1 year ago
28 April 2010
21 April 2010
Short Bio: Noynoy Aquino
Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” C. Aquino III has always viewed politics as a necessary vehicle for change, a perspective he formed early in life through the examples set by both of his parents.
In 1998, he ran for a seat in the House of Representatives and won. He would serve as Congressman of the 2nd District of Tarlac until 2007.
In his nine years at the Lower House, Noynoy focused on the fiscalizing role of a legislator. He felt that there were already too many laws, and good ones at that, but they seemingly lacked proper implementation. He concentrated on crafting laws that would help create opportunity rather than impose additional burdens to those who are already disadvantaged. He actively took part in budget deliberations to ensure that government initiatives do address the plight of the people who need help the most.
His commitment to continue the legacy of his parents was evident in his performance. In November 2004, he became Deputy House Speaker of Luzon, but he relinquished the post when he joined leaders of the Liberal Party (LP) in calling for the resignation of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo at the height of the “Hello Garci” scandal. To him, it was easier to give up the position than abandon his duty to hold accountable those who do wrong.
In May 2007, he ran for Senator and won, placing 6th in the national elections. He chairs the Senate Committee on Local Government, and is also the vice-chairperson of the Committee on Justice and Human Rights. He had been determined to ensure that his key legislative initiatives would bear fruit and to see them through until the end of his term.
However, fate had other plans for him. The passing of his mother, former President Cory Aquino, stirred a long-dormant yearning for good leadership. Filipinos from all walks of life, here and abroad, began to look at Noynoy as the new hope for a better Philippines. The groundswell calling for him to run for President became too loud to ignore, and eventually overcame his reluctance.
In his letter from prison many years ago, Ninoy said to Noynoy, “Son, the ball is now in your hands.”
Today, the people want the future back into their own hands and Noynoy will not let them down.
His critics say he merely trades on his good name and skeptics consider him a lightweight. Rivals accuse him of wrongdoing despite a clearly unblemished record. Noynoy’s detractors have been busy trying to bring him down, but their efforts have only allowed him to improve his popularity.
Noynoy is an economist by education, a lawmaker by vocation. He is an audiophile, history buff, marksman and self-taught billiards sharpie. He is a loving brother and uncle, and a steadfast friend. He is also destined to be the one to finally lead our country towards a brighter future.
“There is no greater nation than our Motherland. No greater people than our own. Serve them with all your heart, with all your might and with all your strength.” – Ninoy Aquino in a letter to his only son Noynoy
12 April 2010
Why I will vote for Noynoy, and why he will win
by Krip Yuson and from Sylvia Morningstar’s FB Notes
Actually, there’s no correlation. Either won’t be contingent on the other.
The first is a sure thing. I know what I will do come May 10 when I step into the polling place for Valle Verde residents in Pasig City. I will shade that oval, the way the Sexbomb Dancers have sufficiently enlightened me, right before the second presidential candidate’s name: Benigno Aquino III. And I’ll make sure to fight off the temptation to spit at the name that appears before his, whatzisname Acosta.
Just because I think the usual suspects have done their darndest to knock off Aquino from the uppermost perch, and succeeded somewhat despite Acosta’s tardy disqualification, shouldn’t make me express my disgust at Comelec’s apparent ministrations. No, I won’t soil and spoil my ballot.
I will vote for Noynoy and I will vote for Mar, primarily because — and this is the most fundamental of many reasons — I know our country deserves 12 consecutive years of good governance. Yes, I’m scanning far ahead. I’m looking beyond Noynoy’s six-year term. If the Liberal Party’s main ticket wins, it will mark the first time in ages that the tandem for the highest positions in the land gets elected together.
I don’t think they’ll ever quarrel over policy or girls or governance, from 2010 to 2016. Most likely, VP Mar will be highly supportive of Prez Noy2, and that they will conduct themselves in office as a true partnership. They’re friends, they’ve been friends, they’re the sons of a former LP tandem that was just as formidable, maybe even more so.
Both are intelligent, decent men advantaged not so much by wealth but by good upbringing, including education and having nice families. That is why Mar should then become president in 2016, and proceed from the foundation of stability and optimism we hope to have been put in place by then — by Noynoy with the help of his sisters and brethren, which will include all of us who vote him into power so that national corruption is drastically, dramatically decreased. Then Mar can continue the same and push an even stronger economic program forward.
By 2022, and I hope I can still be around to applaud those dozen years as they end, our yet nascent republic would then have attained more than a semblance of competitiveness with our neighbors. I also hope that by then the Catholic Church would have finally taken a backseat in the busybody observance of affairs of governance.
Noynoy thence Mar might have then conducted such a turnaround in national ethics and spirit that the usual bully pulpits would have been silenced on the use of strawberry-flavored condoms. Why, maybe even the matter of divorce might start to stand a chance for official consideration.
This is what I pray for (gulp, okay, that’s being tongue-in-cheek, since I usually just send tons of sunshine vibes to anyone in distress or critical health): that we Filipinos move forward not a hundred steps behind the ways of the rational, pragmatic Dutch, Belgians, Scandinavians, etc. — but only by about 50. Maybe by the time Baby James gets elected as Mayor of Quezon City, our capital can allow cafés to display rainbow colors not just for the aesthetics of it.
But to get back to the present — next month when we troop to the polls, as they say, it should be with much hope.
