FIRST met Jose Albert Laylo, whom we called 'Jal,' when I worked as a communications consultant for Sen. Mar Roxas in 2007.

I had written to then Senator Roxas asking for help for our Ladlad party-list and one day his chief of staff, Susan 'Toots' Ople, came around with a donation. However, the Commission on Elections (Comelec) did not allow us to run for the party-list elections, citing our 'lack of constituency' because we only had chapters in 10 out of 17 regions. We argued that 10 was a majority number, but we were blithely ignored.