Over a casual phone call, President Rodrigo Duterte offered Vice President Leni Robredo the housing portfolio in the middle of a media interview at Malacañang on Thursday afternoon.
“Pwede ka housing ma’am? Can you be the housing secretary? Tanggapin mo ma’am?” Duterte asked Robredo over the phone.
In an RTVM video released to the media, Duterte talked to Robredo to “satisfy the questions everybody had been asking him.”
Robredo readily accepted the appointment. She said: “Mas mapaglilingkuran natin ang ating mga kababayang walang tahanan, at maipagpapatuloy natin ang ating pangakong itulak ang kaunlaran at kaginhawaan para sa ating mga kapus palad na kababayan.”
Robredo will head the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC), the government’s housing arm previously held by former Vice Presidents Jejomar Binay and Noli De Castro.
Before Duterte stopped talking to the media, he said in his earlier interviews he is not keen on giving Robredo a post in his cabinet because it would hurt the feelings of defeated vice presidential candidate and his close friend Bongbong Marcos.
