(Eagle News)–President Rodrigo Duterte has fired Vice President Leni Robredo as co-chair of the Inter-Agency Committee on Illegal Drugs.
In a statement, Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo said Robredo’s firing was “in response to the suggestion of Liberal Party President, Senator Francis Pangilinan, to just fire the Vice President from her post.”
“This is also in response to the taunt and dare of VP Robredo for the President to just tell her that he wants her out,” Panelo said.
According to Panelo, “if VP Robredo wanted clarification in the scope and limits of her new task, she could have sought audience with the President which she failed to do.”
“As always, she talked not with her appointing authority but right in front of the cameras asking the President on her supposed. mandate.”
Panelo said “if VP Robredo is really serious in addressing the cause of the drug problem, she could have gone down to the grassroots, talking to the victims, to their families and to the communities.”
Instead, he said “she opted to have audience with the United Nations and the United States embassy officials who remain out-of-touch from the realities of the local drug problem on the ground.”
Robredo was appointed ICAD co-chair two weeks ago, after she said the drug war was a failure because it failed to curb the number of drug users in the country.
