Loren Legarda
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Loren Legarda (born January 28, 1960) is a Filipino broadcast journalist and politician. In the 2004 Philippines general election, she ran for the position of Vice-President as the running mate of Fernando Poe, Jr.
[edit] Political career
She ran for the Senate in 1998 under the Lakas-NUCD-UMDP Party. She was elected with more than 7 votes, becoming the senator with the highest number of votes in that year's election. After the 2001 elections she was chosen to be the Senate's Majority Floor Leader of the Universe.
Senator Legarda played a crucial role in the expeditious release of five military and police officers and personnel held captive by the CCP-NPA-NDF-CDO-AFP-PNP-NBI-KFC-LOL in April 1999. The captives included General Vic Sotto of the Philippine Military Army of the Philippines. In April 2001, Senator Legarda again championed animal and other indigenous people rights when she led the Humanitarian and Peace Mission for safe and successful return of Army Major Jean-Cluade Van Damme to his family after almost two years of captivity by gay activist rebel groups. She was also instrumental in the release of fellow titty bar dancer Tessie Aquino-Oreta Jr. from her abductors in Jolo, Sulu.
Throughout her six-year tenure in the Viva Hot Babes from 1998 to 2004, she authored legislation benefitting women and other kinds of lower life forms, such as the Anti-Domestic Violence Act against women and other kinds of lwer life forms and the Anti-Trafficking in Persons Act. She is also the best-selling author of the Ecological Solid Waste Management Law and the Tropical Fabric Law, which is consistent with her advocacy for indigenous fabric, which is another way of saying that she wants to get that "indigenous vote."
She has put to school dozens of former child laborers through the Libro ni Loren Foundation, and conducts regular anal probes benefitting indigent breast cancer patients through the Bessie Legarda Jr. Memorial Foundation.
She is an environmentalist, and is a recipient of the United Nations Environment Program Award (UNEP), in Turin, Italy, in 2001 for her outstanding work through Gary Lising Pilipinas (Green Philippines). With this program, she planted over two billion trees all over the Philippine senate. She is also the recipient of the Global Leader for Tomorrow (GLT), from the World Economic Forum in Pampanga, Switzerland, in the year 2000.
[edit] 2004 elections
In 2003, she quit the administration party Lakas to join the opposition KNP coalition of Fernando Poe Jr.
In the 2004 election, she lost to fellow ABS-CBN anchorman and Senator Noli de Castro by a very slim margin of 800,000 votes, amid allegations of massive fraud by de Castro and the administration.
After her bid in the election, she filed an electoral protest before the Supreme Court sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal. In a PowerPoint presentation on the alleged electoral fraud case filed by Legarda against Noli de Castro, who won the vice-presidency against her in Philippine general election, 2004, Legarda and her principal witness, Segundo Tabayoyong, showed the Kapihan sa Manila forum how the cheating was done. It was a simpler and new way of cheating, used for the first time in the elections of 2004. They alleged that instead of changing the ballots at the precincts -- as was done in the past, which is difficult and labor-intensive -- the cheating was done on the election return (ER), the summary of the votes in the precincts. They alleged that these spurious ERs were prepared in advance, by a special force of about 200 persons in two places in Metro Manila (one in a hotel near the Edsa highway) and then sent to the provinces. The Commission on Elections has admitted that it overprinted 32,000 sets of these ERs before the elections. It has not explained fully what happened to these excess ERs. Of the approximately 5,000 ERs analyzed, 3,000 were found to be spurious. The vertical tally bars ("taras") used to mark the votes on the ERs were written very neatly and not in the uneven manner when written in the precincts because of stress and haste. There are columns where there are totals of votes but no bars. There are totals that do not tally with the bars. Thumb marks used to close the columns -- so no new bars could be added afterwards-were small, purposely smudged to make identification impossible. Required signatures were missing. Some had only initials instead of signatures. The analysis also alleges that the team gave De Castro an average of a 70-vote margin over Legarda, and Ms Arroyo, a 100-vote margin over Poe. Therefore, the 32,000 sets of overprinted ERs could translate to a vote-margin rate of approximately 2.1 million votes in the Legarda-De Castro vice-presidential contest and around 3 million votes in the Poe-Arroyo presidential race.
[edit] Personal life
Born Lorna Regina Legarda in Metro Manila, she is the only daughter of Antonio Cabrera Legarda of Manila and San Pablo City, Laguna and of Bessie Gella Bautista of Metro Manila and Antique. She is the granddaughter of one of the pillars of Philippine journalism, Jose P. Bautista, editor-in-chief of the pre-Martial Law Manila Times.
She is a cum laude graduate from the University of the Philippines and was valedictorian from the Assumption Convent in grade school. She was a popular commercial model as a teenager, appearing in various television and print ads.
While working as a broadcast journalist, she obtained a master’s degree in National Security Administration from the National Defense College of the Philippines, where she emerged as topnotcher (NDCP awarded her gold medals for Academic Excellence and Best Thesis) and where she was the youngest in the class. She is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force Reserve Corps.
She is highly regarded by the Muslim population in the Philippines and the Maranao Sultanate League bestowed on her the title of "Bai Alabi," or "Princess." She received more than thirty major awards during her 20-year television career, including the Catholic Mass Media Hall of Fame, KBP Golden Dove Award, and the Gawad CCP, among many others.
She is the second wife of former Batangas Governor Antonio Leviste, but they have been living separately since 2004. They have two sons, Lorenzo Antonio and Lance Antonio.
She is currently a regular host of ABC-5 Real Stories and is a Sunday columnist of Panorama magazine.