Talkin’ bout a revolution

MANILA, Philippines - Do you know how Freedom of Information started in Thailand?” Sen. Grace Poe-Llamanzares asks me as we sit across each other inside her office at the Senate

“There was this one mom,” Sen. Poe says. “This mom couldn’t believe that her daughter didn’t get into the state university, but all of her rich friends did. So, she petitioned to see the results of the exam, and the university wouldn’t allow her.“The mom rallied, she protested, and finally a court ruled and said that public documents should be made available. She got a hold of the results and found out that her daughter had indeed passed. It was a mother’s fight in Thailand that brought about Freedom of Information.”

Sen. Poe looks out of her window. The view she sees is a composite of the Philippines’ contradictions — high-rise buildings, a super-sized mall, a dirty creek, a contaminated Manila Bay. I ask her if she feels that her struggle to pass the Freedom of Information Act (FOI), of which she is the principal sponsor, is also a mother’s struggle — she being a mother of three.“Of course,” she answers. “We want to make sure that our country is better for the future.”

UNLIKELY SENATOR

Now, Grace Poe speaks with the demeanor of a statesman — she uses words for dramatic effect, has a penchant for anecdotes, and when she talks about the country’s future, she makes you feel like she means it. But Poe is also an unlikely figure in a Upper House. While she may have been elected by virtue of her father, the late film legend Fernando Poe Jr., Grace Poe — the Boston College political science graduate  — sticks out in a Senate roster full of action movie stars, scions of political dynasties, and vestiges of Martial Law.

Poe grew up away from the trappings of politics. “My parents were very active in show business and very apolitical. They knew the Marcoses — not really closely though — (the Marcoses) presented themselves to be the ninong and ninang at their wedding, and of course my parents at the time were so honored that the President would.”

During the Marcos regime, Poe says her father and mother, the actress Susan Roces, stayed away from the streets, leaning instead toward status quo. “Not that they condoned the dictatorship — they were not sympathetic to Marcos, just not naman against him. ”

Grace, meanwhile, was kept sheltered. “When I went to parties, I always had a chaperone. Even in high school, my friends and I went to Quiapo once to ride a kalesa, and my dad immediately got a call from somebody — like a policeman — who said, “O, yung anak nyo nasa Quiapo!”

It was the 1986 EDSA revolution, though, that opened an 18-year-old Grace’s eyes, and gave her a peek at the world outside her own. “I didn’t join the EDSA revolution, maybe because growing up, there was the influence of my parents, but the EDSA revolution made me realize that it’s important to take part in our country’s unfolding history,” she says.

Poe volunteered for NAMFREL and, just a few months after the revolution, enrolled at the University of the Philippines campus in Manila, where she took up development communication. “I was with the student council and I was the batch chairman of the freshman assembly. I joined a party that was very, well, militant. We would actually stage rallies in front of the US embassy.”

“The issues then were the US military bases, the continuing presence of the US here, the rights for farmers and land ownership, and also compensation for the human rights victims during the time of Marcos,” she recalls with a smile.

PERSONAL FREEDOMS

But the legacies of Grace’s parents hung over her shoulders, and before she turned 20, Grace decided it was time to fight for another freedom — her own. She received an opportunity to study at Boston College in Massachusetts, and she saw it as her ticket to independence.

“What I felt was for as long as I was in the Philippines, it was difficult for me to step out of the shadow of my parents,” Grace says. “Whatever I’d do here, my dad would find out, my dad might be affected.”

“So when the opportunity presented itself to study abroad, I took it! I was just so happy to be out of here. Then, I decided to get married as soon as I graduated college. But my husband and I thought that if we came back to the Philippines, we would have to depend so much on our parents. That was the early ’90s. It was difficult to find a job that could compensate you justly for your educational attainment. I didn’t want to go back to my dad with my tail between my legs, saying, ‘I decided to get married early, but can you support us?’ It’d be so embarrassing. So we stayed in the States,” Grace continues.

Sen. Poe went on to live in the States for more than a decade. “I was happy. I worked part time even though I had kids. I did everything — I was a yaya, cook, driver, and housekeeper to the family, then I worked part time. And after a while, it became a way of life,” she says. “I was actually enjoying the convenience. There, even if you’re not wealthy, you can go out and play in parks, you can enjoy the safety. You didn’t have to have tremendous wealth or fame to enjoy the simple things.”

This way of life would be interrupted, though, when FPJ announced his candidacy for the presidency in 2004.

BACK TO THE PHILIPPINES

“I wanted to help him,” Grace says. She flew back to the Philippines, while she was pregnant with her third child.

