Looking at the track records of the presidential candidates

The upcoming May 2016 elections is very interesting as it pits fascinating political characters with storied backgrounds.

In a matter of months, one of these five candidates could be our next president: Vice President Jejomar Binay, Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago, Senator Grace Poe, Former Interior Secretary Mar Roxas, and Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte.

Ahead of this Sunday's PiliPinas Debates 2016, GMA News Online takes a look at the background of each of these candidates.

Binay is an activist lawyer-turned-politician who is currently embroiled in corruption issues. 

Santiago is considered one of the country’s most brilliant legal minds but is facing health challenges.

Poe is a newbie politician, having been elected senator only in 2013. Her candidacy remains uncertain because of her status as a foundling. The Constitution only allows natural-born citizens to run for president.

Roxas is an investment banker-turned politician-turned Cabinet member. A scion of one of the country’s richest families, his most recent post was Interior Secretary. 

Duterte is a lawyer-turned-politician. Among the five candidates, Duterte is the only one who has not yet held a national position but he has had a long political career, beginning with his rise as mayor of Davao City in 1988.

Binay

Binay, 73, is a political science and law graduate of the University of the Philippines in Diliman, Quezon City.

During Martial Law, he was put in jail for defending political prisoners. He later joined the August Twenty-One Movement (ATOM) that staged protests against the administration of the late strongman President Ferdinand Marcos. 

ATOM was formed after Marcos’ strongest political rival, former Senator Benigno Simeon “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. was murdered on August 21, 1983. Ninoy is the father of incumbent President Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Aquino III and the husband of the late President Corazon “Cory” Aquino.

Aside from his involvement with ATOM, Binay also co-founded the Movement of Attorneys for Brotherhood, Integrity and Nationalism, Inc. (MABINI), an organization that provided free legal assistance to political detainees.

After the 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution, one of Aquino's first political decisions was to appoint Binay as Officer-in-Charge of the municipality of Makati, the financial center of the country.

In 1988, Binay ran for mayor of Makati and won. He was reelected in 1992 and 1995, the year that Makati became a city.

In 1998, his wife, Dr. Elenita Binay, served a term as mayor while Binay became the chairman of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA), the agency for governance and urban development of the National Capital Region.

Binay returned to Makati in 2001 and served for three more terms until he ran for Vice President in the 2010 elections. 

He defeated Roxas, the running mate of Aquino, by a slim margin of roughly 700,000 votes in the 2010 vice presidential race.

During his term as vice president, Binay also served as chairman of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) and as Presidential Adviser on Overseas Filipino Workers (OFW) Concerns.

He resigned from his Cabinet positions in June 2015.

Being one step away from the presidency, Binay has been hounded by allegations of corruption.

In October last year, shortly after Binay filed his Certificate of Candidacy, the Office of the Ombudsman approved his indictment for graft and other criminal charges over the construction of the P2.28­billion Makati City Hall Building II.

Binay and his son, dismissed Makati Mayor Junjun Binay, were also charged with graft for alleged overpricing in the construction of the Makati Science High School building.

In January this year, Binay said over radio dzBB’s “Ikaw Na Ba? The Presidential Interview,” that his relations with the Aquino family remain strong despite having political differences with the president.

Santiago

Santiago, 70, is one of the few public officials to have served in the three branches of government: judiciary, legislative and executive.

She served as presiding judge of the Regional Trial Court in Quezon City from 1983 to 1987. 

She moved to the executive branch when she was appointed by Cory Aquino to be immigration commissioner from 1988-1989 and agrarian reform secretary in 1989.  She received the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award for Government Service in 1988 “for bold and moral leadership in cleaning up a graft-ridden government agency.”

She then moved to the legislative branch after being elected senator for three terms (1995, 2004, and 2010).

Santiago placed third in the 2010 senatorial elections. 

She has also had her share of political defeats. In 1992, she ran for president but lost to former President Fidel Ramos. 

In 1998, she again ran for president but lost to former President Joseph Estrada. In the 2001 mid-term elections, she ran for senator but did not make it to the top 12.

Santiago’s struggles are not limited to the political arena, having been diagnosed with Stage 4 lung cancer. However, Santiago said, “My cancer should no longer be a concern in the presidential campaign.” 

Despite the health challenges she faced, Santiago has filed the highest number of bills and authored important laws. One of her important pending bills is the anti-political dynasty bill; anti-epal bill; Freedom of Information bill; and Magna Carta for Philippine Internet freedom.

