Liza Maza declares bid for Senate
Liza Maza, a women’s rights activist and a former Cabinet official for antipoverty, has decided to give her aspiration to the Senate another chance for the midterm elections next year.
Maza is the fourth senatorial candidate to be under the Makabayan Coalition’s planned 12-man slate for the 2025 polls, joining her fellow candidates ACT Teachers Rep. France Castro, Gabriela Rep. Arlene Brosas and labor leader Jerome Adonis.
The former Gabriela party list representative herself announced her Senate bid on Thursday in Caloocan City, surrounded by her fellow women’s rights activists, former lawmakers from the Makabayan bloc and groups of migrant workers and seafarers.
“The reason why I was convinced and eventually decided to run [for senator] is a sign of protest. This is my protest against the rotten, corrupt and oppressive politics in our country that we have long been suffering from,” Maza told her supporters.
“Let’s end this kind of rotten politics, it’s time to put the masses first in the Senate,” she said, eliciting applause from the supporters.
She lamented how Filipinos, especially the poor, continue to live in poverty despite promises of help and assistance from the government, including politicians who ran for senator.
She recalled her time as the lead convener of the National Anti-Poverty Commission (NAPC) during the Duterte administration, when she said she crafted policies to address poverty issues in the country.
“But what did they (government) do? They wanted me to get arrested. They issued a warrant of arrest against me,” Maza said, referring to the 2018 warrant issued by a Nueva Ecija court in 2018, in connection to a murder complaint against her in 2006.
She insisted that the charges against her were fabricated and that the warrant was timely during her time in the NAPC.
The murder charges against her were eventually junked by the court and her warrant was also quashed.
Among the notable personalities who endorsed her candidacy were former Gabriela Rep. Emmi de Jesus, former Kabataan Rep. Sarah Elago and veteran actress Maria Isabel Lopez. INQ
