With no pol backers, volunteers mobilize in Robredo sortie in hostile territory
Chanting “Sure na sa Zambo Sur!”, thousands of supporters from all over Zamboanga del Sur fill Plaza Luz in Pagadian City on Friday, March 15 to welcome presidential aspirant Vice President Leni Robredo. Pagadian City is the last stop of Robredo’s four-day Mindanao barnstorm that brought her around Central Mindanao, the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), and the Zamboanga Peninsula. (VP Leni Media Bureau)
PAGADIAN CITY—No support from local politicians, no problem.
Volunteers from various sectors in Zamboanga del Sur pulled their efforts together for a rally here on Friday for Vice President Leni Robredo, manifesting her goal of going on a people’s campaign.
Organizers estimated the crowd at the Plaza Luz ground between 4,000 to 5,000 people. Campaigners for the vice president consider the province a “hostile territory” as there are only a handful of local politicians backing Robredo’s presidential bid.
“You surprised me,” Robredo told her supporters.
Among those that mobilized participants were doctors and health workers in government and private hospitals who expressed gratitude to the vice president for coming to their aid at a time when personal protective equipment was in short supply at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
They were joined by interfaith advocates and officials and workers of electric cooperatives in Zamboanga del Sur and Misamis Occidental provinces.
Jose Raoul Saniel, general manager of Zamboanga del Sur Electric Cooperative, said the One Electric Cooperative-Member Consumer Owners Movement (One EC-MCO) is solidly behind Robredo.
The movement count as members the partylist groups Association of Philippine Electric Cooperatives (APEC) that covers Visayas and some parts of Mindanao, Philippine Rural Electric Cooperatives Association (Philreca) that covers Luzon, Ako Padayon Pilipino (APDP) that covers Northern and Northeastern Mindanao, and RECOBODA that covers Southern Mindanao.
