One of the biggest surprises in the Philippines’ presidential election has been the groundswell of “Generation Z” and millennial support for Leni Robredo, the current vice president — and an outspoken critic of the president she served under, Rodrigo Duterte. Many of those supporters are first-time voters, or are too young to vote.
Ms. Robredo, the widow of a government minister who died in a 2012 plane crash, drew comparisons to Corazon Aquino, the country’s former president who was swept into office after the assassination of her husband, Benigno Aquino, and the huge “People Power” revolt that ousted the Marcos regime in 1986.
But Ms. Robredo, who has served as a congresswoman and worked as a lawyer and an economist, is more politically experienced than Mrs. Aquino was. In 2016, she beat Mr. Marcos narrowly to win the vice presidency. Ms. Robredo has vowed to stop the extrajudicial killings in the violent drug war overseen by Mr. Duterte.
In an interview, Tricia Robredo, one of Ms. Robredo’s daughters, said her mother had been reluctant to run because she had told her family that she would not run for office again. “It was a promise to her daughters and the bigger goal, which is to prevent a Marcos from being president again,” said the younger Ms. Robredo. “I think those were the things that were going through her head.”
But when no one emerged as an unifying opposition candidate to take on Mr. Marcos, she threw her name in the ring late last year.
