Elijah San Fernando

Elijah "Eli" R. San Fernando (born August 13, 1994) is a Filipino activist, community organizer, and former student leader. He served as the 19th Student Regent of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines. He is also one of the Vice-Presidents of Freedom from Debt Coalition, a debt-watch monitor working on the Philippines' debt problem.
Career
San Fernando, an economics student and founding chairperson of PUP SPEAK, was elected as the vice-president of the central student council of the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP) in September 2016 and eventually succeeded to the presidency after several months, due to vacancy. In the following year, he was elected by 25 out of 35 student councils throughout the university system to lead the ANAK-PUP Student Council Federation and concurrently represent the student sector to the PUP Board of Regents, which, in turn, "unanimously decided to recognize" his election. However, Anakbayan downplayed what they call as "hurriedly-convened" student council federation congress and called San Fernando "not qualified...because he is not a duly-elected president of any student council." Movement Against Tyranny, likewise, tagged him as "admin-appointed student representative".
San Fernando worked as the community relations officer of Eye Bank Foundation of the Philippines in 2019.
In April 2021, with the popular rise of the community pantry movement in the Philippines, San Fernando also organized a community food bank located at Matiyaga Street in the Diliman district of Quezon City, in coordination with the donors, volunteers, farmers from Central Luzon, and Magsasaka Partylist.
San Fernando was chosen as the first nominee of labor rights-oriented Alternatiba for the 2022 House of Representatives election, running on the platform of abolishing endo contractualization, manpower agencies, provincial wage rate system, and party-list system, in which, the group claimed, has long been abused by "traditional politicians". The party-list received 18,048 votes or 0.049% of the votes, entitling the newly-established sectoral coalition no seat in the 19th Congress.

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