Jamby Madrigal

Name: Maria Ana Consuelo “Jamby” Madrigal-Valade
Party: Independent

A candidate wealthy enough to personally fund a presidential campaign. A candidate whose sense of nationalism runs in the family. These phrases have been used to describe the frontrunners in the 2010 presidential race, but they could very well describe Jamby Madrigal, the lone female vying for the country’s top post.

Jamby is a scion of the Madrigal family – a clan with substantial investments in real estate, shipping and other businesses, and also dabbled in politics and philanthropy. Senator Vicente Madrigal was her paternal grandfather, while Senator Pacita Madrigal-Gonzales and the renowned socialite/philanthropist Chito Madrigal-Collantes were her aunts. Jamby’s relatives on her mother’s side were equally illustrious political figures. Her maternal grandfather is the Supreme Court Justice Jose Abad Santos, while her great-uncle Pedro Abad Santos was an assemblyman and founder of the Socialist Party of the Philippines.

Jamby first entered public service in 1992 as an Undersecretary of the Department of Social Welfare and Development. She was appointed Presidential Adviser for Children’s Affairs in 1999. As a private citizen, she championed women’s and children’s rights and education, through the Abad Santos Madrigal Foundation and Books-for-the-Barangay Foundation, respectively.

She was elected Senator during the 2004 general elections, and currently chairs four Senate Committees: Environment; Youth, Women and Family Relations; Peace, Unification, and Reconciliation; and Cultural Communities. She principally authored the Anti-Child Pornography Law and successfully passed the Magna Carta for Women under her chairmanship. She proudly states that her voting record is “100% nationalist” citing her votes against the E-VAT law, JPEPA treaty, and the Anti-Terrorism Law.

Known for her outspoken demeanor, Jamby conducted an inquiry on the C-5 road scandal, and continues to bring up the allegations against fellow presidential contender Senator Manny Villar, while on the campaign trail.

Her presidential platform is based on a “genuine people’s nationalism” and a “Philippines for Filipinos” with an emphasis on fair trade, anti-monopoly and other more inclusive labor and trade policies, the environment, OFW rights, gender equality, and anti-corruption.

She has been married to Eric Jean Claude Dudoignon Valade since 2002.

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Mulat Pinoy’s writers have been doing research on various aspects of the candidates’ platforms, based on campaign websites, interviews, news articles and blogger forums. Here’s what we have on Jamby Madrigal:

Population and Environment: Genuine, adequate pro-Filipino protection and rehabilitation of the environment.

• Stopping destructive logging and large-scale mining, factory, trawl, blast and cyanide fishing, conversion of mangrove forests, industrial pollution of rivers and water bodies, maintenance of landfills and waste dumpsites, the importation of toxic wastes, acidification and poisoning of the soil with synthetic agrichemicals, the spread of GMO farming, further global warming through coal-and-oil-fired power plants, and continued promotion on non-biodegradable materials and fossil fuels.
• Prosecuting and imprisoning especially the major deforesters, polluters and their political-military collaborators and protectors.
• Demanding and extracting reparations from foreign countries and businesses for the massive and wanton deforestation and environmental plunder of the country and toxic despoliation of the former US bases
• Promoting organic farming, zero-waste management, R & D and public, pro-Filipino funding of wind, solar and other renewable energy, and people’s environmental awareness and activism.

Population and Education:

We need to genuinely support Philippine education by canceling and rechanneling at least 160 billion pesos in annual unfair foreign debt and trade payments to the public education budget. In this way, we will provide for completely free education for Filipinos in state colleges and universities and give more substance to the democratic access of the poor youth to adequate education. But beyond this, we need to give provide more substance and depth to the education of the Filipino people in genuine nationalism. This involves debunking the anti-Filipino “neoliberal” economic doctrines fostered by the IMF and WB and other foreign vested interests, educating students about the hidden roots of their underdevelopment through unequal trade, and inculcating among them a genuine deep nationalist vision and mission for the country.

Population and Health: The country needs a pro-Filipino health care policy that eliminates dependence on expensive imported medicine and medical equipment, and provides adequate priority funding for public health care.

The policy will focus on development of a fully Filipino owned and controlled pharmaceutical industry based on local medicinal herbs and making affordably-priced medicine available to the majority of Filipinos. It will also focus on prioritizing preventive health care and ensuring adequate and much higher pay for public health care workers and adequate public funding for public health facilities in line with the World Health Organization standard of 5% of Gross National Product (GNP). It will fund this thrust by channeling funds away from odious foreign debt payments and unfair trade payments.

On Population Control – Choices by spouses on family planning methods should be respected. However, abortion as a means of either population control or attempts at escaping poverty should be totally discredited and prevented.

Gender Equality:
All forms of gender inequality should be opposed and ended, including unequal pay for equal work, discriminatory access to work, sexual harassment, sexual exploitation and abuse, rape, and sexist culture and biases. Women should enjoy the right to divorce to end abusive and exploitative relationships, a right enjoyed in all countries of the world, except two, the Philippines and Malta.

Others:
Human capital: Protection for indigenous people against illegal logging, mining, and “greedy corporate interests”.

At the same time, the attempt of foreign agencies to attribute Philippine and other third world poverty and underdevelopment is outright false and pernicious. It blames the victim countries and people themselves impoverished by “free trade/free market policies” and unequal trade and economic ties for their poverty.

On Youth – The youth should be encouraged and developed to play the role as catalyst of truly nationalist and progressive change to end the lingering centuries-old feudalistic and colonialist social system that dominates Philippine society today. They should lead the protest against the dehumanizing and impoverishing conditions that burden the Filipino people as a whole. Such campus and community activism and activists should not only be safeguarded in their civil liberties in schools and communities but also promoted as role-actions and role-models in the Philippine quest for genuine change.

Sources:
http://www.jambymadrigal.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamby_Madrigal
various news reports