‘We ask each voter to take responsibility for the 2025 national and local elections. We ask each voter to do everything they possibly can to make the best choice on May 12, 2025, election day.’
The week-long candidacy filing for the 2025 elections ended Tuesday, October 8, and what a circus it’s been, with a few promising lights in the horizon.
Two notorious red-taggers running for senator and party-list nominee. Three siblings intending to be 13% of the Senate, where other siblings already dominate. A whistleblower who has lied under oath is running for senator. An arrested doomsday preacher convicted in the US for human trafficking also vying to be a lawmaker. And much, much more (backread the action in the Philippine politics chat room).
It’s fun to watch the entertainment, until we realize how this will affect our lives.
Senators and House representatives approve the national budget, controlling the salary of our children’s public school teacher and if there will be a budget for that bridge your town desperately needs. Mayors and governors are in charge of basic services, infrastructure, peace and order, and business permits in our neighborhoods. Councilors will write the ordinances that will determine what programs and projects you’ll benefit, or suffer, from.
Elections are not a telenovela we passively watch from the comfort of our couches. It is a story we are a part of, and a story we get to write, together.
Hence, as we embarked on our coverage of the candidacy filing, we soft-launched our voter education and empowerment campaign at Rappler: #AmbagNatin.
Does it sound familiar? Does it give you flashbacks of when trolls supporting the Duterte administration would lash out at critics and ask, “Eh ano’ng ambag mo?” (What’s your contribution?)
We’re retaking that narrative, because that is what agency is all about.
We ask each voter to take responsibility for the 2025 national and local elections. We ask each voter to do everything they possibly can to make the best choice on May 12, 2025, election day.
Rappler will be with voters all the way, through the #AmbagNatin campaign.
For starters, expect a series of data journalism and analysis pieces from our reporters, editors, and researchers, about those who filed their candidacies. We go beyond surnames and spot trends, patterns, and co-relations that can help voters make sense of the current crop of candidates and what their bids mean for you.
Within the month, expect profiles on political families, reactions about local and senatorial elections from communities and ordinary citizens, from our MovePH partners and Rappler fellows.
We are also offering a series of live chats that will let you directly interact with civil society leaders, analysts, Rappler staff, and other concerned citizens about the elections: #AmbagNatin community chats.
These live chats, open to the public, are being held in various chat rooms in the Rappler Communities app. Our first chat was about the Comelec’s historic social media and anti-disinformation guidelines, which we held with lawyers from the Movement Against Disinformation. We had a live chat about how to tell if your current mayor or governor deserves to be reelected, with GoodGovPH, a youth-led group advocating for excellence in political leadership. On World Teacher’s Day on October 5, the theme of the chat was how to spot candidates who will be genuine champions of the education sector.
If you missed any of these, no worries, you can always backread them. We’ve compiled all of them here, a page which includes links to all previous chats.
Want to suggest a topic for future #AmbagNatin live chats? Let me know!
And last but not the least, Rappler and the Comelec have a shared chat room in the app called voter hotline. This is where you can send any question to Comelec staff, and even report electoral violations or anomalies.
The voter hotline chat room has already helped Rappler app user @Elle determine that her son will be eligible to vote, and user @Dan figure out how he can get info on his precinct number so he can reactivate his voter registration. All of their queries were answered by Comelec Education and Information Department staff especially onboarded by Rappler to the voter hotline chat room. As we near election day, we’re hoping citizens can use this chat room to report violations and anomalies to the Comelec and Rappler journalists.
We also have a show with Comelec Chairperson George Garcia, hosted by Rappler managing editor Miriam Grace Go, about pressing election issues.
Information, and meaningful conversations about elections, are literally at your fingertips! – Rappler.com
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