POLITICAL: Liberal Party gets its foot in
Eighteen days after the votes had been cast, the lady who had been involved in a ding dong battle with Ferdinan Marcos Jr romped home to claim the Vice-President’s post after just scraping past the son of the former dictator in a nail-biting finish.
Thus, the ruling party managed to come up trumps in the race for the post of the Vice-President of the Republic of Philippines; with that, the representative of the Liberal Party from Camarines Sur emerged victorious at about 7:15 PM today.
The national Board of Canvassers who were the officials who were maintaining the tally of the votes polled by the candidates finally issued the number of votes which amounted to 14,418,817 votes for Leni Robredo while Marcos Jr ran up 14,155,344 thus making it a difference of 263,473 votes more than Marcos.
The vital announcement came just after 7:00 P. M. on this crucial Friday which ironically also happened to be the 58th birth anniversary of her late husband which had been the biggest point that helped her rise to the top post.
Her husband, Jesse Robredo , whose 58th birthday it was on Friday was the erstwhile Mayor of Naga City and had been serving as the Interior Secretary when he perished in an aircraft crash in 2012; the crash was reportedly due to engine failure.
The all-important declaration of the results materialized after the 166 Certificates of Canvassing (COCs) had been concluded.
A wave of sympathy for the widow had propelled her to victory in the mid-term elections that were conducted in 2013 to replace the deceased Internal Secretary. She was thus projected by the sympathy wave to the post of Congressional representative for Camarines Sur; the sympathy wave was so potent that, in the process of winning, she decimated the representative of the powerful political clan called Villafuerte.
Her role in the Congress earned her a lot of attention and she was instrumental in passing certain important instruments or bills which included some important ones like the one on Philippine Railways, The tax incentive Bill and the transparency Act etc.
Leni also came up with a different form of the Freedom of Information bill, but that did not see the light of day since it is still pending in Congress.
Leni was the human rights lawyer for Saligan when her husband was serving as the Mayor of Naga City. She was, incidentally, the lone woman contesting for the Vice-President’s post which she opted for when Grace Poe decided to run for President.
The most remarkable aspect was that she started off as a rank outsider.
Umrao Singh Umraoz.wordpress.com
Written for: Lars-Magnus Carlsson www.thephilippinepride.com
