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PRRD hits back at Robredo: You’ve done nothing as drug czar
FILE: President Rodrigo Roa Duterte greets Vice President Maria Leonor Robredo on the sidelines of the commencement exercises of the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) ‘Mabalasik’ Class of 2019 at Fort General Gregorio Del Pilar in Baguio City. KING RODRIGUEZ/PRESIDENTIAL PHOTO
MANILA — President Rodrigo R. Duterte on Tuesday chided Vice President Leni Robredo for claiming that the current administration’s crackdown on illegal drugs is a “massive failure.”
Duterte turned the tables on Robredo, saying the latter failed to make an accomplishment during her brief stint as co-chairperson of the Inter-Agency Committee on Anti-Illegal Drugs (ICAD).
The President also said Robredo has no right to lecture him when it comes to his way of handling the drug problem in the country.
“You know for all of these years, she has done nothing. She is a colossal blunder,” he said in an interview with Palace reporters on the sidelines of an event at Malacañan Palace. “You know, as a lawyer, lecturing on me, well, she should revisit her record, I suggest.”
Duterte was forced to appoint Robredo on October 31 as co-chair of ICAD, after the Vice President claimed that his administration’s drug war is “obviously not working.”
Robredo was originally tasked to assume the role of ICAD co-chairperson until June 30, 2022 but was stripped of her role at the anti-drug body following her supposed failure to present new measures in curbing the drug proliferation in the country.
Robredo, whose ICAD chairmanship only lasted 18 days, bared on Monday that the Duterte government barely made a dent in the drug menace despite a relentless war on the rampant narcotics trade.
The Vice President, in her assessment contained in her report summing up her 18-day stint at ICAD, said only 1 percent of the estimated consumption of illegal drugs had been seized since Duterte’s anti-narcotics campaign was launched in 2016.
Duterte merely brushed aside Robredo’s findings, saying he would not listen to the latter.
Presidential Spokesperson Salvador Panelo on Monday merely dismissed Robredo’s findings on the drug war as a “dud.”
On Dec. 12, 2019, Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency Director General and ICAD chair Aaron Aquino said Robredo did not see the “total picture” of the drug problem in the country during her short stint as drug czar.
Aquino also noted that Robredo had “refused to be briefed” on the roster of high-value targets and on the administration’s accomplishments to fight illegal drugs because her scope of authority at the time she was appointed as ICAD co-chair remained unclear.
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