Text and photos by Elizabeth Lolarga
The audience at SM Cinema Baguio mostly came in their best “Kakampink” outfits so much so that the queue outside the movie house attracted a paranoid, alarmist alert from a netizen who falsely posted that this was a gathering of communists in Facebook.
But the cinema was filled to seating capacity with pre-registered attendants. That’s part of the Leni Robredo discipline—come early, follow the rules, respect one another (no shoving or pushing happened despite the long queue), think pink, even love pink.
I must confess that I was nearly incapacitated by osteoarthritis at the height of the Robredo-Kiko Pangilinan presidential and vice presidential campaign in 2022. I viewed the mammoth rallies from the comfort of livestreamed videos, regretting that I was not fit enough to have my number counted among the masses of people, whether in Baguio or in Makati at the miting de avance.
Thank heavens for writer-director-producer Ramona S. Diaz’s documentary film And So It Begins for making possible for us kakampinks to relive those heady days when hope was truly within our grasp and the prospect of radical change didn’t inspire calls of terrorism from the other side.
Like Gandhi, Ninoy Aquino and other leaders of non-violence, Robredo preached a gospel of life-altering love. Not the fuzzy-wuzzy or merely feel-good kind, but a love that sought to address and uproot the centuries-old injustices in our feudal, corrupt society.
Leni Robredo, center, at a ‘lugawan’ fund-raiser at Gypsy Baguio by Chef Waya in December 2021
Robredo’s appeal harked back to the yellow confetti days of another presidential candidate, Cory Aquino. It was pitting a widow with no political or financial machinery against incumbent strongmen (Marcos Sr., Duterte) with all resources available.
Cory was a reluctant candidate thrown into the spotlight after the assassination of her husband. But instead of acting like a woman maddened by grief and seeking vengeance, she appealed with that calm, motherly voice that was capable of summoning millions to Rizal Park to start a campaign of boycotting Marcos- or crony-owned newspapers and other businesses.
Robredo, with a few registers of her voice, uncannily sounds like Cory. Plus she has enough humor and wit to see her through political speeches at rallies. She only had to read aloud the home-made placards seas of people brought to those events, and the audience’s day was made.
During one such rally, she was filmed reading aloud a scrawled placard with the one holding it begging for a selfie with her so he could convince his pro-Bongbong Marcos father to vote for her. She asked him to come up the stage and smiled for that selfie. The crowd roared. To paraphrase Rudyard Kipling’s poem “If,” she knows how to walk with kings and not lose her common touch.
When a manang (older woman) offers an umbrella to keep the sun out of Robredo’s head, Robredo responded by saying that she is not Imelda Marcos who had to have a bodyguard or even a Supreme Court Chief Justice to hold an umbrella for her. This modesty is an endearing trait, indeed.
Her smile is part of that graciousness and steely strength. She smiled through President Duterte’s outright pambabastos or vulgar ways when she was his vice president. Others might easily just have stood up to show they’ve taken offense and walked out on him. She compared that time with him as some sort of a fraternity hazing with her as the neophyte. She considered his words as verbal blows or pambubugbog.
But who is Leni Robredo, and why is Duterte fearful of her? Only fear can inspire such macho posturings! She described herself as an ordinary lawyer serving non-governmental organizations that, in turn, serve the marginalized of society. She was used to sleeping on fisherfolk’s banca when nights would find her working overtime with them, and her body would be feasted on by mosquitos.
She could’ve chosen to remain so had not her husband Jesse, President Noynoy Aquino’s secretary of Interior and Local Government, died in a plane crash in 2012. Circumstances propelled her to run for a congressional seat. Even then she had no machinery and relied on door-to-door campaigning. Hers was a landslide victory on election day.
With the Liberal Party still shaky, almost in a shambles, force of circumstance again moved her to run for vice president and win against Marcos Jr. who never wearied of claiming she cheated him out of that position. This seemed laughable coming from Marcos—it is like the pot calling the kettle black.
The author meets her presidentiable at a December 2021 fundraiser in Baguio
During her memorable and historic presidential campaign, Robredo did not even have to call on the support of figures in the entertainment industry. In one scene, unmasked actors Bodjie Pascua, Jaime Fabregas, among others, revived street theater, which took root during the First Quarter Storm and was banned during martial law, by visiting a disadvantaged community, performing, issuing leaflets, gladhanding voters. This at the height of COVID-19. When the acting troupe break out into song, “Handog ng Pilipino sa Mundo,” the goose bumps rose on my arms.
The story of 2021 Nobel Peace Prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa is also included, she who warned that the country was facing its end times after the May 2022 elections and should the son of the dictator win at any cost.
And yet, as early as 2014, Ressa’s group, Rappler.come, came out with a t-shirt promoting these words: “Believe there is good in the world.”
That is just what Filipinos must hold on to with all the strength of their faith—do good and believe that the end times may someday soon mean the end of disinformation, trolling, corruption scandals, extra-judicial killings and other blights that have kept us from raising our chins up.
