Yes, they have taken the lead because the government institutions that are supposed to be doing this are not. We have a Philippine women's commission that is supposed to be the guardian of the Magna Carta of Women, but they have been quiet.
Of course, he appoints the people. He appoints the people to these commissions, and they say that the civil service that is still there will say, “Yes, we call him out. We write a statement to call him out when he comes out with a statement”. Of course, they submit them to the office of the president, and they don't know what happens.
In fact, it is civil society that.... One of the earliest sectors in Philippine society that stood out to say, “No, this cannot be” was the women's movement. In fact, we had to do a lot of reawakening of the passion for feminism, because we had gotten complacent. We had gotten to the level of doing checklists for women and development stuff: “What do you need?” We were really quite in this kind of danger, but very quickly that has revived. I am happy to say that, in fact, the intergenerational thing in the women's movement is one of the most hopeful things to older women like me. The young women who are coming up are talking to each other and finding out what that means.
I think, in fact—and it is one of my advocacies, and I hope that there will be assistance here—we need to set up a parallel type of guardian of women's rights, because our official institutions are not working. We need to be able to bring together prominent individuals—we can say it may be a bit self-commissioning—to become recognized in our society again so that somebody will speak out publicly and in one voice with strong gravitas when there is a need to push back.