The candidate's top five accomplishments and contributions for the last 15 years or so

As a three-term member of the Senate, Pangilinan authored 103 bills. Of these bills, 11 that he principally authored were passed into law. In the 18th Congress, three of his bills in support of the agricultural and fisheries sector were passed, including R.A. No. 11524 or the Coconut Farmers and Industry Trust Fund Act, which mandates the creation of a 50-year trust fund and the transfer of at least P75 billion of accumulated coco levy to the trust fund from 2021 to 2025.

He is one of four opposition senators in a chamber mostly allied with President Rodrigo Duterte. All four of them have been the subject of the chief executive’s ire on multiple occasions.

Pangilinan, in particular, was criticized by Duterte for his authorship and support of R.A. No. 9344 or the Juvenile Justice and Welfare Act of 2006. Duterte and some members of the House of Representatives at the time favored lowering the age of criminal responsibility from 15 years old to over nine years old, in contrast to the provisions of R.A. No. 9344 which place responsibility on criminal syndicates and not young offenders.

In May 2018, Pangilinan and other opposition senators filed a petition with the Supreme Court assailing Duterte’s unilateral act of withdrawal from the Rome Statute (and the International Criminal Court) in March as unconstitutional. The SC unanimously dismissed the petition for being moot and academic while also recognizing that the president’s power to withdraw from treaties is not unlimited. The petitioners hailed the ruling as a victory, noting that the SC opined that the withdrawal does not discharge the state from its duty to cooperate with the ICC in all investigations and proceedings started before the withdrawal, including the one-year period before the effectivity of the withdrawal. Malacañang, however, reiterated that the Philippine government would not cooperate with the ICC’s investigation on the drug war killings.

Pangilinan was also the lone negative vote on Bayanihan II, which he explained was due to allegations of COVID-19 funds misuse and the “mediocre leadership” of Francisco Duque III, the Health Secretary and chairperson of the Inter-Agency Task Force for the Management of Emerging Infectious Diseases.

Most recently, he has called for amendments to the Cybercrime Prevention Act, R.A. No. 10175, “as technology and social media platforms become more and more integrated in the everyday lives of Filipinos.” The Cybercrime Prevention Act also includes the prohibition against cyber libel. In July 2021, Pangilinan filed two cyber libel complaints before the Department of Justice against YouTube channels for allegedly spreading false information about him and his wife. YouTube has since taken down said videos. In February 2022, Pangilinan again filed a cyber libel complaint against a YouTube channel for spreading videos seeking to baselessly damage his and his family’s reputation.