Robredo can lead the opposition

AFTER only around five months, Vice President Leni Robredo has resigned from her post as chair of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC). The resignation came after President Rodrigo Duterte barred Robredo and Commission on Higher Education chair Patricia Licuanan from attending Cabinet meetings. The views of the two are supposedly in conflict with those of the President— and already irreconciliable.

Licuanan didn’t resign but Robredo did, saying she could not be effective in her job if she is barred from the affairs in the Cabinet. Also, Robredo took the President’s order, relayed to her by Cabinet Secretary Leoncio Evasco, as a call for her to leave her post.

The more diplomatic in Duterte’s circle expressed surprise. But Evasco, who replaced Robredo as HUDCC chair, was blunt: he said if a Cabinet member differs with the President, he or she must leave. The harshest reaction was from House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, who said that Robredo was fired. Duterte fanatics in social media, apparently getting the signal, pounced on Robredo like many ants biting a person’s leg, spreading the lie she was incompetent.

Robredo has always been the “odd woman out” in the Cabinet. Her appointment as HUDCC chair was done grudgingly. The President’s favored vice presidential candidate in the May polls was not even his running mate, Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, but Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., whom Robredo defeated. Had there not been a one-year ban in the appointment of defeated bets to government position, Bongbong would have been in the Cabinet, not Robredo.

The coalition, if we may call it that, that Duterte forged in the Cabinet also disliked Robredo from the beginning. The Left in the President’s circle, led by Evasco, have been critical of Robredo, whose claim to being progressive they derided at every turn. Remember the attack on social media by people identified with the National Anti-Poverty Commission headed by Liza Maza? Former Kabataan party-list representative Terry Ridon, who heads the Presidential Commission on the Urban Poor, has also been critical of Robredo’s policies.

Of course, hardliners in Duterte’s camp like Alvarez see Robredo as a political threat, considering she is the highestranking government official in the Liberal Party (LP). In a way, easing out Robredo was partly a response to the gradual consolidation of the LP ranks after the party was decimated by defection to the Duterte camp of its less-principled members. LP senators like Sen. Franklin Drilon, Kiko Pangilinan, etc. are more vocal in criticizing some Duterte policies.

Now Robredo must have realized that she is not dealing with a leader like former president Benigno Aquino III but with Duterte, whose style of leadership is blunt and harsh. Former vice president Jejomar Binay lasted for six years as HUDCC chair because his president, Aquino, was not only different from Duterte in character but also considers him a family friend.

In a way, Robredo’s resignation can be a boon to the country’s democracy. Because of Duterte’s overwhelming win in the May polls, the political opposition in the early months of Duterte’s rule was decapitated and silenced. A very small group in the House of Representatives led by Edcel Lagman and Teddy Baguilat provided the first voice in the wilderness, sort of. With her out of the Cabinet, Robredo can lead an opposition that has become leaderless for so long.