Spite

It was bound to happen. As expected, someone’s got to give. And so, President Rodrigo Duterte took back his designation of Vice President Leni Robredo less than the six months he originally intended her to oversee the operations of the government’s anti-drug campaign. Only after 19 days, Vice President Robredo lost her designation as co-chairperson of the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs (ICAD).

The Duterte administration is thus under fire anew from the political opposition and his most bitter critics for alleged “mansplaining” his Vice President, among other accusations and criticisms. The former Davao City Mayor has no one to blame except himself in creating this messy affair in the first place.

Let us look at the preceding events. The official designation of Robredo came last Oct. 31 when the President first publicly offered to his estranged Vice President a chance to prove the better way of solving the illegal drugs problem in the Philippines. In his usual extemporaneous remarks, President Duterte made this offer with obvious exasperation over the criticisms attributed to the Vice President who supposedly scored the anti-drug campaign of the administration is a failure.

The presidential pique obviously stems from a number of human rights violation complaints. President Duterte has been accused before the International Court of Justice over alleged extra-judicial killings (EJKs) of suspected drug users and peddlers slain in anti-drug operations by law enforcers purportedly with his tacit go-signal.

The Vice President herself subsequently came out in media to clarify the statements attributed to her. She claimed being misquoted by the Reuters interview. The Vice President clarified she is not totally against President Duterte’s drug campaign but urged the administration to “tweak” what is no longer effective in its campaign. “Because if it’s already improper, we need to tweak it. Tweak means to change slightly,” she explained. But the international wire agency Reuters issued their own statement and stood by their story on the Vice President.

This was why the President initially offered Mrs. Robredo to be designated as anti-drug czar for six months only. But barely a month since the Vice President warmed her seat as ICAD co-chairperson, she was “fired” unceremoniously again from the Duterte administration.

President Duterte has done this to Vice President Robredo not just once, but twice already.

Less than a year in the Duterte Cabinet in 2016, it would be recalled, Vice President Robredo was forced to resign as chairperson of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) following criticisms she dished out against the administration. Then Cabinet Secretary Jun Evasco informed the Vice President in a text message sent her “to desist from attending all Cabinet meetings” effective Dec. 5, 2016.

This was why Mrs. Robredo was initially skeptical to take on the President’s offered new designation. Her official spokesman Barry Gutierrez would later confirm the Office of the Vice President (OVP) received three days after the Palace memorandum to Mrs. Robredo’s designation at the ICAD.

Invoking Executive Order (EO) 15 dated in March 2017, Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea signed the Vice President’s designation as ICAD co-chairperson “By Authority of the President.” But a perusal of EO 15, the designated chairperson of the ICAD is the Director General of the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA).

So from the start, the Vice President questioned her lack of authority to perform her designation as ICAD co-chairperson. No less than the incumbent PDEA chief Aaron Aquino would later announce having sent a letter to the Office of the President (OP) to clarify this matter.

Ironically, Mrs. Robredo did not seek out any written clarification from the OP. Neither she sought a meeting with nor called up President Duterte – as the appointing authority to clarify her role.

Nonetheless, the Vice President accepted the challenge and went on to perform her tasks at the ICAD. She started meeting with the heads of the 20 or so government agencies included in the ICAD as well as with local and international anti-drug watch groups. She sought out an official list of the “high-value targets” or principal suspects engaged in narcotics trade who are the subject of manhunt by police and other law enforcement agencies of the ICAD.

All these she revealed to media interviews about what she has done so far. In fact, according to the Vice President, she sent two official written communications to the President to report and update him, including some recommendations about the same things that she mentioned already in her media interviews.

Apparently, however, President Duterte got different information and appreciation of facts. In an unscheduled late night press conference at Malacañang last Nov. 21, the President expressed in angry, strong terms his displeasure at how the Vice President so far carried out her tasks as ICAD co-chairperson. A visibly irritated President described her as “scatterbrain” and prone to “kneejerk” reaction.

But the President clarified he was “not firing her (from ICAD) because she is working” after all. He, however, went on to concede he and Mrs. Robredo could never work together. With the next presidential elections in May 2022 just around the corner, he admitted, both sides would just “throw” political garbage at each other.

This came to head when the political opposition led by Liberal Party (LP) president Senator Francis Pangilinan weighed in to dare President Duterte to fire the Vice President from ICAD. Mrs. Robredo mouthed the same lines.

So before he left for South Korea last Sunday, presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo announced Mrs. Robredo was fired. The next day, Panelo disclosed the Vice President was eased out from ICAD due to her lack of action on the drug problem and her “transparent motive to politicize” the government’s drug war.

It was given out of spite. It was accepted out of spite. It all began in spite. Thus, it all ended in spite.