halalan – Katrina Stuart Santiago

I applauded when I heard over radio yesterday, through a Naga news report, that Naga Mayor Leni Robredo had categorically stated that she is not running for national office in 2028, and instead is keen on winning another term as mayor.

This politically made sense to me. Three years is not enough to do anything substantial on the local level, especially if one is undoing the kind of politics that was instituted by nine years (if not longer) of a predecessor.

This also just socio-culturally-politically made sense to me as voter, spectator, and citizen: Mayor Leni has disappeared from national discourse, and understandably so, since she lost the 2022 elections and especially since she won the 2025 local elections. There is absolutely no reason to imagine that she can win another presidential run, especially given the epic loss of the last one. Not only will there be enough material against her that will easily be revived and refurbished for an anti-Leni campaign; there will also be absolutely nothing to talk about in terms of her contributions on the national level since 2022.

I think VP Leni knows this. And I trust that she and her closest (female) circle know how unkind another presidential run will be for her and her daughters. It will be as painful for the rest of us, who campaigned for her in 2022, and who will know, deep down, that she is a non-starter at this point. We will be faced with a whole library of anti-Leni content that we failed to battle with in 2022. In 2028, we won’t even have enough weapons and ammunition to counter these attacks given her lack of national political work and engagement.

Which is why I cannot understand statements such as that of Senator Kiko Pangilinan’s, that insist that she can, might, should still change her mind, for reasons that are so deliberately naive, and also obviously conveniently silent on the other (more obvious) contenders.

Pangilinan says:

Today, given her rising poll numbers, I believe that Leni is in the best position to build the broadest and strongest unity not just amongst the ranks of the Liberal Party and our allies but to include all other groups and personalities outside our allied forces who are also looking to participating in the 2028 Presidential elections.

The Senator is being silly. The reason Leni is being polled at all is because she has refused to say she is not running for president. The moment polling companies remove Leni’s name from the list of choices, that is the only time we will see who can rise against Sara Duterte. And the sooner we have a sense of our choices, the better for all of us on the democracy side who are in this to ensure that we do not go through another Duterte presidency.

Leni polling higher than anyone else on our side is also no surprise given the nature of surveys; among short-term memory, name-recall, and pandemic visibility, she will be top of mind second to a Duterte. Those were, after all, the names of a former president and vice president.

The only reason polling companies will include Leni’s name now is if those who commission a survey insist that her name be put in. And if that is a strategy that even the Liberals etal will use for their commissioned surveys, then that just proves how unkind and manipulative they can be against someone who is, purportedly, their own.

More Pangilinan:

As her poll numbers grow, so will the number of politicians and groups of various political colors and civil society/private sector groups throwing their support behind her. A snowballing of support behind her bid is quite possible. With her at the helm going into 2028 and given her current poll numbers that are much higher now than in the run up to the 2022 Presidential elections, a formidable coalition, far broader and more inclusive than the one we forged in 2022, can be cobbled together and lead us to victory in 2028.

This is of course exactly what we thought in October 2021, when Leni announced (too late) that she was running for President, for exactly the same reasons that Pangilinan now invokes: “para sa bayan.”

Tigilan na ‘yang ganyang linyahan. Especially because this is also what Duterte propaganda has used as slogan since 2024, when Sara Duterte left the Marcos Cabinet, and even more so since 2025, when the former president was jailed. And because they have been saying this, at scale, across all platforms, more consistently than any of us on this side, this now has lost all meaning. Propaganda-wise, “para sa bayan” now invariably means another Duterte presidency.

Here’s more of Pangilinan sounding exactly like the dilawan-pinklawan that lost us the 2022 elections.

Now more than ever, having witnessed the largest corruption scandal in Philippine history, our people are crying out for good governance, and public accountability. Now more than ever, all those who believe in meaningful change and honesty and integrity in our public institutions must come together, sacrifice our time and effort for the sake of a better future for our children.

Big words ano. Good governance. Public accountability. Meaningful change. Honesty and integrity. I am not sure that any of these are the reasons why Leni is polling high at all. Political consciousness will tell us that more than anything, what people are remembering about Leni as VP is the work she did during the pandemic. At best, that was crisis management. And that is not at all what wins elections — because if that were true, she would’ve won 2022.

But Pangilinan’s biggest problem is that he even believes Leni to be the leader of the democratic movement that has a chance of winning 2028 for us.

