Senatorial Candidate Florin Hilbay On Tondo, Twitter, And Credibility

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Few people could name the solicitor general during the previous administration, let alone name his top accomplishments. Never mind that Florin Hilbay, then 40, was the youngest to ever hold the post as the government’s top lawyer, or that, as solgen, it’s his signature that appears on the Philippines’ case against China regarding our claim on the West Philippine Sea. Or that, as a senior state solicitor, he defended the Reproductive Health law at the Supreme Court.

Florin Hilbay may have started to become a household name after his term as solicitor general ended, as he stepped in as legal counsel for Senator Leila de Lima in 2018, where his clear and eloquent oral arguments were broadcast to a polarized audience that finally found reason to either love him or hate him.

But it was really when Florin Hilbay became @fthilbay on Twitter that he became a political force—and, now, a senatorial candidate. As part of the Otso Diretso slate, he is one of the most vocal oppositionists running; he is also one of the first to understand the power of social media in delivering one’s message. But he’s a newbie when it comes to being a politician, not to mention a candidate. So he sticks to his message, about being a poor boy from Tondo who did good as a lawyer and public servant. He hopes that it’ll be enough to get him to the Senate.

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So let’s get some of those facts out of the way: Hilbay was born to working-class parents, his mother only having graduated from elementary school, and his dad with a high school diploma. To make ends meet, his mother had to work as a kasambahay with a family nearby. His dad, who still lives in the family house on Amarlanhagui Street, is named Rodrigo. (“Not a Duterte,” Hilbay is quick to interject, which never fails to draw a laugh from his audiences.) His mother pawned a watch to send the young Hilbay to a parochial school instead of a public school. Later, proving himself as a bright child, he went on to high school at the University of Santo Tomas, attending the subsidized classes run by the UST College of Education.

Hilbay ended up in the Economics program at UST for college, on a partial scholarship that he thought would put him on track to becoming, of all things, a bank teller. But while most of his batchmates did go on to work in banks, a few said that they intended to go to law school. And so Hilbay went, too; he was the only applicant from UST to be accepted into the prestigious UP College of Law. To earn a little bit extra for his studies, Hilbay taught undergrads back in UST. He also worked for the dean of the law school, wrote speeches for a classmate who was also a congressman.

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Four years later, the list of bar topnotchers in 1999 had the name “Florin Hilbay” at number one. Enamored with the lore of the Supreme Court, he worked as a law clerk for Justice Vicente Mendoza—“the most renown constitutionalist of his time,” Hilbay explains. He was only 26 when that gig ended, and he returned to the College of Law to teach.

Hilbay also met and began working with Senator Jovito Salonga, who had set up cause-oriented organizations after retiring from politics. Hilbay became the vice chair of Salonga’s Bantay Katarungan, an anti-corruption organization. “That’s how I got politicized,” he says in retrospect. “My activism springs from my work in Bantay Katarungan with Senator Salonga.”

PHOTO: Joseph Pascual

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In fact, Salonga introduced the idea of running for public office to the young Hilbay. “It was really Senator Salonga who introduced me to the possibility of using law for politics, for good governance issues, those anti-corruption issues. In fact, in 2004 he wanted me to run for Congress,” Hilbay says. “I said, no I’m not interested, I’m not a politician, that’s not my thing. I really saw myself as an academic doing activist work through Bantay Katarungan. That was my life.”

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Hilbay took a break in 2004 to take up a scholarship at Yale for his masters degree, and returned to the Philippines to continue working at Bantay Katarungan with Senator Salonga until 2010, after which Hilbay was named director of the Institute of Government and Law Reform, the policy arm of the UP College of Law. In 2013, he rejoined the Office of the Solicitor General, then headed by Francis Jardeleza.

Under Jardeleza’s OSG, Hilbay argued the case for the Reproductive Health Law in front of the Supreme Court. When Jardeleza was appointed to the Supreme Court, President Benigno Aquino III asked Hilbay to take over as solicitor general. At 40 years old, Hilbay was the youngest ever in Philippine history to have been named to the position. As solgen, Hilbay handled everything from the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement to the Grace Poe disqualification case and the West Philippine Sea arbitration.

