Grace Padaca

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Ma. Gracia Cielo "Grace" Magno Padaca (born October 25, 1963) has been the governor of the northern province of Isabela, Philippines since 2004. Among Filipino politicians she is among the minority who are not from politically connected families. Her success has largely been attributed to her support from the Catholic Church and her fame as a radio commentator on radio station Bombo Radyo in Cauayan.

During her childhood she suffered from polio which has forced her to walk with crutches for most of her life.

[edit] 2004 Gubernatorial Elections

Grace Padaca, with her victory in the 2004 gubernatorial election in the northern province of Isabela, seems to be everyone's favorite. Teachers are proud to point out that she is the daughter of two public school teachers. The physically challenged look to her, a polio victim, as proof that being handicapped is no barrier to success (valedictorian in elementary and high school and magna cum laude in college). Would-be public servants reluctant to enter the political race because they are honest and poor are inspired by her performance (what she lacked in financing she got from volunteers). And ordinary people who felt helpless against dynasties and political machinery have gotten the starch back into themselves. Grace has shown them that they can make a difference.

Of course, the feeling is not unanimous. The Dy family, whose 30-year grip on political power was broken in the 2004 elections, is not among her fans. Then there are Election Commissioners Rufino Javier and Virgilio Garcillano, whose rulings leave no doubt in anyone's minds as to whose side they are on. It was on their order that radio station Bombo Radyo was closed down on the eve of election day; and it was they who signed the temporary restraining order on Grace's proclamation, based on the charge that she should be disqualified because she used terrorist tactics to force people to vote for her.

What the general public, outside of the province of Isabela, may not be aware of, is that one of the reasons Grace Padaca triumphed (she got 55 percent of the votes) was that the people guarded their ballots, determined that this time she would not be cheated of victory.

[edit] 2001 Congressional Elections

Grace Padaca ran for Congress in 2001 because she wanted to give the people of the third district of Isabela a choice other than a Dy. A truck she could use only every other day for campaign purposes (because it was harvest season), about P500,000 raised mostly from small contributors, plus no less than ten full-time volunteers (because she didn't have enough money to pay for food for more volunteers) constituted the sum total of her resources. This, she pitted against the 30-year-old political machinery of the Dy family.

But her campaign struck a responsive chord among Isabela voters. Initial results showed her winning in most of the seven municipalities and one city of the congressional district. The final tally, though, had her losing to her opponent, Faustino "Bojie" Dy, by a margin of 1,285 votes (he got 50.7 percent of the vote to her 49.3 percent).

She protested the results of 151 ballot boxes. Dy counter-protested, questioning the results not only of the 151 precincts but all 812 precincts. Ridiculous as the idea was--of the family controlling Isabela politics being cheated by a novice--it achieved a not-so-hidden objective: it increased the cost of Grace's protest, because she would have to pay P1,000 for every ballot box that needed to be opened--for a grand total of P812,000, an amount larger than her entire campaign expenditures.

A daunting development for the fainthearted--but being faint of heart is not one of Grace's attributes. She initiated what she called an "Adopt A Ballot Box" campaign, where a donor knew that each P1,000 donated would defray the cost of a ballot box revision. Her campaign was not limited to Isabelinos. She sent letters to people she had never met, but whom she believed to be persons of good will, asking for their help. The great majority responded--people like Enrique Zobel (who also hired her as an accountant in his hacienda in Calatagan, Batangas)--and she raised the required amount.

And so the revision of the ballots in 812 ballot boxes. It was found definitively that not only were the questioned Angandanan CoC and SoV fraudulent, falsified, and padded; there was also evidence of post-election fraud in the form of genuine ballots being removed from ballot boxes, then replaced with spurious ones that had Dy's name in a hand other than the voter's.

But after two and a half years, the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal (HRET), in a decision promulgated on Dec. 18, 2003, declared Dy the winner by 48 votes. Those who signed that decision were Supreme Court Associate Justices Leonardo A. Qusimbing, Angelina Sandoval Gutierrez, Representatives Douglas Cagas (Davao Sur), Zenaida Ducut (Pampanga), Enrico Echiverri (Caloocan), and Joaquin Chipeco (Laguna).

With all that fraud corrected, how could Dy still have won?

The answer might be in the dissenting opinion of the chair of the HRET, Supreme Court Associate Justice Jose C. Vitug (widely considered to be one of the Supreme Court's intellectual heavyweights), who opined that Grace Padaca won by 202 votes.

A major point of disagreement was what to do with the ballots with "Grace" written on them. The majority of the HRET refused to count ballots with "Grace" written on them in favor of Grace Padaca! Their reason was that her real name was "Maria Gracia Cielo Padaca" and the nickname she gave when she filed her candidacy was "Bombo Grace". According to their logic, "Grace" was not the same as "Bombo Grace", and there was no reason to conclude that Grace derives from Gracia. Furthermore, it is not the dominant name in Maria Gracia Cielo, since "Maria" appears first.

Justice Vitug made no bones about what he thought of that reasoning, "The admission of 'Grace' only votes will not in any way violate the law," he opined. "No doubt the voters intended to vote for protestant when they wrote 'Grace' only on the ballot, considering that the same is admittedly the name by which protestant is popularly known. Additionally, there was no other candidate, whether national or local, who ran in the May 14, 2001 elections with the name or nickname of 'Grace.'"

Vitug also pointed out that the name "Maria GRACE Cielo Padaca" was listed in the certified list of candidates, in all the different copies of CoCs and SoVs and even in the ERs found inside the ballot boxes. He therefore concluded, there could be no doubt that the voters intended to vote for Padaca when they wrote "Grace" on their ballots.

Grace may have "lost" by 48 votes in the 2001 congressional elections, but she won by 44,000 votes in the 2004 gubernatorial elections.