(Eagle News) — Vice-President Leni Robredo said she had accepted the dinner invitation of President Rodrigo Duterte for her and her children, saying this was the right thing to do.
“The way I look at it, at the end of the day, we were both elected. We were given the mandate to serve the people, and it’s our obligation to find common ground even though we may disagree on some matters,” Robredo said in a radio interview.
Robredo explained that the President has extended a hand and so her “assumption is always that he has good intentions.”
“It seems bad not to meet his offer halfway,” said Robredo in answer to the alleged warning of opposition senator Antonio Trillanes IV who claimed that this was a “trap.”
Robredo had been very critical of President Duterte’s policies, particularly on the government’s campaign against illegal drugs.
She had even sent a video message to a side event of the United Nations conference on Narcotic Drugs in Vienna Austria, where she openly denounced the Philippines’ illegal drugs war, claiming that this resulted to some 7,000 extrajudicial killings — a figure which was contradicted by official figures from the Philippine National Police. The PNP said the number cited by Robredo included those killings that had been already resolved and which were attributable to murders that were totally unrelated to the illegal drug campaign.
In her video message, Robredo also claimed that the country’s poor felt “hopeless and helpless” under the Duterte government. This was also disputed by recent surveys from Pulse Asia and the Social Weather Stations where pollsters found that there were more people who felt safe and who favored the illegal drugs war under the Duterte administration.
Her video message also prompted calls for her to be impeached because of how she allegedly misrepresented facts about the government’s efforts to curb crime in the country. President Duterte recently told Robredo critics to “stop” any moves to impeach the Vice-President.
The President extended the dinner invitation to Robredo during last Saturday’s Philippine National Police Academy (PNPA) graduation ceremonies in Silang, Cavite where they shared the stage for the first time since the impeachment controversy.