By the end of his term as solgen, Hilbay was ready to live a life of semi-retirement. “I thought I had already done my part. Three years in the OSG is a lifetime of experience,” he laughs. But then, 2016 rolled around—“Then Duterte happened,” he says wryly. Hilbay found that his language and his views were especially welcome on Twitter. “I started commenting on Duterte’s policies, especially his drug war, his language, his attitude. So I became branded as an oppositionist, as someone critical to the administration.”

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ESQUIRE: Would you say that you are still running on a legal platform? You spoke about returning the rule of law as the big idea behind your candidacy.

FLORIN HILBAY: I think that’s part of it. Because my background is legal, and I teach the Constitution. And I think many of the institutions of the Constitution have been undermined by the Duterte administration. Institutions of free speech, independent judiciary, freedom of the press, independent foreign policy have been severely challenged by Duterte’s policies.

But I think also people are looking for new voices. Given my background, given my story, I think that’s the kind of story that will resonate to ordinary people. The university crowd can easily be enthralled by the paper qualifications: the academic qualifications, being a professor of law, being a bar topnotcher, being a very young solicitor general, etc. But if you want to reach a broader audience, you must appeal to them on a more emotional level, and I think my story, my background, as someone who has seen different worlds, the world of poverty, the world of academic privilege, the world of power—that’s a rather unique perspective. A person who has seen those different worlds would have a very different perspective.

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So I still don’t see myself as a politician. I’m very awkward as a politician. If you ask me to do a lecture on law, I can talk for hours and hours. But if you ask me to talk as a politician, I can probably only talk for 10 minutes tops. But I can tell you about myself, about why I’m running.

ESQ: How has your growing up in Tondo informed, say, your attitude towards law?

FH: It’s kept me really grounded, kasi iba yung hugot. So I don’t think theoretically… I’m generally seen as a theoretical constitutionalist in the university, but I think my theories are heavily grounded in my experience here in Tondo.

I spent the first 30 years of my life in Tondo, even when I was a lawyer I would still go home here to Tondo, so I think my normative views about law are heavily shaped by my experience. I’m the poor guy talking about his experience, and using that experience to explain what the law is all about. Compared to someone who is middle class or upper class who is trying to help the poor—there’s that separation between the activist and the people he is helping. When I talk about the poor, I am talking about my own experience. I am one of them.

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"I spent the first 30 years of my life in Tondo, so I think my normative views about law are heavily shaped by my experience."

ESQ: The law is a difficult proposition for voters, because the Filipino voter does not have a lot of faith in the law, and we do not have a lot of faith or knowledge in the Constitution and what it can do for us.

FH: Seventy-five percent of Filipinos are not familiar with the Constitution. Filipinos see law in terms of class. If you are Imelda Marcos, it’s not like you’re going to jail. If you’re poor, you have a fast lane to prison or detention, to a cell. So I think people, given the ordinary Filipino’s [attitude towards] the law, they’re really looking for credible speakers who can push an agenda in the political arena that can bring law to their level, that will allow law to level with them.

So when I speak about batas ng api, I’m basically talking about different types of law. There’s a law for those who have status, those who have money and power; and there’s a different kind of law for those who are not privileged. So while the language of the law is the same, the way it’s applied is very different. So there is a very differential application of law based on one’s status. I think people are looking for champions, and those champions I think they prefer if it came from their class.

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ESQ: So you think, hopefully that’s you.

FH: Yes, I hope I can speak with credibility given my background and given my history, given the things that I’ve experienced. So the fights that I’ve fought are not fights that I’ve fought because I was playing the game of the politicians or of the elite. The fights that I’ve fought are because they were the right things to embrace, the right causes to address.

ESQ: Being an oppositionist is also hard in this current climate.

FH: That’s a special challenge, being a member of the opposition. But I also see it as an opportunity because there’s not a lot of expectations. You can embrace the U.P. hashtag: There’s no way to go but up, right?

PHOTO: Joseph Pascual

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"The foundation of the political statement is still an appeal to one’s sense of integrity, to one’s sense of fairness, an appeal to honesty."

ESQ: When did you start using social media consciously?

FH: The moment I realized that some of the things I said had gone viral, and that there’s a traction there. I started developing a loyal following. That’s when I realized that I had the power, not of a solicitor general, not the power of a law professor, but the power of an ordinary person with control over language to which a lot of people associate. I started with what 10 followers. Then I started looking at the Twitterverse, for example; some people are so famous on Twitter for saying, doing, basically nothing. And I felt, I’m a law professor, I’m a constitutional law professor, I’m a former solicitor general—I think I should be heard as well.

