Roque shocked at Robredo Holocaust memorial photo

MANILA — A photo of Vice President Leni Robredo and other Liberal Party officials smiling at the Holocaust memorial in Berlin was too much even for presidential spokesperson Harry Roque, who regularly defends the president's oft-controversial words and actions.

On Tuesday, the vice president has already apologized for the photo in the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, Germany. She said that there was no excuse for it.

The memorial honors and remembers up to six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of Jews by Nazi Germany, which believed that German "Aryans" were racially superior.

Roque said that he could not understand Robredo and Liberal Party members Sen. Francis Pangilinan, Rep. Jose Christopher Belmonte (Quezon City, 6th District), Rep. Teddy Baguilat (Ifugao), Rep. Miro Quimbo (Marikina), Rep. Jorge Banal (Quezon City, 3rd District), Rep. Kaka Bag-ao (Dinagat Islands) and former Budget Secretary Florencio Abad.

“I was shocked when she apologized. Although she has already apologized, I can’t understand what they were thinking (when they did that),” Roque said in an interview on government Radyong Pilipinas.

“I thought: ‘Didn’t they understand the place they were in?’” he said.

Duterte’s spokesman also said that there is a code of conduct for public officials to make sure that the actions of public officials are beyond reproach.

Roque, however, has explained away controversial words and acts in the past.