VP ignores ‘Lenileaks’

MANILA, Philippines - She would rather focus on her job than dignify allegations regarding her alleged involvement in a plot to unseat President Duterte, Vice President Leni Robredo said yesterday.

In the controversy now called “Lenileaks,” her staff was alleged to have engaged some of her supporters in email conversation regarding a plot to oust Duterte.

“This is not clear to me because since Tuesday I’ve been going to areas devastated by the typhoon. But I received bits and pieces of information that there is this Yahoogroups where I’m being linked,” Robredo said in an interview in Boac, Marinduque. “I’m not a part of that group.”

The emails were reportedly seen in a YahooGroups page, Global Filipino Diaspora Council.

Robredo said she had been on the receiving end of fake news.

“For me, as much as possible, I want to concentrate on my job, because I think there is a lot of viciousness now in the internet,” she said.

Robredo also denied meeting or talking to Filipino-American philanthropist Loida Nicolas-Lewis, earlier tagged in an alleged plot to oust Duterte.

Lewis, who also hails from Bicol like Robredo, is a known supporter of the Vice President and her party’s standard bearer in the 2016 elections, Mar Roxas.

“I’ve talked to her but that was a long time ago. I don’t remember if that was before the campaign or during the campaign, I think it’s before the campaign,” Robredo said.

She said Lewis supported her when she ran for congresswoman in Camarines Sur.

“After the elections, I don’t remember any meeting with her. They said we met in America; that’s not true,” the Vice President said. “We don’t have any personal meeting or phone calls.”

On allegation made by Justice Secretary Vitaliano Aguirre II that she stayed overnight at the house of Lewis in the US, Robredo admonished the secretary to stop lying.

“He is the secretary of DOJ, he should not tell lies. We didn’t talk, we didn’t meet in the US when I went there,” Robredo said, referring to Lewis.

The Vice President and her children spent the holidays in the US.

In a speech before student leaders of the Ateneo de Manila University last Sunday, Robredo called all the allegations against her as “purely ridiculous,” including rumors that she had an abortion in the US.

“If I allow myself to play their game, how will I achieve my goal (to serve the poor)? How will I perform my mandate?” she said.

She cited a picture of her circulating in social media reportedly showing her wearing a pair of $700 Salvatore Ferragamo shoes.

Robredo also revealed she had been accused of having a house in Tagaytay and a boyfriend.  There were allegations she was married to a leftist before her marriage to the late interior secretary Jesse Robredo.

“Most of the things thrown at me are really purely ridiculous,” the Vice President said.

“Now they have new allegations, the so-called leaks. My question to myself is, tomorrow what will be their new allegations?” Robredo said.