SENADO 2016, sino nga ba?

Neri Colmenares

Makabayan

Born: December 4, 1959, Negros Occidental

 

The three-term party-list representative and human rights lawyer Neri Colmenares may be new to the Senatorial race, but he is not new to experience.

 

“The nation needs a fighter in the Senate,” Neri Javier Colmenares, Bayan Muna representative, said in an interview for Rappler.

 

He also stated several other reasons for running, including the need to fight for an increase in pension and salaries, and lowering the prices of electricity and water; strengthening public service; and letting Filipinos benefit more from the country’s resources.

 

Colmenares, 56, was among the first to declare his intention to run, declaring he would be under the principle of “politika ng pagbabago” under Grace Poe and Francis Escudero’s ticket.

 

“President Aquino and Mar Roxas chose business over the country,” Colmenares said in his speech last September 30, when he declared his intent to run for Senator under the Poe-Escudero tandem. “Daang Matuwid has been here for 5 years, did your lives improve? Daang Matuwid is a big lie to the people.”

 

In his speech he said he would push for the freedom of information law, the anti-dynasty law, and policies promoting nationalism.

 

Overall, Colmenares has a visible stand on all relevant issues in the country. He is also against the pork barrel and lump-sums, pro-BBL, and anti-train fare hike.

 

Supporters include former president and now Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada, actress Angel Locsin who is Colmenares’s niece, and the National People’s Coalition (NPC). NPC has declared support for the Poe-Escudero tandem as well.

 

Poe and Escudero had nothing but praises for Colmenares, with the former saying they went through a lot together and the latter joking that his only wish was when Colmenares became a senator, they would not see each other in Senate anymore.

 

Even former president Estrada, who was called on to be ousted by Colmenares and his Makabayan bloc in 2001, declared his full support for the candidate, saying he now sees they will get along and “past is past”.

 

The leftist leader got his undergraduate degree in AB Economics at San Beda College in 1992, and his law degree at the University of the Philippines College of Law in 1996.

 

All leading to him being a human rights lawyer, he became an associate at the Asian Law Centre at the Melbourne School of Law in 2002 while taking his Ph.D in Law on “The Writ of Amparo and the International Criminal Court”.

 

He also lectured at the University of Melbourne on the International Human Rights Law and the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.

 

Colmenares was and still is an activist, having been one of the political prisoners during Martial Law. In 1976, he became active in the Student Catholic Action (SCA). Shortly after being a national council member of the SCA, he was arrested.

 

When he was set free he moved to Manila where he was involved in various religious organizations, then came to work as a youth organizer at Cagayan Valley. After five months of working there, the military arrested him and charged him with rebellion. They detained and tortured him for four years. He was one of the youngest political prisoners at the time.

 

After he was released, his mother urged him to finish his studies, which led to him getting his Economics degree and later on, Law. Not letting dark times stop him, Colmenares became secretary general of the National Union of People’s Lawyers (NUPL), a national association of human rights lawyers in the Philippines.

 

Colmenares became active in constitutional legal cases, including the controversial Executive Order 464 which he questioned the constitutionality of. He also argued before the District Court in the United States on the Marcos Human Rights case.

 

He is now on his third term in Congress representing the party-list Bayan Muna. During this time he acted as counsel for the five impeachment complaints in the House of Representatives, and was one of the prosecutors in the impeachment trial of Merceditas Navarro Gutierrez, former Ombudsman.

 

He was a member of various committees in the 15th Congress, and is currently sitting on the Committee on Rules and is the Senior Deputy Minority Leader in the 16th Congress. He has authored the bills and resolutions on making annulment of marriage accessible to the poor, helped in increasing the Social Security System pension by P 2,000, and investigated high prices of gasoline in the provinces.

 

It may be worth mentioning that the Senatorial candidate obtained an undergraduate degree in engineering in West Negros College and the University of Negros Occidental Recoletos (UNOR) in 1977. He is also a director of the National Chess Federation of the Philippines, and chairman of the organization’s committee on grassroots and development.

 

Above all, Colmenares is a very private family man, with little to nothing much known about his family. His most famous relative is actress Angel Locsin (born Angelica Colmenares). He and wife Shalimar C. Vitan have a 9-year-old son named Bien Carlo. According to sources, he is quite a doting father.