Robredo launches podcast to reach younger generation

MANILA, Philippines — Vice President Leni Robredo has joined the growing podcast community in the country with her own series that promises “more relaxed and intimate conversations” with the second-highest official in the land.

“For so long, so many people have been asking me to do a podcast of my own, (especially here in our) office because a lot of our staff are very young people. Hopefully, with this podcast I will be able to reach the generation of my daughters,” she said during the first episode of The Leni Robredo podcast aired on Monday.

Unlike her weekly radio program that primarily tackles her activities as Vice President, Robredo’s Spotify podcast will feature relaxed and casual conversations with Filipino personalities about topics close to her heart.

Robredo’s first guest was host, author and content creator Bianca Gonzalez, who recently guested the Vice President in her own podcast.

During their conversation, the Vice President shared how she relates with Gonzalez, given that they never planned to do the things that they are currently doing.

“Politics was really not in my horizon. It only happened because the man I married eventually became a politician,” she said, referring to former Naga City mayor and interior secretary Jesse Robredo, who died in 2012.

Initially not the choice for the positions she won, Robredo won as Camarines Sur representative in 2013 and Vice President in 2016.

“In a way, I was saying that I did not aspire for this but I wanted to do it for the party. But when I was already the candidate, the mindset should be… once you decide to do it, you should always do your best,” she added in Filipino.

“And then now we are again in a point of reckoning. For me, a large part of it is also faith… a large part of all my decisions have been anchored on faith,” she added.

Robredo, urged by various groups to run for president, is being considered by political coalition 1Sambayan to be the standard bearer of a unified opposition slate. She expressed openness to running but has yet to make a final decision on the matter.

Fix the system

Meanwhile, at a virtual forum, Robredo stressed the need to discuss ways to address what she described as the abuse of the party-list system.

“Our party-list system, it has very good intentions on why it is in the Constitution. It was to give more opportunities to more people, sectors that do not have the capacity to run in the regular elections to be represented. But over the course of many elections that we’ve had, the party-list system has been abused time and again,” she added.

“What is the solution to fix this so that we will no longer allow the use of a constitutional provision to pave the way for consolidating of power of many political dynasties?” she added.

Critics of the party-list system note how members of political dynasties or term-barred politicians were able to secure seats in Congress by supposedly representing marginalized sectors.