It’s time to clarify the vice president’s role in government
Credit to Author: THE MANILA TIMES| Date: Mon, 28 Oct 2019 19:09:47 +0000
WAS Vice President Maria Leonor “Leni” Robredo merely expressing her personal opinion, or was she doing it in line with her duties as vice president in our government when she told a Reuters reporter the other day that it is time for President Rodrigo Duterte to call off the government’s war on illegal drugs because it is a failure and because it is bad for the country’s international image?
We raise this question because we can find nothing in the Constitution that says the vice president has any role to play in policy-making in our republic.
The Charter says only that the vice president shall have the same qualifications and term of office as the president.
It says also that the vice president may be appointed as a member of the Cabinet.
Most importantly, it says that in case of death, permanent disability, removal from office or resignation of the president, the vice president shall serve the unexpired term. He or she is first in the line of succession to the Philippine presidency.
Other than succession, nothing in the Constitution indicates the specific role or duties that the vice president will serve.
Elsewhere in the Reuters interview, Robredo claimed that the government’s drug crackdown has overwhelmingly targeted the poor rather than big drug networks in the country. She added that President Duterte’s violent rhetoric was aiding a culture of police impunity for which international help should be sought should the government not change tack.
She said the thousands of people killed in the drug war were too many, with no evidence of a decline in drugs supply or usage.
“We ask ourselves, ‘Why is this still happening?’ The President has already made very serious threats to drug syndicates, to drug lords … and yet it’s still very prevalent, so obviously, it’s not working,” Robredo told Reuters.
She added: “The lives of our people are on the line and the dignity of our country is on the line, but my first call is for our government to take care of the mess.”
Coming from the second highest official of the land, this is heavy criticism indeed.
Consequently, we are moved to ask whether this is the role that the vice president is supposed to play in our government. Is there a document or statute somewhere that says the vice president will serve as some kind of critic in residence in our government?
In fact, the vice presidency has always been a position with no specific duties. It was so right at the beginning in the American republic. The US has found some use for the vice president by making him the president of the Senate. In our case, the office becomes active when the president chooses to appoint him or her as a member of the Cabinet.
For this position with no duties, the public treasury spends several hundred millions a year.
Last August, Robredo presented her office’s budget before the House appropriations committee, which quickly approved the proposed P447.68-million budget for 2019.
Robredo pointed out that her office’s proposed budget for next year went down by 17 percent from its approved 2018 budget of P543.95 million.
She appealed to the lawmakers to restore the slashed budget so that her office could continue providing livelihood assistance to its adopted local government units (LGUs).
Adopted LGU units? Where did this function of the Office of the Vice President come from? Who invented this thing?
It is also appropriate to cite here that the public treasury pays a tidy sum for the services of the vice president and her staff
The vice president is paid P353,476 (approximately $7,080) per month and P4.2 million per annum as of July 2016 by virtue of Executive Order 201 series of 2016 as authorized by Congressional Joint Resolution 4 series. Prior to the raise, the monthly salary was just P100,000.
In addition, the nation provides through the Quezon City Reception Office an official residence for the vice president.
The vice president of the Philippines also rides in style in a Mercedes Benz W140 S-Class, backed up by personnel from the Presidential Security Group.
Enumerating all this sounds petty and persnickety, but we want to make this point: The nation needs to define the functions, duties and powers of its second highest official. It is a mistake to tolerate Ms. Robredo’s freewheeling approach to public office, especially when her words collide with stated public policy.