After making the decision to run for Congress, Leni Robredo, a widow
at 47, now stands on the cusp of history wondering if she can indeed
cross into the world her husband had inhabited.
But the wooing of the heir to Jesse Robredo’s legacy had not been
so easy. Had she been the average political animal driven by greed for
power and glory, she might have announced she would follow her husband’s
steps into politics way back in August.
It would have been perfect timing, with her riding on the crest
of the nation’s grief over her husband’s untimely death, and propelled
further by several nationwide movements that hoped to keep alive the
Robredo legacy of servant leadership, transparency and accountability.
She could only win a run for any office by a landslide.
Lawyer Manuel Teoxon, president of Jesse Robredo Lives, one of
several movements organized to perpetuate the legacy of the late
interior secretary: “Naga City’s 140,000 voters will support her and so
will the neighboring municipalities.”
“If [Leni] wants it, she should run now while the Robredo
phenomenon is still strong,” Alan Robles, political analyst and
correspondent for the South China Morning Post, said at the time. “She
can’t wait until the next election because [the phenomenon] will fade.
It always does. Who remembers Lean Alejandro and Evelio Javier now?
Even Ninoy Aquino is fast losing his luster,” he added.
After her husband’s death, Leni Robredo has become widely seen as
the strongest unifying force that can break the stranglehold of the
squabbling Villafuertes on Camarines Sur and bring a Liberal Party
victory in the region.
Leni recently accepted an appointment as chief of the Liberal
Party in Camarines Sur, bowing, according to the grapevine, to pressure
from President Benigno Aquino III and new Interior Secretary Mar Roxas
for her to fill the vacuum in the LP leadership in the province left by
her husband’s death.
Until last Friday when she filed her certificate of candidacy for
the third district of Camarines Sur, the favorite guessing game in Naga
City was whether Robredo’s widow would succumb to the pressure for her
to run and how long she could hold out.
Said Leni herself at the time: “I have seen so much of [politics]
to know it is not for me. After all, I handled [Jesse’s] campaigns … ,
so it is very clear to me what I want to do. [And that is] to keep alive
the legacy of my husband as a private citizen, to remain in the
judiciary, and be a mother to my children and help them grieve for their
father.”
Teoxon, a neighbor of the Robredos who worked closely with Leni
in the past had said: “It is highly unlikely that she will run for
public office. She has always been a private person who is more inclined
to take care of her children.”
Of the local LP chairmanship, she
explained: “I only agreed to take on the LP chairmanship because it
seemed like the only option left for the LP Camarines Sur leaders to
unite after Jesse’s death left them feeling orphaned … [But] I will only
help manage the provincial LP in choosing its bets, in the filing of
their candidacy, campaign and so on. In other words, everything short of
running for a post myself, and only until after the election.”
Afraid of politics
She added: “There are many ways I can
continue Jesse’s legacy. Politics is just one of them. I am sure I will
be more effective outside of it.”
It was, in fact, because of her personal discomfort with electoral politics that Jesse had shielded her from it.
“I had always been afraid of politics and
afraid of what it would do to my family,” Leni said. “Because of this,
Jesse was very considerate of my feelings. The demarcation between his
job as mayor and his family, his office and our home, was very clear and
the lines never crossed. When he ran for mayor, I was a young wife and
mother, and with too much on my hands, he made sure our home was a
sanctuary. He never held political meetings at home. After he won, he
never forced me to be active. He knew I was not comfortable with public
attention. He knew it was not my cup of tea,” she recalled.
She said Jesse understood her because he
himself realized that after six terms as Naga City mayor and during his
stint as Cabinet secretary, he longed to be a private citizen again.
“At some point, he told me he did not
really like electoral politics. After his stint at DILG, Jesse was
talking about working for an NGO. He had an offer from the World Bank
that involved local [government] projects and he was seriously
considering accepting it,” Leni said.
By grace
Jesse, she said, was very introverted by
nature, perhaps even unfit for the field he had chosen by his very
nature. No matter how successful he had become, he would always be the
fervent devotee to Ina, our Lady of Peñafrancia, and just one of the
barefoot vayadores who bore the image of Ina on their shoulders during
her feast day. Whatever he had accomplished, whenever he came home to
Naga, he would always go straight to the Basilica to lay down his
accomplishments as gifts at the feet of Ina.”
Jesse never consciously pursued things and
glory, Leni said. He thought everything came to him by grace—his six
terms as Naga mayor, his Harvard stint and the Ramon Magsaysay award. He
never felt entitled to them, as he always thought they came not because
of his talent or his hard work, but because of grace.
And though he had his frustrations and had
been reduced to tears at some point as chief of the Department of the
Interior and Local Government (DILG), chafing at the slow progress of
the reforms he wanted immediately implemented, toward the end of his
life, Jesse was a happy and grateful man, Leni said. And he told her,
she said, that his blessings were overflowing and much more than he
deserved.
