Vice President Leni Robredo’s ouster from the Cabinet of President Rodrigo Duterte was inevitable. She did not belong there, period.
Every freshman law student knows that under the doctrine of qualified political agency, members of the Cabinet are the alter egos of the president. Unless reversed by the president himself, or unless a law mandates otherwise, official acts and decisions of Cabinet members are deemed official acts and decisions of the president. The unwritten rule, of course, is that members of the Cabinet are not allowed to maintain any view that is repugnant to the president’s.
From the start, Robredo never comported herself as genuine alter ego of President Duterte.
Robredo openly shared and continues to share the misplaced sentiment of opposition politicians that extrajudicial killings have become rampant in the country and that Duterte and his top men in the Philippine National Police are, in all likelihood, responsible for the same.
As a lawyer, Robredo is expected to know that there is nothing illegal when policemen kill a suspected drug lord who exchanges gunfire with lawmen rather than surrender to them. The ensuing deaths may not be expressly authorized by the courts—and may thus be considered “extrajudicial” in a sense—but the result is nonetheless authorized by the law.
President Duterte has not hidden his displeasure towards the outgoing secretary general of the United Nations for what the latter has been saying regarding the law and order situation in the Philippines. This notwithstanding, Robredo was seen engaging the UN chief in a very friendly banter at an international housing summit recently held in South America. It was almost as if Robredo thought nothing about the President’s views about the outgoing UN leadership.
On some other occasions, Robredo met with the news media and scored the President for almost anything—from his speeches to the subjects of his press conferences.
How Robredo has been comporting herself in the public eye is not how a president’s alter ego is expected to behave.
The more glaring anomaly is that Robredo belongs to the Liberal Party, the political party openly opposed to President Duterte. From the way Senator Leila de Lima, a top LP political stooge, has been bashing Duterte in the news media, the LP seems determined to pursue the ouster of Duterte from the presidency. It does not end there, of course, because as vice president, Robredo is Duterte’s successor to Malacañang. That, by itself, already creates a conflict of interest situation for Robredo. From this observation alone, it may be argued that Robredo’s departure from the Duterte Cabinet was long overdue.
Robredo supporters will insist that the Vice President has the right to speak up, being the second highest elective official of the land. That’s true, but only if Robredo was simply the vice president devoid of any political portfolio. They conveniently forgot that Robredo was also a member of the Cabinet and, therefore, expected to align her public persona with that of the President. If Robredo can’t live with that, then her resignation from the Cabinet is necessary. After all, Robredo was never coerced into accepting a position in the Duterte Cabinet in the first place.
After Robredo finally resigned from the Duterte Cabinet last week, she assumed the titular leadership of the LP and declared it the opposition party. She added that Duterte will finish his six-year term as president because the LP has no plans of taking him down from office.
Her announcements are, however, self-serving.
Robredo’s resignation from the Cabinet did not catapult her to the leadership of the LP. She has been the LP’s pointman ever since the LP political machinery resigned itself, days after the May 2016 elections, to the fact that no amount of computer fraud can overtake Duterte’s insurmountable lead over Mar Roxas, the LP presidential candidate. Robredo inevitably had to be the LP titular head because as vice president, she currently holds the highest elective office among the LP politicians.
As for the six-year term of President Duterte, suffice it to say that the matter of whether Duterte will finish his term or not does not depend on the alleged decision of the LP not to oust him from office. Robredo’s statement on behalf of the LP uses pretty hefty language for a political party that does not even control the House of Representatives, which has the exclusive power to initiate impeachment proceedings against a sitting president.
Right now, Robredo may be the titular head of the LP but that is not going to be a walk in the park for the next five and a half years. Other than her lackluster three-year quiet stint at the House of Representatives (and her celebrated use of a public bus to and from Bicol), Robredo has no real political track record to speak of to justify her obvious desire to become the next president. It is for this reason that LP veterans like ex-President Benigno Aquino III and ex-Senator Mar Roxas will breathe down on Robredo’s neck each time the LP finds an opportunity to embarrass Duterte.
This ultimately raises the question—can Robredo stand on her own without the LP? She can’t, because she was virtually an outsider to the party for the entire duration of her adult life. This also means that when Robredo speaks, she speaks for the likes of Aquino III and Roxas, and other oligarchs like them.
More revolting for Robredo should be the idea of being the face and voice of the LP itself. The historical record confirms that the LP is the same political party, through President Manuel Roxas (Mar’s grandfather) that gave the Americans parity rights and the military bases. It was also under the LP, through President Aquino III, when the Hacienda Luisita, owned by the Aquino family, remained virtually exempted from land reform.