Philippines' Duterte to VP: keep state secrets or lose your 'drugs tsar' post

MANILA, Nov 17 (Reuters) - 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 U.N.
Human Rights Council to investigate the killings and responded
to a preliminary examination by the ICC by pulling the
Philippines out of the organisation.
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
U.S. 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-centred 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 towards
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.