In their last conversation in the car just before he boarded his plane, Jesse told her that all his dreams had come true.
Of the same cloth
That Jesse chose a wife cut from the same cloth is an ideal that many Robredo supporters are anxious to preserve.
Bemboi Badiola, one of the organizers of
Jesse Robredo Lives, debunked speculations that the organization was
going to be used as a platform to launch Leni’s candidacy.
“There is no pressure from the movement for
her to run for public office. In fact, we prefer that she does not. If
she decides to run, of course we will support her but we are not
encouraging her,” Badiola said, not expecting that days later Leni would
decide run for the seat of the third district of Camarines Sur in the
House of Representatives.
Embert Rodriguez, a supporter of the
movement overseas, said running for public office and keeping her
Liberal Party affiliation would diminish Leni’s stature not only in
Camarines Sur but also throughout Bicol region.
“Leni should give her blessing to
candidates who will do a Robredo regardless of party (affiliation). Then
she would have started a trend and would have made sure that Jesse’s
legacy lived on,” he added.
Said Robles: “If she runs, it is a
perpetuation of the Philippine culture of dynasty which is focused on
personality that Jesse himself hated. We have seen too much of that … To
elect (Leni) to public office just because she was his wife only
reinforces the inordinate preoccupation with personalities and
celebrities that has marred the democratic exercise of politics in this
country.”
Agreed political strategist Reli German:
“(Leni) running will leave a bad taste, perhaps even tarnish the memory
of Jesse and will be seen as taking advantage of her husband’s death.
Right now, she is perceived as being above the clamor and that is where
she should stay.”
“If she runs for public office, she will
cease to be legendary,” said artist-sculptor Jerry Araos, a former
member of the Communist Party of the Philippines. “People kneel before
icons; nobody kneels before politicians.”
A mother first
Such fears may be unfounded. The way she
tells it, Leni Robredo does not want to be a legend or a politician, and
she sees enough fulfillment in her work and in her home, raising her
children well.
“I don’t need the validation of others or even public opinion to realize my worth,” she said.
While she recognizes the power of an
elective position to effect change at the national level, she has also
seen that change only trickles down to its intended beneficiaries.
Said Leni: “As a lawyer for an NGO, I can
get things done and see it done fast. I do a lot of community work that
satisfies a lot of my advocacies. I was once assigned in Masbate for two
years and I would take the 5 a.m. ferry once a week to supervise
capacity building of the community leaders there. There were very few
lawyers in Masbate and a lot of legal problems, [so] my role was very
clear and I saw where I fit in.”
Two women have influenced her, Leni said:
her mother, a teacher who taught her “to be independent and not to
depend on anyone,” and her mother-in-law who made her realize that her
number one calling is taking care of her children.
“She was engaged in the business of
trawl-fishing. She would wake up at 3 a.m. and make sure that everything
was sold by 12 noon so the rest of the day could be devoted to her
children. This was the kind of life and family that I was assimilated
to,” Leni said.
Quantity time
She added: “I am very protective of the
time I spend with my children. I am one of those parents who believe
that quantity time is quality time. People know that after 5 p.m., I am
no longer available. Even when I was teaching, I only taught half a day
and the rest of it I devoted to my children. I can take time away from
my work but not away from my children.”
Her children’s needs come first, she
stressed. ”My children have just lost a father. They are not about to
lose a mother,” Leni said. “I do not see how running for political
office will benefit my children at all.”
In fact, she added, she was turning down a
Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) nomination as regional trial court judge
in Camarines Sur, and would be applying for a post in Quezon City
instead to be with her daughters who still needed her guidance.
Because of her singular devotion to family
over almost everything, it is easy to dismiss Leni as apolitical. Far
from it; she cares about nation building as much as any well-meaning
politician, except that she eschews grandstanding and motherhood
statements, preferring to go by the smallest particulars instead. It
was how she described Jesse in her eulogy—by the smallest particulars
like how he loved to fix things around the house, how he would help
Jillian with homework even during staff meetings, how he gave her
flowers on their anniversary.
Mothers as nation builders
To hear Leni say it, people who are trying
to do their best in their jobs and mothers trying to raise their
children well, contribute as much to a nation’s progress as any
well-spoken politician. Who’s to say that Jillian’s homework, Aika’s
need for career guidance, Tricia’s need for comfort isn’t as importance
as those issues being debated in Congress?
Her efforts have been worth it, she said
proudly. “They are self-confident and sure of what they want. They have
exceeded all my best expectations,” she said of her children.
To people who would tell Leni that they
would finance a national election campaign for her, she would only smile
and cut them short. Whatever the world can offer her is meaningless
and small compared to what she has lost in that plane crash. And
whatever is left, she will not lose and hold close to her heart.
Leni Gerona-Robredo, widow of Jesse Robredo
had the best of everything and still has. It’s impossible to tell her
she can have better.
By Gemma Luz CorotanPhilippine Daily Inquirer
