MANILA, Philippines — Vice President Leni Robredo will automatically cease being the chairperson of the formerly ruling Liberal Party once her term ends on June 30, party president Kiko Pangilinan and her spokesperson Barry Gutierrez said Tuesday.
“The moment that her term ends, she will automatically stop being chairperson of the Liberal Party. That’s clear,” Robredo’s spokesperson Barry Gutierrez told ANC’s “Headstart.”
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"That is correct," Pangilinan, Robredo's running mate in the elections, told Philstar.com in a text message. "Traditionally, party leadership positions are reserved for the highest ranking elected officials."
But former Rep. Teddy Baguilat (Ifugao), who serves as LP’s vice president for internal affairs, said there is still no party decision on whether Robredo will remain the party’s chairperson after she steps down from office.
“It’s going to be a party decision after consulting with her. But LP officers’ terms are not tied with their incumbency,” Baguilat told Philstar.com in a text message partly in Filipino.
Still, Gutierrez said that Robredo will no longer be chairperson of the LP by June 30.
“My understanding is that the party chair is the highest ranking elected official. On June 30, she will no longer be an elected official, so she will no longer be chair,” he said in a text message to Philstar.com.
In the TV interview, Gutierrez said he still does not know if Robredo will resign from the LP after her term ends, when she plans to launch a non-government organization that will continue the programs she initiated under her office during her six-year term.
“I think that’s something that has to be resolved soon. As to what LP is going to do, well, that’s something that should probably be asked to who will be the leader of the Liberal Party after June 30,” he said.
The outgoing vice president has been chairperson of the LP since August 2017 following the first meeting of its National Executive Council after the May 2016 elections where its presidential candidate, Mar Roxas, was handily defeated by then Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, causing an exodus of party members to the latter’s PDP-Laban.
Robredo has described the LP as having been “decimated” and has pointed to this as proof that she was not being controlled by the party when she ran for president as an independent candidate in the recently concluded May polls.
While she ran as an independent candidate supposedly to show that she is open to working with everyone across the political spectrum, Robredo remained LP chairperson.
Robredo lost to her archrival, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., in the presidential race by a wide margin of some 17 million votes.