Upon returning, Poe helped her father out as much as she could, writing his speeches, connecting with constituents. “But I felt I could have done more,” she says with a crack in her voice. “If I had known then what I learned in my Senate campaign, I think it would have made a world of difference for my dad. But then again, my dad didn’t have the benefit of the PCOS machine, so even if you ran an excellent campaign, if at the end, they’d start changing the result, it wouldn’t matter what your efforts were.”

FPJ died shortly after the 2004 elections — an election that he was cheated out of, his family and supporters maintain. Grace was then thrust into the limelight as the heir to her father’s legacy, and as a daughter looking for truth and justice. Here was a woman who spent her life struggling to escape the shadow of her parents, only to find that it would be her parents that would bring her her calling.

“Joining so many rallies after my dad died, I realized that it’s not enough that you criticize the government. You should actually take part and do something. (Our family) was helping, we had our outreach, my mom had her charities, but I really wanted policy.” The political science major had found her opening.

SENATE CAMPAIGN

After heading the Movie and Television Ratings and Classification Board (MTRCB), Poe ran for the Senate in 2013, and won in a come-from-behind victory. She began the campaign at the bottom of the surveys, and ended up with the most votes out of all of the senatorial candidates.

For Poe, though, the sheltered child, the alien in America, the campaign trail was an eye-opener — a tour of the Philippines, uncut and uncensored. “Going around the country, it was so frustrating,” she says. She talks to me about poor urban planning across the provinces, pollution, poverty.

She then begins to talk about the need to support the agriculture industry. (“Agriculture should not be looked down upon as a light sector. It supports 74% of our population.”) She goes at length about her dream for a national feeding program. (“Goldman Sachs says that in 2050, because of our population, we will be the 13th largest economy. Can you imagine? But how will that happen if the kids today are not prepared? We need education and proper nutrition. Feed these kids.”)

But I ask her whether entering the Senate, with its dirty politics and all, has taken some idealism out of her.

“I’m just impatient,” she says. “It’s the best of times and the worst of times to come in here. As an institution, it’s enjoying an all-time low popularity base. It’s sad that we’re coming in at this time, but it’s an opportunity for us also to help make the institution better.”

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION

Since taking office last June, Sen. Poe has bucked trends. As a neophyte senator, she had been told by older colleagues that her first year would be uneventful. “Sen. Serge Osmeña said to lay low and use the time to learn the ropes,” shares Brian Llamanzares, Sen. Poe’s 21-year-old son, who served as her campaign coordinator and now works in her Senate office.

But after taking office last June, Sen. Poe was given the plum chairmanship of the Senate committee on public information and mass media, a position that allowed her to spearhead the passage of FOI in the upper house. “I already finished the committee report. We’re done with the debates, the period of interpolation. We’re now in the period of amendment, which is actually a record thing in the Senate. We did it all in less than a year,” she says.

The FOI bill is what takes much of the senator’s time now. “FOI is our very basic weapon to ensure that government is doing its job,” she tells me with force in her voice. She sees the measure as a legacy she can leave for her children.

“There are a lot of things that scare me about the future of the country,” she says. “If we don’t have the right laws in place like the FOI, we might succumb to another leader who is not as honest as the leader that we have now. It doesn’t matter what reforms we have if this very basic tenet of how government is run is not available.”

ACTIVE CITIZENRY

To close, I ask her what gives her hope for the future of the country. She smiles and straightens her back.

“What gives me hope is that we have an active citizenry. I know that people say it in the negative —‘Ah, pulitika nanaman!’ — but because of people’s interest in politics, I think things are moving faster. For example, because of people’s interests, we have the PDAF hearings, and what did that bring about? Now there’s no more pork barrel. That is phenomenal. Even if you say that all corruption cases are languishing in court, we were able to have a sweeping change. Immediately. Right now, every single congressman or senator, if they want to have anything funded, they have to debate on it and have it in the General Appropriations Act for everyone to see. That is a sweeping change that was brought about by a participative democracy.”

She brings up the Freedom of Information Act again. A smiliar measure is yet to be passed by Congress, and she calls on the people to help get it off the ground. “Be active on social media,” she asks. “Call the attention of people in government to pass it already. Appeal to your congressman to vote for FOI. You know, social media keeps us on our toes. Once you start criticizing — tao lang kami. We can feel it. “

“I spoke to Speaker Feliciano Belmonte, and I said, ‘Speaker, kailan ba mapapasa ang FOI sa Lower House?’ Sabi niya, ‘I promise you, within my term, we will pass it.’ Hopefully, we’ll pass it before 2016. We certainly need it just to ensure that no matter what type of administration we have in the future, we have the Freedom of Information to protect us,” says Sen. Poe.

She’s talkin’ about a revolution.

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