The economics professor has a doctorate, a master’s degree and known advocacies for fiscal prudence and judicious budgeting.
Judging from the results of elections in recent years, such sterling credentials could actually turn off voters from Cielo Magno, who announced her intention to seek a Senate seat in 2028.
But Cielo, who bared her political plans in response to a question while interacting with Filipinos days ago in Milan, Italy, prefers to believe that people are ready for change and are looking for alternatives to the same surnames and faces that stick to the ship of state like barnacles.
To help get her advocacies across, Cielo writes pop songs and plays the piano and saxophone, giving her an entertainer’s mass appeal.
She understands the complexity of the issues she is raising, and she is moving to simplify the messaging so her advocacies can have the widest reach, all the way down to the grassroots.
Is the Philippines ready to toss out the traditional politicians who are stealing the nation blind, and bring in new blood?
I’m pinning my hopes on the young voters – those from age 18 to their early 40s – who should be worried about inheriting a rotten country. They will be constituting over 60 percent of the voters in 2028. The Commission on Elections expects some 40 percent of those voters to be age 30 or younger.
Elma Laguna, director of the University of the Philippines Population Institute, told a seminar last month that the country now has 112.7 million people and is currently experiencing a “youth bulge” – meaning a significant increase in the number and proportion of people aged 15 to 24. This age group accounted for nearly 19 percent of the population in the latest census in 2024.
Also based on that 2024 census, there were 82.7 million Pinoys of voting age, with 26.1 million ages 18 to 30. By generation, there were 26.4 million millennials (ages 28 to 43) and 20.4 million Gen Zs (ages 12 to 27).
Laguna said the country could reap its demographic dividend if the youths are properly supported through quality education, decent job opportunities and comprehensive health care programs.
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Such investments in the nation’s most important resource, its people, require the judicious use of precious public funds. This is the field of expertise of Cielo Magno, who teaches public finance, institutional and health economics in her alma mater the UP School of Economics.
Speaking to The STAR’s online show “Truth on the Line” last Monday, she said that if she makes it to the Senate, her priority legislation would be to increase funding for the Philippine Health Insurance Corp., abolish the medical pork barrel the MAIFIP (Medical Assistance to Indigent and Financially Incapacitated Patients) and expand the zero-balance billing program.
Cielo hopes to dismantle ayudanomics, which has sustained political patronage and perpetuated dynasties.
Breaking the culture of mendicancy calls for effective messaging to inform voters that all of them are taxpayers and therefore have a stake in seeing that money used judiciously. Dole-outs or ayuda come from the people and are used by politicians simply for self-promotion at public expense.
For better messaging, Cielo has turned to entertainment, writing the song “Tax ng Ina Mo” – something that could give an economist mass appeal if she pushes through with her Senate bid.
She will need name recall if she hopes to break into the Magic 12 in 2028. I interviewed Cielo on the same day that OCTA released its latest survey on possible Senate bets. She was not among the top 45, although the poll was taken before she announced her plan.
Her announcement made her only the second person, after former elections commissioner Rowena Guanzon last March, to declare a Senate bid for 2028.
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Cielo is fully aware of the challenges faced by a relative unknown, without the right surname or family billions, going against entrenched pols.
Running for a national position requires enormous resources, preferably with a party machinery. Cielo is still weighing whether she should join a political party.
The 48-year-old economist takes heart in the numerous invitations she has been getting to speak at universities, with the youths urging her to run, Cielo, run. There are people volunteering to help in her campaign, she told me.
Cielo knows it will be an uphill climb for her, but she says she wants to challenge the traditional politicians.
Even if she loses, she would have planted the seeds (she hopes) of a different type of politician – someone who need not offer tax-funded dole-outs for personal promotion, but who can instead offer solutions to the complex problems that have made the Philippines a regional laggard.
Cielo wants to elevate the national discourse on issues related to education, healthcare, industrial policy, agriculture and of course corruption.
She believes her knowledge of budgeting and taxation can help provide solutions that will foster job creation, the responsible management of natural resources and food security.
“I’m here not to become a part of traditional politics. I’m here to disrupt. I don’t have to win to do that, but I want to use the election platform,” she told me.
We need not only disruptor candidates, but more importantly, voters who will disrupt the kalakaran, or, as an accused serial plunderer put it, the standard practice.