Powered by the "800,000 minus one" battlecry, more than 47,000 Caviteños packed the General Trias Sports Park in Cavite during Vice President Leni Robredo's grand rally Friday evening, March 4.
Two hours into the grand rally, event organizers estimated the crowd at the venue to be at over 47,000, which is larger than Robredo's Iloilo grand rally that drew around 40,000 supporters.
The event caused heavy traffic on roads leading to the venue that forced Robredo and her staff to hitch rides on motorcycles just to get to the venue.
Organizers also had a hard time airing the entire program due to poor signal within the sports park.
Despite the poor signal connection in the area, people on social media were still able to trend topics such as #CaviteIsPink and #800KMinusOne on social networking site Twitter, with the latter earning more than 60,000 tweets as of 10 p.m. of Friday.
The Caviteños, who joined the Leni Robredo-Kiko Pangilinan tandem in their campaign activities throughout the day, went out to prove that "Cavite is pink" despite their Governor's pronouncement that the province will deliver 800,000 votes to Robredo's rival Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr. in May 9. Hence, the battlecry "800,000 minus one."
While she lost to Marcos in Cavite in 2016, Robredo said she is "very hopeful" that she will be able to get better showing in the province compared to 2016.
"Ako, meron pa tayo ngayon mga 66 days to go from now. Ako, tingin ko, lalong nakakatulong yung mga challenge na ganyan kasi lalong nagpupursigi yung ating mga supporters na gumalaw (We still have 66 days to go from now. I think that challenge will actually help the supporters to persevere and do more)," Robredo said.
"Actually, second time namin itong bumalik, pero napansin ko parang mas fired up sila ngayon, (This is actually my second time to go back here, and I noticed that they are more fired up now) and it is a good thing. Nakikita natin, grabe yung ginagawa ng mga volunteers dito. So wala ito noong 2016 (We see that the volunteers work so hard. This is something we didn't have in 2016)," she added.
During the grand rally, Pangilinan, who is running for Vice President, and Board Member Kerby Salazar also spoke to the Caviteños.
The program was capped with Robredo reading the witty banners made by the supporters, which has became a routine in every campaign activity of the Vice President.
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