Leni Robredo is not the same as PNoy. She is better than him.

A former PNoy speechwriter compares his old boss to VP Leni Robredo

Almost twelve years since I first set foot in Malacañang as a fresh grad, almost six since he stepped down, and almost a year since he passed away, I’ve more or less become a pro at answering the question everyone asks: What was it like being PNoy’s speechwriter?

There are the easy questions—about his love life, to which you just give away an anecdote or two (pick one: Liz Uy, Grace Lee, Pia Wurtzbach); about his video game addiction, which was actually a complete fabrication (but he did play Starcraft, I hear!); about his infamous Porsche (it was used, worth Php 4.5M, and at the height of the criticism, he would drive it around the Presidential Security Group Compound—a sad image, actually). There are moderately challenging inquiries too: questions about policy choices, key appointments, sector-specific issues—energy, mining, transport—all of which usually lead to an interesting discussion about governance.

And, well, there are the tough questions. For those, I’ve always just followed the advice of Mark Twain: to tell the truth, simply because it’s the easiest thing to remember. This means admitting mistakes—where we went wrong on disaster response, how we may have antagonized well-meaning media, how PNoy was—to put it bluntly—absent for occasions a President should be present for, perhaps most prominently the arrival of the bodies of the SAF 44. And the real, dispiriting answer to that question is: He simply didn’t know what to tell their families.

For how much I revere him, it’s only by admitting my former boss’s faults that I am able to cut through the misconceptions about him. It is only by acknowledging that people could have good reasons for hating the President.

Just because you’re his speechwriter, doesn’t mean you can’t resent the President—or even hate him. In fact, I would say that whatever anger I felt for him feels closer to my core, because I love and admire him at the same time. He was my boss. It is the kind of anger that comes from having a relationship with someone. His lapses and absences feel like betrayal. When he shut his people out by saying: “Sino ba sa atin ang Presidente?”—it kept them up at night. It was a liberating realization: finding out that the only way people will believe your story is true is when it is actually true. This means chronicling not just his virtues, but also his most glaring flaw—how he behaved more like a king who loved his subjects from a distance, and not like a President who knew the names, the faces, and the many troubles of his people.

Myself (on the laptop) taking down the President’s comments on a speech

I spent most of my 20s in the PNoy government, and I can say for certain that we aspired and toiled for a nation where no one was left behind. But many people were left behind. We writers often argued with each other on whether constant positivity was good communications, or if it only proved to our audiences that the President lived in a different reality. In the end, we bequeathed to the next administration a work-in-progress, and people are asking a fair question: whether a Robredo presidency would be the same as an Aquino presidency—to which the answer is No. It wouldn’t be the same. Leni Robredo would be better.

She was born into a simple family—neither Cojuangco nor Aquino. In Naga, her hometown, their house was effectively an evacuation center during the Bicol region’s frequent typhoons. She worked as a development worker, and then as a lawyer for those who couldn’t afford one. It is impossible for me to imagine her missing occasions where a President’s eyes, ears, and heart are critical. She would have been there, for example, to meet our fallen policemen—that, I am sure of.

People might find this comparison of character traits simplistic and superficial, but they do exhibit a gulf in governance styles. While PNoy was criticized for lacking empathy, Robredo is fueled by it. In Congress, she visited “the farthest and most inaccessible” places because “that’s where help is most needed.” 

“They’re the ones with the worst schools, worst roads (or no roads at all), no public transport, not [sic] potable water, sometimes no electricity, no access to health services,” she wrote in a 2014 Facebook post. Even as Vice-President, she has trekked several kilometers to visit distant villages, because she is the Vice-President of all Filipinos, and not just of those within her immediate vicinity.

Leni Robredo in 2014, checking on evacuees in Brgy. Mabolo, Naga City

I see in Leni Robredo the traits that could have enhanced the Aquino Presidency—not just effective, but warm; not just intelligent, but down-to-earth. She embraces complete strangers, laughs and cries with them, and understands—truly—that they are equals. PNoy would earnestly prescribe solutions to his people because he felt like he knew better; but it is the people who would offer solutions to Leni, because she knows that they know best. 

