MANILA, Philippines – It has been more than three months since the country’s two most powerful leaders saw each other at the Philippine National Police Academy (PNPA)’s graduation ceremony in Silang, Cavite.
The face-to-face encounter between President Rodrigo Duterte and Vice President Leni Robredo was supposed to be followed by another meeting — a dinner talk for them to have longer time to discuss about the state of the country’s affairs.
But this did not push through until the President got busy with his successive official trips abroad and the Marawi crisis broke out, which made the chief executive’s schedule tighter and his tasks tougher.
Nevertheless, Robredo said on Tuesday, June 27, that she was still hoping to eat and meet with Duterte.
“Graduation ng PNPA, iyong huli nga naming usapan nag-schedule kami ng dinner. Pero hindi pa rin natutuloy…kasi sunod-sunod iyong mga problema, sunud-sunod iyong biyahe, sunud-sunod ng kaguluhan,” the Vice President said in a radio interview.
[It was at the PNPA graduation where we last talked and scheduled a dinner meet. But it has not yet pushed through until now…because problems continued to crop up, there were consecutive travels, and conflicts kept on occurring.]
“Kaya siguro umaasa pa rin tayo kapag siguro kapag matapos-tapos na ito. Siguro matutuloy pa rin ito [But we are still hoping that our dinner meet will push through after all these problems are solved],” she added.
According to Robredo, it’s not easy to contact Duterte because she thinks the President doesn’t have his own cellphone or another person is in-charge of the chief executive’s communication gadgets.
“Hindi ‘ata…nagse-cellphone si Pangulo. Parang wala siyang cellphone na sarili. [I don’t think the President is using a cellphone. It looks like he doesn’t have his own cellphone],” Robredo said when asked during the radio interview if she didn’t send any text messages to Duterte.