MANILA: 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 Oct. 23 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.
“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 realize 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 organization.
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-centered 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 toward dismantling major drugs networks. She had no immediate comment on Duterte’s remarks.
Robredo, 54, accepted the offer to co-lead the drugs crackdown that has prompted activists to call for international intervention, even though she suspected her rival’s administration would try to thwart her progress.
But Panelo dismissed those concerns as baseless and said the president’s latest remarks were meant to remind Robredo of the “imperatives as well as the limits” of her role.
“Other pessimists contend...the president had begun clipping her wings so as not to fulfill her mandate. Such speculations are unfounded and they are unproductive as well,” Panelo said.
Philippines’ Duterte to VP Robredo: keep state secrets or lose your ‘drugs tsar’ post
Philippines’ Duterte to VP Robredo: keep state secrets or lose your ‘drugs tsar’ post
- ‘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’
Europeans push back at US over claim they face ‘civilizational erasure’
- “Contrary to what some may say, woke, decadent Europe is not facing civilizational erasure,” Kallas told the conference
MUNICH: A top European Union official on Sunday rejected the notion that Europe faces “civilizational erasure,” pushing back at criticism of the continent by the Trump administration.
EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas addressed the Munich Security Conference a day after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio offered a somewhat reassuring message to European allies. He struck a less aggressive tone than Vice President JD Vance did in lecturing them at the same gathering last year but maintained a firm tone on Washington’s intent to reshape the trans-Atlantic alliance and push its policy priorities.
Kallas alluded to criticism in the US national security strategy released in December, which asserted that economic stagnation in Europe “is eclipsed by the real and more stark prospect of civilizational erasure.” It suggested that Europe is being enfeebled by its immigration policies, declining birth rates, “censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition” and a “loss of national identities and self-confidence.”
“Contrary to what some may say, woke, decadent Europe is not facing civilizational erasure,” Kallas told the conference. “In fact, people still want to join our club and not just fellow Europeans,” she added, saying she was told when visiting Canada last year that many people there have an interest in joining the EU.
Kallas rejected what she called “European-bashing.”
“We are, you know, pushing humanity forward, trying to defend human rights and all this, which is actually bringing also prosperity for people. So that’s why it’s very hard for me to believe these accusations.”
In his conference speech, Rubio said that an end to the trans-Atlantic era “is neither our goal nor our wish,” adding that “our home may be in the Western hemisphere, but we will always be a child of Europe.”
He made clear that the Trump administration is sticking to its guns on issues such as migration, trade and climate. And European officials who addressed the gathering made clear that they in turn will stand by their values, including their approach to free speech, climate change and free trade.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said Saturday that Europe must defend “the vibrant, free and diverse societies that we represent, showing that people who look different to each other can live peacefully together, that this isn’t against the tenor of our times.”
“Rather, it is what makes us strong,” he said.
Kallas said Rubio’s speech sent an important message that America and Europe are and will remain intertwined.
“It is also clear that we don’t see eye to eye on all the issues and this will remain the case as well, but I think we can work from there,” she said.
