The Nacionalista Party is raising a “rainbow army” of at least one million volunteers to defend the sanctity of the ballot and ensure clean and honest elections this May. But, while one party will clad its volunteers in one color, the country’s oldest political party is drawing volunteers “from all political colors” in order to make the “movement to make every man vote and make his vote count”a truly broad one. “The color for clean elections should not come in one color only. We don’t want to put people in monochromatic straitjackets,” NP secretary-general Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano said. “That’s why the people’s movement for clean elections we are launching would have as members the Greens, those whose signature getup is feminist purple, the progressive Reds, or if school color is the reference, from Ateneo blue to La Sallite green, to the UP Maroons,” he said. And while other parties, based on heir initial announcements, would only protect the votes of their candidates, Cayetano explained that NP’s “rainbow army” will not be as selfish and subjective. “If we see that a candidate is being ripped off his votes, then we will not stand idly by. This is because we believe that the right to suffrage must not be limited by partisan categorizations,” he said. “And on election day, if a voter is lost and needs assistance, we will help, even if he’s wearing, from head to toe, the colors of the competition,” he said. Cayetano said the rainbow coalition is willing to share resources and information with groups “who share the vision of an honest outcome, because this is an issue bigger than our respective ambitions.” The NP’s “formidable grassroots organization,” he added, would easily allow it to assign three volunteers for each of the country’s 352,980 precincts, or “about 1.1 million in all, which shall form the backbone of the rainbow coalition.” He said the NP has also consolidated its legal team, “which now has members in all the cities, in all the provinces.”