I hope I am wrong but Leni’s refusal to run, may create a leadership vacuum that I am afraid cannot be adequately filled by other contenders, this in turn could lead to disunity amongst our ranks and the splintering of not just our forces but of all potential allies outside our ranks. The net effect will be the fielding of various political parties and groups of their respective Presidential bets, further weakening our chances and delivering victory to our adversaries.

This is echoed by Senator Leila De Lima:

umaasa talaga tayo na magbabago pa sya ng isip because for us, she’s still the most winnable among the possible opposition candidates.

Some things need to be said here. One, Leni has not been a leader of this movement for democracy since last year, when she won the Naga mayoralty race. In fact, we have not felt or heard Leni since she lost in 2022 — and that is good for her (kudos to her sense of distance and boundaries and self-care).

Two, when Leni ran in 2022, that did not stop other groups from fielding their own candidates. Ka Leody, Manny Pacquiao, Ping Lacson, Isko Moreno all ran, too, despite VP Leni. Pangilinan should stop kidding himself that they were able to gather a strong coalition around the Robredo-Pangilinan tandem.

Three, winnability was what we campaigned on, was the fuel that pushed us, in 2022. And we proved then that “winnability” to us will not mean winning with the larger majority of voters.

Lastly, whatever “vacuum” Pangilinan is worried about is a falsity. It’s only a vacuum because people like him insist that Leni is the the only person who has a fighting chance. This is absolutely false.

Which brings me to this question: why doesn’t Pangilinan — and many like him on the Liberal side — why doesn’t he consider someone like Risa Hontiveros a viable leader and contender for the 2028 presidential elections? Hontiveros has been at the forefront of urgent and critical investigations in the Senate, from the illegal POGO hubs to the West Philippine Sea; has been fighting with all of us for the divorce and SOGIE bills; has been an important voice on national issues since 2016, and even more so since 2022.

It is beyond me why there is such a silence on Hontiveros as, in fact, a level-up to Leni. The kind that will not dial back on her pro-divorce stance (as Leni did) when faced with the Catholic Church. The kind that will not suddenly compromise on her stance for equal rights and protection for LGBTQIA+ in the face of conservative criticism. The kind that can and will and has proven able to speak about democratic rights and systemic change in a language that we all understand, and in ways that are doable and imaginable and possible.

Pangilnan says:

We must forge the broadest unity possible for the cause of good governance and win this for our people and work together for a better future for our children.

Maybe the broadest unity is only possible when the Liberals like Pangilinan realize that when a woman says NO, she means it. And when another woman is willing and absolutely able to take on that spot vacated by the woman who said no, then we should also respect her enough to see her, name her, and work with her.

The burden at this point is not on Leni to change her mind. The burden is on the Liberals to tell us why they cannot imagine a 2028 battle for the presidency without her. ***

A little over a week since the May 9 elections, and one understand why those on the side of democracy, Left, Liberal, and civil society, feel like we’ve been robbed.

In that sense, everyone’s performing like victims. Some are raising their fists against the irregularities on election day—dysfunctional vote counting machines, dysfunctional SD cards, long lines because of both, voters disenfranchised. Some have flexed their privilege: not going to help the poor anymore, not going to help nation anymore, bahala kayo sa buhay niyo. Some have shot back at actual people who they know voted for Marcos: magbayad kayo ng utang niyo! A day or two after elections, we heard of some small NGOs losing their funders—purportedly, people were not wanting to help the new government at all, and that is equated with not wanting to help the most vulnerable.

Many are spreading all sorts of disinformation about the president-elect, letting this permeate social media accounts in the way that rumors do. It is fueled, shared across platforms, thrown around Viber and messenger GCs for good measure. Never mind fact checking—it always feels good to have our perceptions proven right by any kind of information at all.

But I guess we want to forgive ourselves for these responses? Emotions are high. We thought we were going to win after all—especially if we believed surveys were unreliable. And now we are grasping at straws, picking the stories and narratives that serve our purpose, because it is the only way to keep the fire burning.

But at a time like this one, these responses, public as they are, do nothing but fuel this divide that already exists, a polarization that we now know is really about 14 million vs 31 million. And we need to understand that it doesn’t matter whether or not you think or believe polarization is happening—the fact is, it already is.

