MANILA, Philippines — Despite not pushing through with his plan to run for the Senate, human rights lawyer Chel Diokno said he would continue to push for the same advocacies and policies if elected as party-list representative in next year’s midterm elections.
Diokno, who unsuccessfully ran for the Senate in 2019 and 2022, said it was a “principled and practical” decision for him to accept the nomination of Akbayan for the midterm polls.
“When I joined Akbayan, I was still planning to push through with the Senate run. But when the proclamation of the Comelec (Commission on Elections) came out, there was an opening and opportunity,” he told “Storycon” on One News yesterday.
He was referring to Akbayan’s proclamation last month as a winning candidate in the 2022 elections.
Without the proclamation, which was due to the cancellation of the registration of An Waray party-list, Akbayan would have been ineligible to join the party-list race for failing to secure seats in two consecutive elections.
“I just happened to be in the right place at the right time. No one knows if and when Akbayan party-list would be proclaimed,” Diokno said.
For Diokno, the son of the late senator and human rights icon Jose “Ka Pepe” Diokno, the change in his political plans will not affect the issues that he wants to focus on if elected as a legislator.
Among those that he wants to push for is the passage of a Philippine National Police Discipline Act, which would establish an external body to investigate police misconduct.
Diokno is chairman of the Free Legal Assistance Group that provided legal support to some victims of the drug war.
Akbayan’s current representative, Perci Cendaña, will be the party’s second nominee in next year’s polls, along with Moro leader Dadah Ismula as third nominee.
The party said it would continue to support former senators Francis Pangilinan of the Liberal Party and Bam Aquino of Katipunan ng Nagkakaisang Pilipino in their respective bids to reclaim their Senate seats.