Vice President Leni Robredo’s choice of venue, Makati City, for her miting de avance was a practical choice for her supporters since it is easily accessible for some one million supporters originally expected to attend.
There aren’t many venues in Metro Manila that can accommodate many people, Robredo’s spokesman Barry Gutierrez said in an interview over dzMM on Saturday, May 7, the last day of the campaign.
The goal, after all, was to surpass the more than 400,000 supporters who flocked to Macapagal Boulevard during Robredo’s birthday rally.
Initially, the campaign was considered to be at Luneta or at the Quezon City Memorial Circle. But both were not possible.
“So, nauwi tayo sa Makati. Okay din naman ‘yung lugar na ito dahil bukod sa maluwag at kayang ma-accommodate ‘yung maraming tao, madaming mga paraan para makapunta. May mga MRT, may LRT, may bus (we ended up in Makati. This place is okay because aside from being spacious and can accommodate a lot of people, there are many ways to reach it. There’s MRT, there’s LRT, there’s bus),” he said.
“Hindi kamukha noong sa Pasay, isa sa mga naging problema namin, ‘yung pagpunta at pag-alis lalo na pag ganoon karaming tao ang dadalo (Unlike in Pasay, one of the problems we had was going there and leaving when there were many people who attended),” Gutierrez added.
READ: Star-studded miting de avance caps Robredo’s campaign with 780,000-strong crowd in Makati
On April 23, during Robredo's grand rally cum birthday party, some "Kakampinks" had to stay in a bus terminal until the next day morning because there were no more available buses by the time the event ended.
A staff from the Robredo campaign team said the “historic significance” of the venue also came into consideration.
Here, in the same place that fueled the peaceful People Power Revolt that pushed Marcos’ family into exile in Hawaii, Robredo stood in awe at the sea of people before her.
She is up against a political strategy decades in the making, and that packaged the Martial Law years as a “golden age.”
The same machinery sent a barrage of disinformation that created an image of her—an insipid, stuttering Vice President who could barely string together a sentence—that’s far from reality.
Ayala Avenue in Makati City is no stranger to political rallies and massive people gatherings, having been the site of street activism in 1986 and at least two coup attempts against former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo staged by no less than former Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, who is now seeking another term under Robredo’s senatorial slate.
It is also in Makati City where former President Corazon Aquino’s funeral procession passed and where yellow confetti rained from the towers of the country’s financial district.
Along the stretch of the street where Robredo held her miting de avance, three statuss stood to commemorate the country’s brutal past—that of former Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., heroine Gabriela Silang, and Mindanao’s greatest son Sultan Kudarat.
The symbolism wasn’t lost on Robredo, who is charting a course to a come-from-behind victory that would end the Marcos’ return to power.