🇵🇭 Ka Leody de Guzman won't win today

Hello friends!

It is election day in the Philippines!

I don’t think it’s possible to be hotter and with pandemic rules restricting how many voters are allowed into booths at a time, lines are long. We will, of course, follow up further in the week when winners become clear and reporting from across the country is published.

But today, I have a very special report. The candidacy of Ka Leody de Guzman, and his VP pick Walden Bello, has been a very quiet one with two tickets dominating the field. Quiet, however, does not mean boring. I spoke with one friend who has already this morning cast his vote for the pair on why he supports the two and not, say, the Leni Robredo ticket.

What I really liked about this conversation is that it’s forward-looking, not interested in just the back and forth of leadership but to a future that has moved on from that binary.

See you later in the week and if you’re in the Philippines, stay safe and hydrated!Erin Cook

Before I could even offer, my interviewee asked if I could give him a pseudonym. The social media battleground has been hard enough for journalists and other high profile users so for the average Filipino without institutional support I shudder to think how it must feel to receive death threats and abuse for sharing your views. I gave it a Google. The Philippine Statistics Authority said the most common name for male babies in 2018 was Nathaniel. Let’s go with that. 

Nathaniel is a Filipino working in the NGO space who, prior to the pandemic, travelled much of the archipelago for work. He describes himself as a soc-dem and has an obvious passion for environmental justice and ending oligarchic governance. For him, Ka Leody de Guzman and his running mate, Walden Bello, have campaigned for the Philippines he would like to see. 

Leody, as he’s popularly known, stands in stark contrast to the frontrunner in the presidential race. He was heavily involved in union organising efforts beginning when he worked at a factory in the early 80s, rising to the top of a labour coalition. The assassination of Benigno Aquino and EDSA 1 was key to his activism and he was also involved in EDSA 2. He ran for an unsuccessful Senate bid in 2019 that helped bring him into the mainstream. 

Runningmate Walden Bello veers even further to the left of his VP candidate cohort. Bello has a long history of political activism focusing on anti-authoritarianism and capitalism, including a stint in jail after trying to take over the San Francisco Philippine Consulate. Seriously, read his Wikipedia. It’s bananas. He has brought that energy to the campaign. He is not interested at all in the civility facade:

I have no interest in ever endorsing anyone in another country’s elections, but I can recognise King Shit when I see it. 

Nathaniel had become aware of Leody during the senate run in 2019, but it wasn’t until a coworker approached him last October about the presidential election that he seriously considered him. 

“At that stage, Leni [Robredo, running a distant second in polls to Marcos Jr] hadn’t decided. There was a lot of frustration around that, because we saw Marcos coming up and Leni still hadn’t decided! Back then, I was for Leni but I wanted her to make a decision.

“I was like ‘Marcos is right here! We need you to decide! And be decisive! Because otherwise Marcos is going to walk in and take the presidency easily,’ so there has been a lot of frustration there,” Nathaniel says. It was this frustration over the perceived stagnation that prompted him to listen to his coworker. 

“I vaguely remembered him [from the 2019 election]. I checked him out and I realised, with regards to my own personal politics, the things I personally believe in and the things I want for the Philippines, he checks off more than Leni would.”

Throughout our 45 minute conversation, Nathaniel repeatedly notes he does not dislike Leni and agrees with her supporters that she would make an excellent president. 

“She is very capable, under Duterte she has done so much with very limited resources,” he says, referring to the very tense relationship the President and VP have had for their six years in office. While Duterte ran amok, Leni got on with the job of responding to natural disasters and then the pandemic (and the challenge to her own legitimacy by Marcos Jr) even as she was constantly undermined by Duterte and his allies. Nathaniel believes this shows just how productive she could be with a free-run as president.

“But I feel like she won’t solve some of the fundamental problems of our country. And that is things like: how we run our country, how we do our politics.” 

Nathaniel is very dejected by those that have surrounded Leni Robredo. The ‘old guard,’ he calls them, will uphold the status quo. He’s found that pointing this out has helped him have conversations with voters in support of Leody.

“I really like that Ka Leody is one of us, he is the ‘one of us.’ Ka Leody worked in the factories, he’s been on the ground and he knows what it’s like,” he says. While Leni is running as an independent and had a relatively average upper-middle-class upbringing, it’s not the same, he says.

He’s spoken a lot with workers at a small family-owned business he is connected to. “When I talk to them, they like him. They see him in themselves. They see in him someone who understands what they’re going through.”

He sees a deep overlap in Leody’s experience and those who support Bongbong Marcos and has respect for the candidate trying to bridge the divide. Leody appeared on Christian ministry Sonshine Media Network International, a television channel that has thrown its weight behind Marcos Jr. CEO Apollo Quiboloy is a highly controversial figure in the Philippines and when you Google him the first hit is the American FBI ‘WANTED’ page. They’re after him for human trafficking and paedophilia charges. Nathaniel doesn’t love it, but he understands what Leody was trying to do — reach Bongbong voters. And to do that, you must go where they are. 

“He was so brave to go on that stage and to take that interview from all the detractors and red taggers. Evil, evil people. I’m sure he knew being up there that he could get his message across.

“I checked the comments — there were Marcos supporters saying, ‘I like this guy, I believe this guy. I’m voting for Marcos but I really like this Ka Leody guy’ and that’s what I’ve been saying. I’ve been saying to all these disbelieving Kakampinks [supporters of the Leni-Kiko ticket]. We have worked it out with the BBMs [Marcos Jr-Duterte supporters] because we understand their frustrations and unfortunately, Leni’s camp is not answering that.” 

The ‘broad tent’ behind Leni has been a blessing, but in this way it is a curse. 

“To them, when they see Leni [and her team] they think ‘oh, it’s just the yellows again, the past administrations failed us.’ Even if it’s propped up on lies.” 

There have been attempts from Kakampink friends and strangers to convince Nathaniel to switch his vote to Leni-Kiko, but he has resisted those calls. Supporters like former senator Antonio Trillanes are a non-negotiable for Nathaniel. He cannot bring himself to be aligned with him. 

“He’s a good senator, has good bills behind him. But he also has a history of red-tagging random civilians which is horrible and gets people killed in the Philippines. He’s an example of right-wingers that we don’t really like.

“Leni has a very wide tent. And a wide tent includes individuals that I just can’t get with. These are very traditional church people who think that LGBT people are abhorrent, or they shouldn’t get married, abortion shouldn’t be allowed. And they look at the left as scum.” 

Nathaniel says he has been accused of ‘voting for Marcos,’ that any vote not for Leni will help Marcos across the line. He doesn’t believe it: “If I wanted to vote for Marcos, I would. I am voting for de Guzman.” 

Still, Nathaniel is excited by the campaign overall. 

“What I like most about the Leni camp is their mass movement. It is very organic, that is power to the people,” he says, which is credit to her supporters, not the operatives who surrounded her. “This mass movement of frustrated, angry Filipinos, that’s nice to see. I’m happy for many things if Leni wins and I hope they don’t lose.”

Nathaniel is already looking ahead. 

“Perhaps in the future, one day, we’ll have a Leody-type. I think Leni is very capable and would do great things. But one day we’ll see a socialist leader for the Philippines.”