US Filipinos: “We Demand Clean And Honest PH Election!”

On March 27, over ten organizations and an estimated 700 people joined a “Walk for Democracy” event to march from Midtown Manhattan to the Philippine Consulate General in New York.

The participants are mostly supporters of Leni Robredo and Kiko Pangilinan who are running for president and vice president of the Philippines.

Organizers said the event was a way to “show our resolute unity to send a strong message that we demand a clean and honest election in the Philippines this coming May 2022.”

The Leni-Kiko tandem’s respective daughters who are studying in New York are also present at the event.

Jillian Robredo, the presidential candidate’s youngest daughter, addressed the crowd in a speech. “I know it’s hard to be far from the Philippines when so much is happening there,” she said in Tagalog.

“But I believe in you all who are here today standing up for democracy even if we are far away. Even though we are 8,000 miles away from the Philippines, we still care about what’s happening back home, in our nation.”

Frankie Pangilinan, the vice-presidential candidate’s daughter, also addressed the event and its participants.

“We are all here because we would like to better the social, economic and political conditions back in our homeland, the Philippines,” she said. “We would like to call on the Commission on Elections of the Philippines to have an honest, clean, orderly, peaceful, and credible election that we as a people can trust.”

During the event in front of the Philippine Consulate, various organizations expressed the importance of campaigning for progressive partylists and candidates over the last month of the campaign period.

Speakers urged participants to contact their family members in the US and the Philippines who are eligible voters to cast their votes in the upcoming May 9 elections.

“Millions are starving in the Philippines because of corruption,” said Nida Gonzales-Chan of United Filipinos of North America. “This is a battle of good and evil. We are for the good, the truth, and clean governance.”

For more information regarding Philippine voting eligibility and procedures in the US and abroad, contact your city’s Philippine Consulate General or Philippine Embassy office. The full list of offices worldwide can be found here: dfa.gov.ph/index.php/2013-03-21-05-48-17.

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