Senatorial aspirant Robin Padilla on Tuesday thanked President Rodrigo Duterte for including him in the administration senatorial slate and credited the chief executive for his “surprising” performance in a recently conducted survey that showed the actor in the top 12 among candidates running for senator in the May 2022 polls.
The survey, conducted by SWS sometime in October after the filing of candidacies, showed that 29% of those polled would vote for Padilla if the elections were held that day. Padilla was the 10th highest among senatorial candidates.
Padilla attributed his showing in the survey to the support and the popularity of the President, who could finish his term as the most popular president in our country’s history.
The actor said that like the President, he would continue to fight for the rights of Filipinos, especially overseas Filipino workers who are abused by their employers.
Duterte in February 2018 prohibited workers from being deployed to Kuwait after domestic helper Joanna Demafelis’s corpse was discovered in a freezer in her employer’s home. The deployment ban was only lifted in May that year after the government signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with Kuwait that would provide additional protection for OFWs in the Gulf state.
Padilla said Duterte’s decision protected OFWs and is worth emulating.