Madrigal seeks Senate seat with a new role

MANILA, Philippines - Former senator Ma. Ana Consuelo “Jamby” Madrigal won her first term in the Senate on a platform of anti-corruption and was known as a critic of the Arroyo administration.

After a failed presidential bid in 2010, Madrigal is hoping to return to the Senate under the Team PNoy coalition to take a new role: an ally of the Aquino administration in bringing the country to new heights.

Madrigal was a popular candidate in the 2004 senatorial elections. Back then she had actress Judy Ann Santos endorsing her, which many observers believed propelled her to victory.

Madrigal admits that the endorsement of the actress was crucial at the time because she was new in the political scene and had to find a way to introduce herself to the electorate.

This year, Madrigal has not tapped a celebrity endorser to boost her senatorial bid. Instead, she has banked on the endorsement of President Aquino and her track record as a senator.

“If people like what I did – I did not steal, I fought corruption and I was clean. I maintained my integrity and my principled stand against GMA (former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) and corruption,” Madrigal said.

Madrigal participated in the investigations on the alleged involvement of the Arroyo administration in the controversial NBN-ZTE deal. She was also actively involved in the probe on jueteng and on an allegedly anomalous road project involving Sen. Manuel Villar – one of her rivals in the 2010 presidential race.

She was also instrumental in fighting human rights violations, specifically the enforced disappearances of political activists. She even went to Geneva, Switzerland to file charges before the United Nations Human Rights Council against the Arroyo administration for allegedly being behind the enforced disappearances and for curtailing the rights of indigenous people to ancestral domain.

Now that a new administration has taken over, Madrigal said that she wants to get back to the Senate to work on legislation and push for her advocacies, which she was not able to focus on that much in her first six years in office.

“Six years ago I was fighting a sitting president. I was not able to come out with projects because I had no pork barrel. Now I would like to have six years supporting a president who is straight and then you can give more projects,” she said.

Still, Madrigal was able to push for significant measures when she was in the Senate. She authored and sponsored the Magna Carta for Women, the Anti-Child Pornography Law, Tubbataha Protected Area Act, Declaration of Child Abandonment Adoption Law, the Child Legitimation Law, and the imposition of higher excise tax rates on tobacco and alcohol.

However, Madrigal is lagging behind in the senatorial surveys. She ranked 16th, just one notch above fellow Team PNoy candidate, former Akbayan party-list Rep. Risa Hontiveros.

But Madrigal said she does not have much faith in the surveys because these did not accurately predict how well she would do in the 2004 elections. She recalled that she was consistently ranked 13th in the 2004 surveys, but ended up getting the fourth most number of votes on election day.

“At the end of the day, what is important is to see how the people react to you,” Madrigal said.

Regardless of how she is doing in the surveys, Madrigal believes that her awareness level is high and that this would hopefully translate to votes in her favor.

“If I win, it’s good and if I don’t win, I will continue my NGO work. There are many ways to serve. I am not one who treats politics as a business. Either way I can serve my country,” Madrigal said.