(more…)

On repeat: I do not think misogyny and the patriarchy are those big ideas that have made this electoral race an uphill climb for VP Leni. That has no basis if one considers the kind of very feminine, very female, very woman empowerment frames that have been created for the women on the Marcos-Duterte side—from Manang Imee to Tita Irene, to Sara Duterte herself. Let me not begin about Liza Araneta, or even their female supporters like Dawn Zulueta. It has even less basis if we consider that throughout the past two years in this pandemic, it is the women in communities that have risen quickly, worked on survival and recovery efforts, taken on more than they usually do. Yes, patriarchy is here. No, it isn’t as simplistic as saying “majority of voters are patriarchal”—like that dictates the numbers we shade on our ballots.

Let’s be clear: there are many reasons why the Robredo-Pangilinan campaign has failed to capture the imagination of the 90% of voters we need to convert. No, the reasons are not as simple as so many 280-character tweets insist it is. This is not about the campaign being “feminine,” nor about the campaign being middle class.

And certainly, the solution is not to make it “more masculine.” These assertions are borne of terrible oversimplifications, i.e., that since Duterte has high-approval ratings, therefore what we need is more masculinity, more military, on VP Leni’s campaign. That fails to consider that the past four years a majority of us—and yes, that cuts across social classes—have grown tired of the militarized governance of Duterte. No, people are not tired of Duterte, but they are at the receiving end of his military and police, so emboldened by having a President who will forgive them anything. To even imagine that any campaign would benefit from being seen with military and police officials at this point, is failing to read the room. (more…)

I was asked in a women’s month forum about what to do with comments on women being weak leaders, the kind that we encounter on social media when we talk about being on the side of Robredo-Pangilinan in this heavily polarized electoral exercise. The context of course is the notion that we remain a heavily patriarchal society, and as such, there is a basic, illogical, refusal to even consider a woman leader.

My answer was simple: I do not think that VP Leni’s womanhood is what’s being attacked, as much as it is her person. And yes, those can be one and the same, but in this particular case, given propaganda against her that’s run its course the past six years, and has escalated across this campaign, hindi ito tungkol sa pagiging anti-woman, tungkol ito sa pagiging anti-Leni.

This is the same VP Leni that’s been called Leni Lugaw for years, na nag-evolve to Leni Lutang, at nag-evolve to Lenlen nitong nakaraang ilang buwan. These three things are interconnected, and are part of a bigger narrative against VP Leni that the other side has galvanized into massive black propaganda. And sure, Leni Lugaw started with Duterte supporters and propagandists, pero ang matindi sa social media, wala naman nang tumitingin saan nagsimula. Ang lagi lang natin nakikita ay kung ano ang nasa harap natin. Ibig sabihin, sa iba man nagmula ang Leni Lugaw at bagama’t simpleng paninira lang ito noon, iba ang gamit nito sa kasalukuyan ng kampanya. That the other side has been able to evolve it into two different things based solely on the exercise of spreading spliced videos and fake news that frame the vice president as incompetent and un-presidential—is the success of its campaign strat. They didn’t rest on the laurels of Lugaw, and as that was being turned into a positive, i.e., they shifted quickly to Lutang. (more…)

To some extent, it is no surprise how the closer we are to the May elections, the deeper we are into our echo chambers. This is, after all, what it means when more people agree on something. After all, the number of people it takes to disbelieve Covid numbers is also the same number of people you need to debunk Presidential surveys; the number of people you need to start believing SMNI would be the same number of people you need to start championing Google trends as the basis for “real” presidential survey numbers. The more you are in a bubble of a rally, the more you believe this is it, the election can be won by this.

That we are mirroring the actions of the other side should be no surprise, but it also bears articulation.

Here, a basic lesson in gentrification. The spaces we inhabit are based on our privilege, as it is based on the lack of it. Our access to certain areas of a city dictates the same. Places within the same city, even in the same zipcode, can completely disenfranchise the poor. Emerald Avenue, Ayala Avenue, and all the “business districts” do this. This is why the same stretch of JP Rizal that ties together Cembo, Pembo, Rembo is a space as fancy as Rockwell and Powerplant mall.

This is not the time to problematize gentrification. The point is only to acknowledge that the choices made for where the big Robredo rallies are held is indicative of the audience it caters to.

And that audience is us, people who are already voting for VP Leni, who are already voting for the 1Sambayan slate, who are already in the echo chamber. We are the ones who would not think twice about going to the business districts, who would not feel out-of-place in these spaces, and might even have friends and family who live in the area. The question really is why VP Leni is spending time and energy still talking to us, the people who are already on her side? (more…)

Katrina Stuart Santiago

Katrina Stuart Santiago

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