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So it took a while, but when I realized that there was an audience and that audience can cross disciplines, can cross ages, that’s when I realized I had some power, I had a voice and that voice is a relevant voice in the public sphere.

ESQ: Twitter is a hard thing to master.

FH: It’s like poetry! You need to develop a mastery over the form. Because you have 140 characters, now 200-plus characters, you can’t say a lot of things. So you need to develop mastery over the form. It’s like poetry, I suppose. People appreciate control over form, efficiency over verbosity, right? Being able to put the right emphasis, the right time…

ESQ: That’s an interesting tool for politicians, because it has you digest complex thoughts into bite-sized…

FH: Yes! In the same way that politicians want key words and phrases, soundbites, Twitter is also training for that. But generally the more educated crowd, the woke crowd. So the challenge now is to convert that into the world of Facebook.

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You know last year, I opened a Facebook page, my former student said, okay, you’re famous on Twitter, you’re very much respected on Twitter, but the game is on Facebook. The game is in that world. So I opened a Facebook page, now I think I have around 65,000 followers [89,000+ followers as of today—ed.] and the page is not sponsored a lot, not paying to be seen. I don’t post photos of myself the way actors and actresses and models do. The following is for the ideas. That says a lot about the number of Filipinos who are looking for intelligent takes on public issues.

ESQ: But I’ve always thought, especially Pinoy Twitter, is a double-edged sword. If they love you, they love you. If you’re cancelled, that’s it. And that can happen overnight.

FH: That’s right, that’s right. (laughs) The universe of Twitter is very fickle.

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ESQ: You’re the only politician I know of—with the exception of Teddy Boy Locsin—who’s embraced Twitter, perhaps because it’s so volatile. It might even be easier on Facebook, because Facebook forgets. But Twitter doesn’t. Once you’re dead, you’re dead.

FH: Yes. There’s a very strong cancelation policy on Twitter.

ESQ: How do you handle that?

FH: You need to communicate with credibility. I think the world of Twitter hates fakery, the lack of authenticity. I’d like to think of myself as a credible speaker. I appeal to the sense of principle of people. Even as I speak about political matters, the foundation of the political statement is still an appeal to one’s sense of integrity, to one’s sense of fairness, an appeal to honesty, etc.

ESQ: Brevity plays well on Twitter, but that’s also at the expense of nuance. And a lot of law, a lot of governance, plays on the gray areas, so how do you address that?

FH: Well I think if I’ve gotten some following on Twitter it’s because they realize that I have the ability to simplify a lot of concepts, and that ability to simplify concepts reflects one’s ability to summarize complex issues and fit them all in the limitations of the form.

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Of all the different takes you can make on a situation, for example, how to find that spot-on take on a situation that you can slice very differently, in so many ways—I think that’s the real challenge.

PHOTO: Joseph Pascual

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"The administration has a special challenge to explain to people why prices are so high and why they have these policies that are seen as anti-poor."

ESQ: Let’s talk about the opposition’s strategy. I remember you saying that maybe the strategy is not to go up against the administration, but maybe to present a more positive way forward. What are say the three top issues you want to address, and how should the opposition’s stance be?

FH: The number one issue is the economy. And I think the administration has a special challenge, a special burden to explain to people why prices are so high and why they have these policies that are seen as anti-poor when they ran on a platform that was pro-poor.

Number two is credibility. So many different statements coming from the administration, so [difficult] to fit into a single coherent line.

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Number three, we’re trying to sell the idea that you need credibility more than anything else. And if you look at the slate, you know, a lot of us are really new politicians, there’s an appeal to freshness, there’s an appeal to uniqueness. In a highly polarized environment, that just may appeal to a large segment of the populace.

ESQ: What’s your outlook on your chances?

FH: I’m very positive about it. I think the only challenge we have is time. Will we have enough time to reach 15 million votes? Because I think everywhere we go, people get really excited about what we’re telling them, about who we are. If I go to a university crowd, I can talk to them about my academic accomplishments, if I go to an urban poor area, I can talk to them about my history. There’s no crowd that I cannot talk to, that’s how I feel. And I see and sense that based on the reactions of the people that I speak to.

