MANILA, Philippines — While Vice President Leni Robredo no longer wants to make a fuss over not being invited to the Nov. 12 gala dinner hosted by President Rodrigo Duterte for Southeast Asian leaders, Sen. Leila de Lima thinks there’s something unusual in Robredo “being sidelined by the administration” in the Asean events.
“Parang ayoko naman to make a big deal out of it. Iyong sa atin, nandito tayo para magtrabaho. Discretion naman iyon ng Pangulo kung sino ang iimbitahan o hindi. Pero tingin ko hindi naman dapat palakihin pa,” Robredo said during a media interview on Wednesday while she was at the Assumption Iloilo, a Catholic school in Iloilo City, for the launching of the Office of the Vice President’s Istorya ng Pagasa campaign.
[I don’t want to make a big deal out of it. I’m here to work. Who to invite and not to invite depend on the President’s discretion. But I think this issue should not be blown out of proportion.]
But for De Lima, there appeared to be an “oddity” during the Asean Summit in relation to the “curious role” given by the Duterte administration to former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo — from her hosting ASEAN delegates in the absence of Duterte, including Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, to speaking before the ASEAN Business and Investment Summit.
“It appears that in lieu of the duly-elected Vice-President Leni Robredo, who was sidelined by the administration from the ASEAN events, the government chose in her stead former President Arroyo, for reasons only Secretary (Alan Peter) Cayetano and the protocol officers of the DFA could fathom,” said De Lima in a statement she issued on Wednesday.
But De Lima isn’t surprised by Arroyo’s alleged big role in the current administration as she “is known to be instrumental in the 2016 electoral victory of Duterte, and in exchange, the political conditions were set for the premature dismissal of her plunder indictment by her own Supreme Court appointees.”
“The payback does not seem to end anytime soon, as the former President with a checkered record of corruption, plunder, and — like Duterte — selling off the country to China in graft-ridden deals and lopsided joint exploration schemes in the Spratlys — continues to figure prominently in this Administration, even ushered to take the place of the Vice-President in clear violation of diplomatic protocols,” the senator said.
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