Honeymoon period over

It is too early to tell how the resignation of Vice President Leni Robredo from the Cabinet will play out at this early stage. Barely warming her seat as head of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC), VP Robredo quit last Sunday from the office supervising various state-run housing agencies.

Barely six months into office, President Duterte let go from his official family the Vice President whom he appointed as HUDCC head only on July 9.

A former congresswoman from Camarines Sur,  Robredo ran and won as vice presidential candidate of the Liberal Party. After the May 9 elections, the LP became part of the “majority coalition” with President Duterte’s PDP-Laban.

The chief executive reportedly accepted “with a heavy heart” the resignation of VP Robredo from his Cabinet. The President, however, immediately appointed Cabinet Secretary Leoncio Evasco Jr. to take over as new HUDCC head. It was Evasco who sent a text message to the VP last Saturday on the presidential instructions “to desist attending the Cabinet meeting starting Dec. 5.”

Taking to mean she is being “fired” from the Cabinet, the Vice President opted instead to resign. Last Monday, she formally sent her resignation letter to President Duterte, citing fears and concerns the presidential instructions to “stop attending the Cabinet meetings” would effectively limit her to perform the duties of HUDCC head. In her press conference on the same day, she echoed fears that some Cabinet members who are close to President Duterte were behind an alleged sinister plot to “steal” the vice presidency from her.

VP Robredo pointed to the camp of former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. to be in cahoots with Duterte allies to unseat her from her VP post. Marcos is contesting Robredo’s victory in the VP race before the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET).

Moreover, VP Robredo surmised she incurred the ire of President Duterte due to her public statements against the burial at the Libingan ng mga Bayani of Marcos’ namesake father, ex-president Ferdinand Marcos.

In response, the Palace revealed the parting of ways between the two leaders was largely due to “irreconcilable differences” and had nothing to do with the pending PET protest of Marcos.

Strangely, Palace allusion to “irreconcilable differences” is one of the grounds invoked by estranged couples in divorce proceedings.

VP Robredo is the widow of the late Interior secretary Jesse Robredo with whom she has three daughters. On the other hand, 72-year-old President Duterte’s marriage with Elizabeth Zimmerman with whom he has three children had been annulled. The President has a daughter with partner Honeylet Avanceña.

The unceremonious departure of VP Robredo from the Duterte Cabinet was not without precedent.

The late President Corazon Aquino unceremoniously fired from her Cabinet the late Vice President Salvador Laurel who was then concurrent secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA). In September 1987, Laurel sent a scathing resignation letter to Mrs. Aquino. Among other criticisms he kept to himself while he was still in the Aquino Cabinet, Laurel wrote: “The reported controversies and scandals involving your closest relatives have become the object of our people’s outrage.”

A few weeks after she took office at the end of EDSA-2 in January 2001, freshly installed President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo appointed then senator and fellow Lakas-NUCD partymate Teofisto Guingona Jr. to become her vice president. Mrs. Arroyo named Guingona as concurrent DFA secretary on Feb. 6. But on July 2, 2002, Guingona resigned from the Cabinet over policy and political differences with Arroyo.

At least in the case of Mrs. Arroyo and Guingona, both agreed to release a joint statement in order not to further fuel friction among their allies and prevent their political foes from cashing in on the situation. In their joint statement released by Malacañang, the two leaders stated: “The resignation stemmed from an honest difference of opinion concerning policy. Since the President is the chief architect of foreign policy, the Vice President yields. The Vice President continues to hold the President in high esteem, and is committed to good governance.”???

The “difference of opinion” between Mrs. Arroyo and Guingona came to head over the terms of reference of the  Philippine-US Balikatan that took the joint military anti-terror exercises to Mindanao. Mrs. Arroyo subsequently named the late senator Blas Ople, who was chairman of the Senate foreign relations committee, as the new DFA Secretary.

Now Pampanga congresswoman for a third term, Mrs. Arroyo recalled her own case when she quit from the Cabinet of former president Joseph Estrada. While she belonged to another political party, ex-President Estrada appointed then Vice President Arroyo as secretary of the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD).

Mrs. Arroyo ran and won as vice presidential candidate of the Lakas-NUCD.

She recalled that when she was still a member of the Estrada Cabinet, there was a time when she was told not to attend a particular Cabinet meeting. “I figured they were probably going to take up something political. Since I belong to opposition, they do not want me to be privy to things I can tell to the other opposition members. I respected the instruction,” she said.

Mrs. Arroyo claimed she kept herself from making critical remarks in public against then President Estrada. But when she could no longer avoid making one at the height of jueteng allegations against then President Estrada, she resigned from his Cabinet in October 2000.

I have covered these four past presidents and knew first hand their respective Cabinet interactions. But once a consensus was made at the end of Cabinet debates, everyone stood behind the President’s decision whether or not they agreed with it. Whoever did not agree, resigned. Or conversely, it is the prerogative of the President to fire any Cabinet for whatever reason.

Barely making a dent in her six-year term, VP Robredo packed up and parted ways with President Duterte. Both abruptly ended their honeymoon period too early without any overt efforts to even settle their supposed “irreconcilable differences.”

But it is really an issue of trust and confidence on a Cabinet member as the alter ego of the President.