A night of thanksgiving for Leni’s backers

VICE President Leni Robredo on Thursday night asked her supporters to continue to stay by her side in the next six years, just as they stood by her during the campaign that ultimately led to her hard-won victory in the May 9 elections.

Robredo joined over 3,000 of her supporters who gathered at the Quezon Memorial Circle for Robredo’s thanksgiving party, which was organized for her supporters who could not be accommodated at the Quezon City Executive House for her formal inauguration earlier that day.

The country’s 14th Vice President said that while the night was a night of thanksgiving, it was also a night where she would ask them for their support once again.

“We can set aside our personal interests…We have the same dreams. We have to unite so that after six years, when I step down from office as your vice president, when I look beside me, it’s your faces that I will still see,” Robredo said in Filipino.

Seeing that many in the crowd were wearing the shirt with the words “From one percent to vice president,” Robredo said those words were deep and had an immense meaning.

“It is because ‘from 1 percent to vice president’ was everybody’s journey. If you did not introduce me to others and defended me, the 1 percent (would have) remained at 1 percent,” Robredo said.

Robredo’s rise from the bottom of the six-cornered fight to the vice presidency was phenomenal.

She won by a slim margin over her closest rival, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son and namesake of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Robredo is now known as the second widow to have defeated a Marcos, after the late President Corazon Aquino, who was swept to power after the 1986 Edsa “People Power” revolt, drove away the strongman and his family, restoring democracy in the country.

Marcos Jr. has filed an electoral protest against Robredo.

Her camp said that the protest would be to Robredo’s favor because it would “finally answer the questions raised before the public.”

“We will be able to answer the allegations leveled against us. To us, it is better that the protest is through the formal process and made before the right institutions,” said Georgina Hernandez, Robredo’s spokesperson.

In her speech on Thursday night, Robredo said she wants to get to know personally each one who worked hard and sacrificed in her bid for the vice presidency.

“My office in Quezon City is open for all of you. Come visit me there so that I can get to know you,” Robredo said.

The Vice President also told her supporters it was time to move on from the deeply divisive election campaign, as she thanked all those who passionately defended her against the vicious attacks on her.