House Deputy Speaker Lorna Regina “Loren” Bautista Legarda was the first to file her Certificate of Candidacy (COC) for senator today, the first day of filing for COC for the May 2022 elections.
Legarda, a former three-term senator, was elected as Antique Representative in 2019. She has formerly served as a Senator for two terms, from 1998 to 2004, and from 2007 to 2019. In 1998, during her first term as a Senator, she became the youngest senator in the Philippines.
She has always aspired to be a member of the Senate, graduating cum laude from the University of the Philippines with a degree in Broadcast Communication. She completed post-graduate courses on special studies for professional designation in journalism from the University of California, Los Angeles.
Before becoming a Senator, Legarda was an award-winning broadcast journalist and co-anchor. While in media, she obtained a degree in National Security Administration, graduating from the National Defense College of the Philippines at the top of her class with gold medals for Academic Excellence and Best Thesis.