang.
VIGILANCE CALL Vice President Leni Robredo exhorts the people to
oppose plans to bring back dictatorship. —GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE
Robredo actively joined the
1986 Edsa People Power Revolution that toppled the dictator from power.
“We have fought this battle
before and won,” she said. “We will never let anyone revise our history and
twist it to turn evil into good.”
Lawmakers in the House of
Representatives spoke on Monday about Robredo taking on a new role as leader of
the political opposition.
Asked if she was ready for
that role, Robredo said: “My opposition to the reimposition of the death
penalty will be stronger, my opposition to to the lowering of the age of
criminal liability would stay the same. I will be vocal against the
extrajudicial killings and the ill treatment of women. But to me, I still
believe that the success of this administration is also for our country, that
is why we will still support policies we agree with,” she said.