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I think people are really excited about my candidacy, because of my background, because of my unique personal journey. Whether I’ll be able to reach 50 million voters in time for the May elections, I think that’s the challenge, but I think I see myself getting more and more followers and supporters as we move forward.

ESQ: Do people see you as an oppositionist?

FH: The people who already know me, who’ve read the things that I’ve [said], they see me as an oppositionist, definitely. The people who don’t know me, they see me as a source of hope, I think. Here’s a guy from his background, who made something of himself, and here we are, having a difficult time with life, maybe he can lead the way. This kind of story is enough to make people feel inspired and hopeful.

Well, the people who know me, I think they’ve already made a decision to support me or not support me.

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ESQ: I guess the challenge now is to get your story out there.

FH: Yes, I think that’s the only challenge, whether we’ll be able to tap into the networks of the information superhighway within a short span of time, to reach the number of votes required to bring me to the Senate. That’s the only challenge. It’s a challenge of communication. It’s a challenge of organization, it’s a challenge of resources.

PHOTO: Joseph Pascual

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"I think my story, my background, as someone who has seen different worlds, the world of poverty, the world of academic privilege, the world of power—that’s a rather unique perspective."

ESQ: If you win a seat in the Senate, what can we Filipinos expect to fight for?

FH: Because I really don’t see myself as a politician, but simply as an instrument—I mean, I’m campaigning with the people, I’m not campaigning for the people. So I suppose I’ll have to carry their voices, to unify their voice. They’ll get a senator who’s very independent, who’s not beholden to some big groups. I don’t come from a political family, so there’s no excess baggage. I suppose I’ll be a people’s senator, a real people’s senator, given that the only way I can win is with the support of the people. I’m not referring just to the votes of the people, but the people campaigning and going out for me to win.

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And if I’m interested in sustainability, and living longer as a politician, I’d have to really listen to the people.

More senatorial candidates:

Samira Gutoc: "People on the fringes like us cannot participate fully."

Bam Aquino: "It’s a disservice to our country and democracy if the senate becomes monolithic."

Erin Tañada: "Stick to the core advocacies that you believe will uplift the lives of people."

Serge Osmeña: "You just hope that the people will see right, rather than see emotion."

Dr. Willie Ong: "Should I change myself in order to please them to get the votes?"

“When I talk about the poor, I am talking about my own experience. I am one of them.”-Florin Hilbay, Senatorial Candidate

ESQUIRE: Would you say that you are still running on a legal platform? You spoke about returning the rule of law as the big idea behind your candidacy.

ESQ: How has your growing up in Tondo informed, say, your attitude towards law?

ESQ: The law is a difficult proposition for voters, because the Filipino voter does not have a lot of faith in the law, and we do not have a lot of faith or knowledge in the Constitution and what it can do for us.

ESQ: So you think, hopefully that’s you.

ESQ: Being an oppositionist is also hard in this current climate.

ESQ: When did you start using social media consciously?

ESQ: Twitter is a hard thing to master.

ESQ: That’s an interesting tool for politicians, because it has you digest complex thoughts into bite-sized…

ESQ: But I’ve always thought, especially Pinoy Twitter, is a double-edged sword. If they love you, they love you. If you’re cancelled, that’s it. And that can happen overnight.

ESQ: You’re the only politician I know of—with the exception of Teddy Boy Locsin—who’s embraced Twitter, perhaps because it’s so volatile. It might even be easier on Facebook, because Facebook forgets. But Twitter doesn’t. Once you’re dead, you’re dead.

ESQ: How do you handle that?

ESQ: Brevity plays well on Twitter, but that’s also at the expense of nuance. And a lot of law, a lot of governance, plays on the gray areas, so how do you address that?

ESQ: Let’s talk about the opposition’s strategy. I remember you saying that maybe the strategy is not to go up against the administration, but maybe to present a more positive way forward. What are say the three top issues you want to address, and how should the opposition’s stance be?

ESQ: What’s your outlook on your chances?

ESQ: Do people see you as an oppositionist?

ESQ: I guess the challenge now is to get your story out there.

ESQ: If you win a seat in the Senate, what can we Filipinos expect to fight for?