Malacañang on Wednesday blasted the camp of Vice President Leni Robredo for insinuating that President Rodrigo Duterte was not serious in appointing her as co-chair of the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs (ICAD).
Robredo has no decision yet whether to accept the appointment even as her spokesperson, lawyer Barry Gutierrez, claimed on Tuesday that the position was problematic, unclear and does not exist under Executive Order 15, which created the inter-agency body.
The Palace disagreed with Gutierrez’s views.
“We hate to educate a member of the bar but obviously the agent of the principal needs to brush up his law,” presidential spokesperson Salvador Panelo said.
Panelo maintained there was no need to amend EO 15 since the President “has the inherent continuing authority to create positions and items, as well as to reorganize instrumentalities, within the bureaucracy.”
“In the face of a challenge to offer meaningful public service, the camp of VP Leni has been hewing and dodging, giving all sorts of excuses and demands,” Panelo said.
“We would like to think that they do not come from VP Leni herself but from her advisers who apparently would not want her to succeed in serving the people.”
Panelo added Duterte’s offer for Robredo to lead the campaign against illegal drugs showed that the chief executive was open to suggestions from a critic of the drug war.
“President Duterte believes that there is no better person who can implement such suggestions than the person making them,” he said.
The Palace spokesman, who earlier described the appointment as a “ladder to the presidency,” urged Robredo to seize the “golden opportunity.”
“We advise the Vice President to reflect and give the matter a careful thought. Sleep over it,” Panelo said.
“We do not believe that the Vice President is incapable of rising up to the challenge and doing justice to the trust reposed upon her by Filipino people, unless of course she proves us wrong by declining the appointment.”
