It was a union that was destined not to last. As it turned out, it was over in barely five months.
Perhaps the President should never have appointed Vice President Leni Robredo to his Cabinet in the first place. The two are poles apart on almost all issues. With her departure from the Cabinet, the Liberal Party is now urging her to lead the opposition.
I do not intend to belittle the leadership capabilities of Robredo, but it is difficult to see this happening. She is too inexperienced a politician to be able to stomach the kind of politics here in the country.
Also, the political opposition is in such disarray that there really is hardly any opposition left. As in every administration, all or almost all the politicians are scrambling to join the administration which tells us the kind of politics that we have.
Maybe what those people urging Robredo to lead the opposition want is something else. Perhaps they just want her to become the symbol of a grassroots movement that they want to launch to oppose and even possibly topple President Duterte. If this is the case, it will of course be a different story altogether. We do not know the kind of support that such a plan can generate from the public without an effective and believable battle cry, it is hard to see it succeeding.
The two most obvious rallying issues would be the alleged extra-judicial killing related to the government’s drug war and the burial of the late, former President Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
If this is the case, VP Robredo should be careful. She should think and think hard. There are people and entities who would like nothing better than to create such a scenario. Robredo should not allow herself to be used. She is such a decent person that it would be a tragedy if she does.
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We have a system wherein the elected vice president, especially if that person belongs to another party, can criticize the President. We have seen this happen much too often. We have also seen this happen even if both belong to the same party. This was the case with Cory Aquino and Doy Laurel. It did not take long before both were at odds with each other.
During the time of former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, she appointed Vice President Guingona and after a while, both were differing on important issues. It is all right to criticize a president, but once appointed to the Cabinet, perhaps propriety will dictate that if a vice president does not have anything good to say about government policies, then it is better simply to keep quiet. In the case of VP Robredo, she did in fact criticize government policies several times. But again keeping quiet might not be that much of a help.
Former VP Binay in fact practiced this until former President Aquino unleashed the power of the presidency that destroyed his chances to become President. The quintessential Vice President was Sergio Osmeña Sr. He was a loyal supporter of President Quezon to the end. Maybe we should follow the system that the United States has—if the presidential candidate wins, he or she carries the vice president to avoid untenable situations.
The practice of appointing the vice president to the Cabinet should stop. There are many things that a vice president can do. She or he can represent the head of state in many activities here and abroad. So what if that vice president uses the six years to campaign? After all, the president is not allowed to run for re-election.
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There might be other underlying reasons why VP Robredo had to go. Perhaos these reasons are related to the last elections. There is this widespread belief that there was election manipulation in the last polls. I have it from a good source that President Duterte believes very strongly that there was indeed cheating.
President Duterte of course does not hide the fact that he believes Bongbong Marcos won the vice presidential race and said so to the press during his state visit to China. In the May elections, Marcos was leading by over a million votes and then this lead dwindled significantly overnight. Then he found himself losing to Robredo by a small margin.
Could there have been electronic manipulation? If so, how? We must remember that Smartmatic admitted to changing some codes at the very last minute or when counting was under way. The code is part of the command that tells the election system what to do. Quite possibly, Smartmatic changed part of the code so that votes for Marcos coming from many PCOS machines were rejected by the Comelec server.
This is the only explanation why all of a sudden, the lead of Marcos was erased overnight. What has to be done is to get someone to do forensic examination to determine how many votes for Marcos were rejected by the Comelec server. Can this be done? Yes, by someone who knows computers.
In this case, it is almost certain that Smartmatic was involved in the cheating. The only question is who ordered Smartmatic to change the codes. We must remember that Smartmatic was never able to satisfactorily explain why it changed the codes.