How do you solve a problem like Robredo?

The perennial problem confronting presidents is how to manage their vice presidents. The challenge is how to make them members of the official team. If marginalized (like some vice governors and vice mayors we know), the vice can become a big headache. Robredo's acceptance of the glorified title of drug czarina is a big problem.

It’s the fault of President Rody Duterte’s advisers that Vice President Leni Robredo has become a loose cannon, an official who keeps attacking the administration. They could have given her a post from the beginning to keep her busy and become an official member of the president's team. Her short stint as the housing czar wasn’t even noticed. This designation as drug czarina is either a joke, a “consuelo de bobo,” a belated but all-too-obvious Trojan horse, or even be a booby trap. Robredo should have known better than accept it. It’s an appointment to a non-existent position, where she is set up to fail and self-destruct. And she would have a Cabinet rank while General Aquino, her co-chairman, is an undersecretary. That’s an incongruity in organization and management.

The problem with Leni is the people around her, the so-called “we bulong brigade,” like Senator Kiko, whose only clear achievement (with due respect) was to marry Sharon Cuneta; Hontiveros whose only contribution to governance is to raise issues, criticize ad nauseam, but never offer concrete and viable solutions; and Leni's fellow Bicolana, the detained Leila de Lima, who is full of venom and out to wreak havoc at any administration initiative. Robredo's only sensible adviser is former senator Drilon, but he has become too immersed in yellow biases, that his words of wisdom are often diluted with prejudice. I'm glad that the other Bicolano gadfly, Trillanes, has been relegated to near oblivion.

If I were an adviser to Duterte, I would counseled to put Leni in charge of disaster preparedness and response. The multiple typhoons, earthquakes, and floods that annually wreck the country could have made her too busy she wouldn’t have time to listen to Kiko's naughty instigations and Risa's provocative imagination. Leni would be overwhelmed with dizzying problems due to endless natural or man-made disasters. It was thus a monumental error on the part of Malacañan to have isolated Robredo. To put her in the drug war is even a bigger “faux pas,” akin to planting an enemy’s spy in the war room. That is a formula for disaster.

Another post for Robredo would have been crisis management czar. Leni would have been the busiest vice president in this part of the world. There’s the traffic malady, let her crack that nut. The water crisis, let her find the solution. The African Swine Fever crisis, let Robredo research on its solution. The pollution crisis, housing crisis, and garbage crisis. Let her fathom the depths of such mysteries and phenomena. Or Leni could be in-charge of OFWs to ask for mercy from kings and prime ministers for death convicts. The presidential advisers were too myopic and clueless on the many lessons from history.

The best way to handle vice presidents (and also vice mayors and vice governors) is to keep them busy so as not to give them time to think of naughty tricks and treats. Send them to negotiate a treaty in Siberia, or rescue hundreds of distressed OFWs in Kuwait and Libya. And let them stay there longer enough to be isolated from de Lima, Trillanes, and Pangilinan. I think the presidential advisers badly need sensible advising themselves. Tsk, tsk, tsk!