Philippines’ Duterte to VP: keep state secrets or lose your ‘drugs tsar’ post

Monday, 18 November 2019 00:01 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

MANILA (Reuters): Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte threatened to remove the vice president from her “drugs tsar” post if she shared state secrets with foreign individuals and entities.

The warning, which the president made in a television interview, came a few days after he offered Leni Robredo a lead role in his brutal war on drugs, which she later accepted to reassess a campaign she said was fraught with senseless killings. Robredo, a political rival of the popular Duterte, told Reuters on 23 Oct. that international help, including from the United Nations and International Criminal Court (ICC), should be sought if the Government refused to change tack and stop abusive police.

Philippines Vice President Maria Leonor Robredo speaks during her first meeting with a drug war task force after President Rodrigo Duterte appointed her as its co-head, in Quezon City, Metro Manila, Philippines, 8 November - Reuters

“Revealing State secrets to foreign individuals and entities as well as welcoming those who have trampled the country’s sovereignty would be damaging to the welfare of the Filipino people,” presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo said in a statement on Sunday. “She may not realise it but she could be treading on dangerous ground. It could be an overreach of the granted authority, hence the reminder,” Panelo said.

Duterte has reacted with fury to a resolution by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate the killings and responded to a preliminary examination by the ICC by pulling the Philippines out of the organisation.

Human rights experts at home and abroad are incensed by thousands of deaths in what police say were sting operations that resulted in shootouts.

Activists dispute those accounts and accuse police of executing suspects based on weak intelligence. Police reject that. In an interview with GMA News aired on Saturday, Duterte said he would fire Robredo as co-chair of an inter-agency on drugs if she shared classified information because certain matters should be kept with the Government.

Robredo met with the officials from United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), community-based advocacy groups and US Embassy last week to discuss the drug problem, which she has said must be tackled from a health and social perspective, including prevention and treatment rather than a largely police-centred approach.

Robredo, who was elected separately to Duterte, has long been a critic of his flagship campaign, arguing that thousands of urban poor have been killed, with no sign of progress towards dismantling major drugs networks. She had no immediate comment on Duterte’s remarks.