How VP Robredo’s loquacity got her axed as anti-drug czarCommentary by Maximo Tumbali, Forum ContributorPhilippine Vice President Leni Robredo just didn’t have the luck to hold her position a little longer as co-chair of Inter-agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs (ICAD). Just after three weeks, President Rodrigo Duterte evidently felt that allowing her to hold that post even a minute longer might just jeopardize the nation’s security in the midst of his administration’s current war on illegal drugs.
IMAGE CREDIT: IMAGE CREDIT: PHILIPPINESTREND.COMThe President clearly didn’t like the manner in which VP Robredo carried out her task. She was too open and ostentatious in her approach. Considering the very sensitive and dangerous nature of the position the President had given her, it would have been wiser on her part to have maintained deep secrecy particularly in handling or dealing with highly classified information, and to have prudently avoided overt meetings with foreign personalities whom she thought could help in the country’s fight against drugs. But to President Duterte’s dismay, she did just the exact opposite, spilling beans here, there, and everywhere, putting at risk our country’s security and, in effect, bungling the drug war.
VP Robredo’s excitement over the challenging task took away any inclination to carefully scrutinize her modus operandi vis-a-vis the nature and scope of her undertaking. She seemed to be unaware that the drug lords the country is at war with are devious, vicious, deceptive, elusive. They operate clandestinely, so it should have entered her mind early enough that the best way to catch them is to assume the role of a sleuth and not that of a market peddler who broadcasts her wares to the public. Her being so loquacious enraged Duterte to such an extent that he called her too
“madaldal”; that’s Pilipino for extremely talkative, a quality that, of course, is anathema to being a good professional spy.
And it goes without saying that a spy VP Robredo must be, for the crooks she was supposed to go after and fight are themselves presumably masters at spying. Thus, it was incumbent upon her to first learn and do some spy craft herself, on the basis of which she could put up an effective strategy to neutralize the drug lords and their distribution network. Rather than protecting classified information from the enemy’s clutches, however, Leni Robredo opened the floodgates for them, so to speak. This gave the drug lords much-needed operational advantage, letting them know when to stop and resume their drug distribution operations in particular areas, and precisely where to transfer those operations when the situation gets too hot for them.
Maybe VP Robredo thought that by publicly flaunting her performance she could win the sympathy of the people, forgetting that the bottom line of her job is to help in decisively and effectively neutralizing the drug menace that besets the nation. This proved to be her undoing as the recently appointed Philippine anti-drug czar, forcing President Duterte to fire her before she could do more harm than good to herself and to the country.
Now it’s abundantly clear that President Duterte miscalculated in appointing Vice President Robredo to handle that highly sensitive and challenging assignment.
Read the author’s November 9, 2019 essay on the same subject, “Sincerity ain’t enough!”Comments from registered Forum members are welcome.