In December 2011, she became the first Filipino and Asian to be elected judge of the International Criminal Court for a nine-year term. However, she had to waive the privilege in 2014 after being diagnosed with cancer.

Poe

Poe is the adopted daughter of the King of Philippine movies, Fernando Poe Jr., and his wife, actress Susan Roces.

Poe, 47, is a first-time senator but she topped the 2013 senatorial race with 20,337,327 votes. 

Poe has filed 59 bills as principal author, including Senate Bill 1733 or the FOI bill, which has yet to be approved by Congress.

Poe heads two Senate committees: Public Information and Mass Media as well as Public Order and Dangerous Drugs.

She is also vice chairperson, of the committees on Agriculture and Food as well as Electoral Reforms and People’s Participation

As head of the Public Order committee, Poe spearheaded the Senate hearings on the botched Mamasapano encounter. More than 60 people, including 44 members of the police Special Action Force (SAF), were killed in the police operation in Mamasapano, Maguindanao, in January 2015. 

Poe took up Political Science at the Boston College in Massachusetts and Development Studies in UP Manila. She worked as a teacher and later as a manager for many years in the US. 

Poe’s citizenship has become a major issue in the May 2016 polls. Poe is married to Neil Llamanzares, a dual American and Filipino citizen since birth. Poe moved to the US with her husband in 1988 and she became a naturalized US citizen in 2001. In 2006, Poe applied for dual citizenship.

In 2010, she had to renounce her foreign citizenship when Aquino appointed her as chairperson of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB). Republic Act 9225 prohibits the appointment of a dual citizen to government unless that person renounces his or her foreign citizenship.

Roxas

Roxas, 59, comes from one of the most prominent and richest families in the Philippines. His grandfather was President Manuel Roxas (in office from 1919 to 1921) while his father was former Senator Gerardo “Gerry” Roxas.

His mother is Judy Araneta, vice chairperson of the Araneta Group of Companies that owns the 35-hectare Araneta Center in Cubao, Quezon City.

Roxas is a graduate of the Wharton School of Economics of the University of Pennsylvania and worked as an investment banker in the US before becoming a politician in the Philippines.

Roxas said he did not have political ambitions early in his life. However, when his brother Dinggoy, then congressman of Capiz, died of cancer, Roxas decided to run. He won in the special election held in Capiz for the position left vacant due to his brother’s death in 1995.

Roxas ran for reelection as congressman of Capiz in 1998 and won with 78,844 votes. As congressman, consumer protection became his personal advocacy. 

His landmark laws include Republic Act No. 8748, amending the Special Economic Zone Act, and Republic Act No. 8756 that gave incentives to multinational companies that set up operations in regional areas.

Roxas joined the Cabinet of former President Gloria Arroyo as Secretary of the Department of Trade and Industry from 2000 to 2003 when he became known as “Mr. Palengke” as he pushed for the development of public markets as the basic unit of the economy. 

In 2004, he ran for senator under the Liberal Party and placed first with 19,253,516 votes.

As senator, he filed bills on fighting smuggling, promoting affordable medicines, regulating the pre-need industry, and promoting alternative energy. He also voted in favour of the abolition of the death penalty.

In 2010, he ran for vice president but placed second to Binay. He later became Secretary of the Department of Transportation and Communication (2011) and Department of Interior and Local Government (2012).

Duterte

Duterte, 70, was a city prosecutor in Davao City before entering politics. He first became the Vice Mayor (Officer-in-Charge) in 1986 after the EDSA People Power Revolution.

Duterte has never tasted political defeat. He was elected mayor in 1988, 1992, and 1995.

He was elected congressman of Davao City in 1998 but returned to local politics after serving for only one term. He was elected mayor in 2001, 2004, and 2007. 

In 2010, he sought the lower post of vice mayor and won. In 2013, he reclaimed the post of mayor and now, he is seeking the highest elected post in the country. All in all, he has been an elected official for 30 years.

In a recent business forum, Duterte said Davao was his “Exhibit A,” meaning that the noteworthy progress of the Mindanao city is proof to his skill as an elected official.

Duterte has implemented programs such as the creation of the  Davao City Investment Incentive Code, the first-known local government initiative granting fiscal and non-fiscal incentives to investors.

He also pushed for the creation of the Children’s Welfare Code of 1995, a first in the country, to help empower children 1–17 years old from any form of abuse.

He was also behind the Women’s Development Code of 1996 to help shield women from abuse.

On his Certificate of Candidacy, Duterte is listed as single. He his marriage from his first wife, the mother of three of his children, including former Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte, has been annulled.

He has another child with his current domestic partner. —JST, GMA News