Burnaby: Maita Santiago takes on another challenge

The veteran activist is putting her experience on the political front. (Facebook)

Updated…

Burnaby, B.C.

From community organizing to politics

Analysis
Teodoro ‘Ted’ Alcuitas
Editor, PhilippineCanadianNews.Com

For someone who has been ‘with the people’ all her adult life, going into politics is not a big leap of faith.

Maita Santiago got involved in the Filipino community as a young Political Science graduate of Simon Fraser University back in the 90s. She was recruited to the nascent Philippine Women Centre (PWC) in the downtown eastside of Vancouver where she got to know and worked with young Filipino-Canadian women who like her, was searching for her roots.

“It was a game-changer for me,” she told me over a cup of coffee at a Starbucks nearby where she agreed to sit down for an hour-long interview.

I wanted to know her reasons for joining the fray after all the years of staying in the background – being constituency assistant for Mable Elmore (NDP), the only Filipina-Canadian member of the Legislative Assembly first elected in 2009 and now in her fifth term.

“Wala sa plano, pero panahon na talaga,” believing that Filipinos should now be in the political table, adding that “it’s long overdue.”

“We are so invisible in the political arena despite our big numbers so I am here to challenge that.”

And she has been prepared for this.

Her pedigree is in politics, coming from a family in the Philippines whose grandfather, uncles and her own father holding political office a a municipal councillor of Pasig.

Moving to Vancouver as a three-year old in the early 70s and growing up without any knowledge of her roots, she was introduced to a group of young women at the PWC after her graduation from university. Among these future women leaders was Mable Elmore herself who she eventually joined as her assistant.

It was here that she got curious and eventually became an active volunteer, emersing in the political, economic and cultural roots of the motherland. The PWC was in the forefront of the grassroots movement at the time, organizing Filipino workers specifically the domestic workers. After her stint at the PWC, she travelled back to the Philippines spending several years as head of the country’s premier migrant’s grouping-Migrante before coming back to Vancouver to start a family.

She eventually reconnected with Elmore, helping her organize and win her first nomination and election. As Elmore’s assistant she was in closely in touch with the grassroots constituents, listening to their concerns and problems and helping find solutions.

But helping people was not only her work. She helped organized the politician’s campaigns, gaining a resource that she now hopes to apply to her own campaign.

“While before I was in the back-rooms of political organizing, now I am out in front,” she says about the challenges in the political front. “I realize it’s a tough fight.”

She is pragmatic in her attitude having first tried her hand running for city council for Vancouver 30 years ago – the first Filipino-Canadian to run. Although she did not make it that time, she garnered an impressive 30,000+ votes, a record for a neophyte and relatively unknown candidate.

“We are just slightly behind and need everyone’s help so that together we elect the first Filipino to City Council in the Lower Mainland,” she appeals to her kababayans.

So go out and vote!