PRESIDENTIAL daughter and Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio has asked Vice President Maria Leonor G. Robredo to refrain from giving advice “if she knows nothing about what is happening on the ground.”
Ms. Robredo, in her weekly Sunday radio program, said the Davao City government could learn from Cebu City’s handling of a coronavirus surge, which involved the active participation of the private sector and the medical community.
Ms. Carpio, in a statement released late Sunday, said the vice president “should not attack the medical community of Davao City as being inactive when they have been silently suffering and working tirelessly to help save lives since March of last year.”
She also said the private sector has been “very helpful and has tremendously contributed” to the pandemic response in the city.
“She (vice president) should open her eyes to the surge of cases in localities all around the world and she might be able to say that a surge in cases where 85% of the cases are asymptomatic is primarily identified by aggressive testing, coupled with tracing and isolation/quarantining,” the mayor said.
Several parts in the central and southern Philippines, mostly urban areas, have in recent weeks seen a sudden increase in coronavirus cases.
Ms. Carpio also told Ms. Robredo to refrain from “involving the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) surge in Davao City in her attempt at politicking.”
The mayor said there will be a proper time to attack her leadership as a local official if the vice president “dares to run for President.”
Ms. Carpio has previously denied intent to vie for the country’s top post in next year’s elections as banners urging her to run have been cropping up in various parts of the country.
In a statement on Monday, the vice president’s spokesperson, Ibarra M. Guttierez, said Ms. Robredo was not politicking and simply offering assistance as she has done in Cebu, Palawan, and Tuguegarao City. — Kyle Aristophere T. Atienza