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Vice President Leni Robredo and President Rodrigo Duterte (Photos of their offices)
MANILA, Philippines – Vice President Leni Robredo on Wednesday denied breaking the chain of command by giving orders to the army and police during rescue and relief operations in the Cagayan Valley, which was during Typhoon Ulysses.
She was reacting to President Rodrigo Duterte’s outburst on Tuesday night when he accused her of “grandstanding” by making it appear that she was giving orders to the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP_ and the Philippine National Police (PNP) during operations in the Valley of Cagayan.
In an interview with CNN Philippines’ “News Night”, Robredo said he simply formed a team that relayed information from people to AFP and PNP about the situation in Isabela and Cagayan provinces, which were massively flooded.
“I don’t know what you mean by which I gave orders to the AFP. But for me, if you check my tweets on that fateful Friday night, I didn’t say anything about ordering the PNP. What I said was that I formed a team and that I will throw everything they send me and they will be the ones looking for help on the ground, ”he said in Filipino.
According to her, the team was formed on Wednesday night when she realized that what was happening was in other areas, it was what she saw in the town of Ragay in Camarines Sur.
He said all the team did was contact people from the AFP, the PNP and other organizations. He never called to give orders to any AFP official, contrary to what Duterte was implying.
The vice president said she had to respond to inquiries on Twitter last Friday, when the Cagayan Valley was already flooded.
“And what I did was check. I checked to see if there was someone from the government answering the calls for help. No one. No one from the government responded, ”he said.
He said he imagined people sitting on rooftops in the dark, with water running around them. And they were tweeting all night, but no one responded.
So he decided to retweet those calls for help.
“Why was he doing that? In that situation, the most important thing, number one, is to recognize that ‘we heard you, we received your call for help’. Number two: ‘Help is coming.’ Number three: ‘We are doing everything we can to save you,’ ”he said.
On Tuesday night, Duterte told Robredo not to compete with him, as the AFP and PNP chain of command begins with the president, not the vice president.
Presidential spokesman Harry Roque also said Robredo made it appear that she was in charge, although she was not.
But the senior AFP commanders said there was no high-level coordination between them and Robredo.
Twitter was flooded Friday night with rescue calls as the Cagayan Valley plunged into water for up to 13 meters after the Magat Dam, which sits on a tributary of the Cagayan River, rose to a critical level due to the typhoon. .
Photos sent by Isabela residents to INQUIRER.net showed that the flooding reached two-story houses in the Isabela town of Santa María, forcing residents to spend the night on their rooftops.
Later, Robredo turned his Twitter page into a hotline for people seeking help with his staff in getting the message across to authorities.
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