To answer a worthwhile question from journalist Roby Alampay: This is the difference between pink and yellow.

This is the only reason I am choosing to elevate Leni above PNoy: Because Filipinos need to know Leni Robredo is not yellow. Or not just yellow. Yes, it was the color of hope—of the peaceful revolution that ousted a dictator. But over the years, it has also come to signify all the triumphs and failings of Aquino the Mother and Aquino the Son. Thus, it has become a color of contradictions. Yellow is both the color of the resistance against a dictator and the color of administrations that kept amplifying the voices of the elite. Yellow is both the color of the 1986 Revolution and the color of keeping things the same.

I am under no illusions here. Pink is only the color of a single presidential campaign. We do not know if it will achieve even a fraction of what Yellow has. But what excites us about Pink is not just what it is, but what it could be. Pink aspires to be Yellow with all of its promise, and fewer of its sins. Pink lets people in without having to be blind to the abuses of the Marcoses or the failings of the Aquinos. It aspires to still be the color of our nation’s democratic story, but this time seen through the eyes of the person on the ground—and not through those of the political elite. And this is what truly excites me about Leni Robredo. It is her kicking open the doors to this movement, and telling us we are all welcome.

Of course, this is not to say that she would be a perfect President. If she wins, she will be welcomed by an impossible gauntlet of presidential challenges—a ballooning debt, generational poverty, a protracted pandemic, agencies with entrenched cultures of corruption, and—in all likelihood—a sore loser candidate who will have blown the biggest lead in Philippine political history. She will have to find hundreds—if not thousands—of Presidential appointees who must be both highly qualified and honest.

Yes, both highly qualified and honest.

At the end of the day, what qualifies Leni Robredo for the position of President most of all is the one thing she does have in common with PNoy—Integrity. For all my disagreements with my former boss, it is that one personality trait that made the six years bearable, and even inspiring. He never personally enriched himself in office—and for all the complaints about him—I cannot think of another President who took on Arroyo, Enrile, Estrada, and Revilla all at once.

Leni Robredo chatting with a constituent in 2014

Before his term ended, PNoy called his writers into a room and told us: “One day you’ll write about these years, but please wait for me to die.” And this is what differentiates PNoy and Leni from the others—that they will let stories about their frailties exist. Accepting that history must be told is the opposite of the Marcos way—which is to see only the good bits, and alter reality so that the bad ones cease existing. It is the first step to having a government that solves problems—having a government that accepts there are problems. 

It is historical fact that Presidents—much like the people we love—will disappoint us. But the magic of democracy—and love—is that we get to choose who disappoints us. I anticipate that I will disagree with President Leni Robredo a lot—that I will question her positions as I did PNoy’s; that I will fail to understand some of her policies; that there will still be scandal and strife and unspeakable moments. It is the nature of being a nation—and a nation with our history, our trauma, and at times, our learned helplessness. 

What Leni Robredo has that no one else has is a way of making me believe, again, in the work of governance—and in Filipinos. I became an adult in a nation that was railing against Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. I saw the wave of Yellow that mourned Cory Aquino and lifted her son into the Presidency. I was part of the influx of young university graduates into PNoy’s government, and it was my job to infuse hope and optimism into his speeches. I was dispirited by the elections of 2016 and 2019, and angered by the past six years. I have lost faith in our people, and regained it, and lost it again.

My experiences may pale in comparison to those of others, but looking at what the people have built around Leni Robredo, I can tell you: It has never been this good. I haven’t felt this much energy in my knees since I was 22. I want to get out there and shout her name. I want to do the hard work of nation building again—the earnest arguments with colleagues and bosses, the grueling groundwork, the long nights in haunted offices—under President Leni Robredo. I want to turn the page to a better chapter in our nation’s history, and be able to talk, a generation from now, about a leader that is not only better than PNoy, but better than Leni too, and better than any leader we have ever had before. I want us to win.