showed a groundswell of support for his candidacy. Even though the party had earlier nominated Sen. Manuel "Mar" Roxas II to be its presidential candidate for the 2010 Philippine general election, Roxas gave way to Aquino and instead ran for vice president. The party was able to field new members breaking away from the then-ruling party Lakas–Kampi–CMD, becoming the largest minority party in Congress. Aquino would later win by plurality, and the LP would become the majority party in Congress. 2016–present In the 2016 presidential elections, the Liberal Party nominated Mar Roxas, former Department of Transportation and Communications (DoTC) and Department of the Interior and Local Government (DILG) secretary, and Leni Robredo, a representative from Naga City and widow of Jesse Robredo, the DILG secretary who preceded Roxas, as the party's presidential and vice presidential candidates. Robredo won, while Roxas lost. Most of the party's members either switched allegiance to PDP–Laban, joined a supermajority alliance but retained their LP membership (with some defecting later), joined the "recognized minority", or created an opposition bloc called "Magnificent 7". As early as February 2017, the leaders of the Liberal Party chose to focus on rebuilding the party by inviting sectoral representation of non-politicians in its membership numbers. Since then the party had been inducting new members who were non-politicians, some of whom applied online through the party's website, Liberal.ph. Before the scheduled 2019 general elections, the LP formed Otso Diretso, an electoral coalition of eight candidates for the senate race; led by the party, the coalition field also comprised members of the Magdalo Party-List, Akbayan Citizens Action Party, and Aksyon Demokratiko. None of the eight senatorial candidates under Otso Diretso won a seat, however; it was the first time in the history of the current bicameral composition of the Philippine Congress under the 1987 Constitution that the opposition failed to win a seat in one of the chambers, and the second time that a Liberal Party-led coalition suffered a great loss since 1955. For the 2022 Philippine presidential election, the Liberal Party nominated Leni Robredo and Francis Pangilinan for the presidential and vice presidential posts, respectively. Ideology While the Liberal Party defines its ideology as social liberalism, the party has often been described as a "centrist" or "liberal" party. Historically, the Liberal Party has been evaluated as a "conservative" party, with an ideology similar to or indistinguishable from the Nacionalista Party's ideology, until