BY NONOY PERDON – PHILIPPINE Vice President Leni Robredo should not be surprised to find and eat here Down Under the spicy laing vegetable delicacy or the Bicol Express favourite stir fry famous in her region when she visits a close relative for an important family commitment in October this year. Australia now has abundant supply of ingredients for these food from multicultural sources that Filipino-Australians used to miss out from home country a decade or more years in the past.
In her second time around in Australia, Vice President Robredo will be on a private visit which she would have preferred off the radar like her first visit to Australia over three years ago when she was then a congresswoman and few months before being elected as vice president in 2016. However, Filipino Australians surely would not miss meeting the second highest official of the Philippines such as in the scheduled business forum organised by the Australian Philippine Business Council (APBC) at Sydney’s Barangaroo business park dovetailing her visit. In 2016, she had a “no frills” visit of Sydney, tried the city’s subway and met the then Australian Ombudsman in an exposure tour on Australian judicial system.
APBC President Eduard Alcordo said,” “The Vice President is the most senior government official after President Aquino to visit Australia. It is important that the Philippines continues to engage positively with our friend
We have a lot to showcase to the world – a sustained growth rate of 6-7% per annum, a young and skilled population with an optimistic outlook. VP Robredo is a strong advocate, and role model, of women empowerment. The Vice President, along with other leading lights, will discuss this at the APBC event we are hosting for her.” Robredo is a lawyer by profession and a social activist.
known for working as pro bono lawyer for the poor and fringe dwellers of society.
She entered politics after the death of her husband Jesse Robredo then Undersecretary for Interior and Local Government in a plane crash and won over the candidate of a long serving political family dynasty in Bicol Region.
Tauted as presidential timber, the late husband Jesse Robredo was a much admired local mayor in Naga City and recipient of the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award on local government.
Twice, Leni Robredo was drafted to run for a political office, first as candidate for the legislature and then as alternative candidate for vice-presidency which she won with a slim margin over the heir to the Marcos family dynasty Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos.
Robredo was not given an assignment to serve under the present administration of President Duterte due to party affiliation differences unlike previous Vice Presidents.
A long drawn election protest by her election rival Bongbong Marcos against her is soon to be concluded by an electoral tribunal chaired by the nation’s Supreme Court thereby resolving the controversial issue whether Robredo would continue serving as Vice President for the next three years.
Members of the association Australian Devotees of Our Lady of Penafrancia (ADOLP) led by long time community leader Mr Jun Relunia would be happy to confer with Philippine Vice President Leni Robredo once again during her scheduled personal visit to Sydney.
A delegation from ADOLP had a courtesy call on Robredo on 15 September last year during their attendance of the Penafrancia festival in Naga City. ADOLP itself holds a yearly Australian version of the Penafrancia festival in Penrith, NSW a week after the Naga City festival, complete with three-week long novenas in Western Sydney and the fluvial procession of the faithful at the Nepean River in Penrith, NSW.Relunia Photos
