Robredo is Naga City’s mayor; Degamo wins Negros Oriental House seat

Naga City mayor-elect Leni Robredo and Negros Oriental (3rd district) representative-elect Janice Degamo

NAGA CITY, Philippines — Former Vice President Maria Leonor “Leni” Robredo has returned to her roots and will now serve as the first female mayor of her hometown, vowing to continue her brand of good governance and transparency in leadership.

Leni was proclaimed winner for mayor of Naga City on Tuesday, in a landslide vote of over 84,000 against her three independent opponents.

Her running mate, former Camarines Sur Rep. Gabriel Bordado Jr. was also proclaimed winner in the vice mayoral race, while most of Robredo’s “Team Naga” council slate won, except for two candidates.

Leni ran under a platform of “strengthening the mechanism for good governance, particularly in transparency, accountability and people empowerment.”

READ: Principled governance possible with Robredo, Pangilinan, Aquino wins

Speaking to reporters on Monday after she cast her ballot, she said that should she win, she would also focus on people’s participation, which she described as the pillar of governance.

“Yes, you can have programs on health, education and the environment, but if there is no good governance, it’s hard. So for me, it’s all about people’s participation,” she stressed.

Among Leni’s key priorities, which she had repeatedly discussed during the campaign period, are urban development, traffic management and flood control.

Before becoming vice president, Leni was first lady of Naga City when her husband, Jesse Robredo, was mayor (1988-1998 and 2001-2010). He was the interior and local government secretary from 2010 until his death in a plane crash in the waters off Masbate City in 2012.

Leni, a lawyer, was Camarines Sur’s third district representative from 2013 to 2016 before winning the vice presidency in 2016. In 2022, she ran for the presidency but lost to now President Marcos.

Janice’s win

In Negros Oriental, it took a Janice Degamo, widow of slain Gov. Roel Degamo and the mayor of Pamplona town, to defeat the entrenched machinery of the Teves clan.

She emerged winner in the race for congressional representative of the province’s third district, defeating by a wide margin (125,738 votes) her opponents, Janice Teves (63,923 votes) and Reynaldo Lopez (25,310).

Teves is the aunt of expelled Rep. Arnolfo Teves Jr. who was tagged as the mastermind in the killing of Degamo’s husband and nine other persons in March 2023.

In a Facebook post, Degamo said her victory was a form of “justice” for her slain husband and thanked Oriental Negrenses in her district for their trust, saying “their votes are an expression of their love for my husband.”

Degamo said she was surprised that she won in Bayawan City, a known stronghold of the Teves family.

“I would like to believe that the voice of the Bayawanons is simply telling everybody that they, too, do not like violence and deaths,” she said.

Arnolfo, who repeatedly denied the accusations, was expelled from the House of Representatives and went into hiding after he became the subject of an arrest warrant issued by a regional trial court in Manila. He was arrested while playing golf in Timor-Leste on March 21, 2024, but has yet to be extradited. /cb —reports by Sheina M. Barrameda, Jarvis Ivan Sadua, Michael Jaucian, and Kaye Brier