Intimidating Digong

HAD it not been for the tinderbox situational condition in Iran and the fury of Taal the classic quotes by Leni Robredo would have hugged the headlines and be another example of absurdity and incoherence that had been the hallmark of the Vice President of the Philippines.

I could have just dismissed the latest of her verbal menu, mathematical formula, and unique gender-cognitive skill but we have to tell the world that our lawyers or past VPs for that matter, are not in the same plain as the incumbent. How can one not ponder and wonder when VP Leni asserts that P4 x 10 kilos of rice per family x 4 weeks = P1,600 to point out how a family of four is affected by the escalation of the price of rice. Or, her classic positivism “my daughters are all girls”.

Ms. Leni Robredo first media interview for 2020 had something to do with her report on the government’s drug war. Recall that when Pres. Rodrigo Duterte appointed her to co-chair the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-illegal Drugs her first act was to consult the US Embassy officials anti-narcotics and security officials before she sat down with ICAD officials. She had earlier asserted that the drug campaign of Duterte was a failure. Taking her statement with a grain of salt the President named her co-chair of ICAD allowing her to prove that she might have a strategy on how to deal with the drug problems besetting the country which is not in the books of the country’s anti-illegal drugs enforcement agencies.

Hardly a week elapsed after her appointment however, the VP suggested to adopt the Mexican approach to dealing with drug syndicates and maintained her view that the war on drugs in the Philippines is a failure. For Duterte and his anti-drugs lieutenants, Robredo had nothing to contribute to the drug campaign but snooping at the government operations against drugs. Mexico’s “hugs not bullets” strategy was actually a euphemism to its government’s surrender to the drug cartel. Robredo’s assignment was then cut short. Like a woman scorned she hit back at Duterte and threatened that she will come out with a report that purports to explain why the government war on drugs is a failure.

“The war against drugs is lopsided in favor of the law enforcers?” This was to be the most earth-shaking statement of the new year. It was part of the opening statements of Vice Pres. Robredo when she made public her long-delayed report on what she gathered during her brief stint with ICAD. She was given hypothetical figures in determining the potential total volume of drugs that drug-dependents could use and she obviously took note but sadly passed it as the real statistics. She disregarded the data on how huge the volumes of shabu had been intercepted in the course of the drug war. She also totally ignored the fact that all existing shabu laboratory in the country had been dismantled. She too paid no attention to the drug enforcement agency report that shabu is now smuggled into the country by drug rings operating worldwide. She has no record of how many drug dependents had been rescued and rehabilitated. She forgot that bigtime drug lords and their networks had been neutralized although she took note of a few collateral damages in the process.

Her grade of the government campaign against illegal drugs is 1%. This is a comical contrast to the unprecedented 82% grade on the anti-drug initiatives given by the people in a nationwide survey. This despite the ‘ninja cops’ issue.

The Robredo Report, therefore, is at best a contradiction. It was meant to prop the sagging image of the Liberal Party which, under her stewardship, is consigned to extinction. The political opposition has been clinging to LP and the Aquino mantra but so much fakery and decadence had been unearthed from the two Aquino regimes not even the US of A Senators can save the cabal from perdition or diminish the popularity of the Duterte government. There has been an unrelenting magma of negative propaganda waged by paid hacks that are based in America and homegrown critics funded by Filipino-Americans and the traditional destabilizers like Omidyar Network and National Endowment for Democracy. Add to that the oligarchs' threat to pull out their investments in the country. Even these will not wash.

Think of this. Amid the thick ash-fall from Taal volcano eruption and cancellation of domestic and international flights at NAIA and Clark International airports, President Duterte and his long-time Executive Assistant, now Senator Bong Go, took off from Davao, braved the darkening skies around Metro Manila, assess the extent of the damaging ash-fall then land at NAIA.

Even the rumbling Taal cannot intimidate Duterte. Not a fairy tale of VP Robredo and definitely not the saber-rattling of US legislators.