That is why we won’t vote for Nicky Perlas. Because he can only project himself as an environmentalist, albeit I recall that the organic pechay he grew on the edge of UP Diliman decades ago was priced nearly double that on supermarket shelves, and looked rather unfortunate.
That is why we won’t vote for that young fellow De los Reyes, whose youthful idealism only seems to translate itself into a certain picaresque weepiness — in mien, in voice, in articulation.
That is why we won’t vote for someone with a titular Bro before his name, because he can only be self-righteous, even if he properly belongs to that questionable breed of televangelists who indulge in an industry more than a poor excuse for faith.
That is why we can’t vote for Dick, because he hasn’t quite grown up from the Atenean cheerleader he was, so that the wurz-wurz motormouth capability doesn’t ever give us a chance to reflect and discern our way through matters of intellect and emotion, both.
We are sorry we can’t vote for Gibo, not because he has no chance of making it anyway, but simplistically because of the albatross on his back. He obviously has the intelligence, the youth, the idealism, and very likely the decency to do right by his countrymen. But he cannot proxy for someone whose dislike and distrust rating is much too heavy for anyone’s backbone.
Voting for Erap would have nothing to do with hope. He doesn’t even smoke that kind of cigarettes. Instant Alzheimer’s could wipe away any memory of plunder, but would we want anyone slurring his oath once again, with Ernie Maceda right behind him for the photo op?
That leaves us the top two candidates by virtue of the survey ratings. All the skeptics not in my payroll (meaning of my particular ilk) may spoof the way Conrad de Quiros has pared it down, again simplistically, to a mythical fight between good and evil. But there is something there, whether or not it tallies with our appreciation for complexities or the grays in between.
Sure, it isn’t a black-or-white world. But the specter of a Money Villarroyo as a Goliath of Mammon cum Mordor versus a bespectacled son of heroes who hasn’t had Botox or follicle transplants comes very close to silhouetting the protagonists.
I believe Noynoy will win the presidency because that kind of narrative pitting a crusader against a giant crustacean will appeal to most Filipinos.
Sure, the kids may sing along to the earworm of a jingle that professional admen have brilliantly concocted. But their parents will give it a good think as May Day Eve turns the corner, and they will say that Dolphy can entrust his kids to whomever, seeing as how a few of them went astray anyway, and that Manny Pacquiao can endorse anyone as much as he wants, but he’ll still be on a different page from where we regard our politicians and legislators, and that Sarah Geronimo has simply taken up where she left off with Sen. Ed Angara and STI, and that Willie Revillame’s support can only show what sort of company this free-spending candidate keeps… Blah blah blah. But they have heard enough of canny banking and land development practices, let alone “C-5 at Taga,” to take those testimonials for their pure word.
And if we were to see a 60-second TV ad that features Kris, Korina, Shawie and Vilma saying they’re related or married to certain men, but that beyond being kapamilya or kapuso they ‘re asking us to vote for Noy-Mar because “Para sa Bayan Ito!” — then I think we win pulling away.
That’s not even counting PBA MVP James Yap and son Baby James, who already commands such adulation as what got our matriarchal society gushing over the cutesy-tot stereotype of the Sto. Niño since Reina Juana of Cebu first held him in her hands.
Finally, I am confident of a Noynoy electoral victory because someone up there, his Mom more than what you think, will continue to do the supernatural for her countrymen’s sake.
It is also time, and it is our destiny, to break off that slough of despond that has characterized our civil service, once and for all — slash through that Gordian knot of corruption that we sneer at but still laugh about.
It is time for positive change, no doubt. Let’s get it on. And reward the yellow army of volunteers and all of the decent-minded kin and friends and barbers and masseuses we know who’ve asked for yellow ballers and yellow-ribbon stickers for their cars and tricycles.
It gratifies me that when I vote for Noynoy and Mar, I am assured that most of the writers, artists and musicians I’ve beered, whiskied, videoke’d and GRO’d with will do the same. That all my brothers and cousins and aunts and nephews will do, too. That most of my Bedan batchmates of H. S. Class of 1960 will also shade the oval before Aquino, Benigno III.
Not only do we owe it to Ninoy and Cory and their supreme sacrifices for Pilipinas, but to our self- respect as Pinoys.
I recall a night in the late ’90s, when it was still Giraffe at the back corner of the 6750 Tower on Ayala, and the place was jumping in the name of a private party. I went out for fresh air and smokes, that curious oxymoron, and ran into Rapa Lopa, who intro-ed me to his smiling cousin Noynoy, who had also lit up. We exchanged light banter. Someone pulled Noynoy away. Still light-years away from any attempt at gravitas, Rapa and I got to talk about the coming presidential elections, how Erap was posing such a threat for a comedown after FVR.
I said Noynoy should think of running for the Senate after his stint as Congressman, well, sometime, before the Marcos children beat him to it. And who knows, maybe from there something even better will happen in the distant future. I thought I glimpsed a furrow of gravitas overtake Rapa’s brow, but only momentarily, before he smiled again. “Sabi mo yan, ha, Krip?”
Yup. I said it. And now I want to prove myself a prophet in my own country. Unless — or else — it isn’t mine at all.
Reposted from http://www.noynoy.ph/blog/2010/04/10/why-i-will-vote-for-noynoy-and-why-he-will-win/
07 April 2010
Aquino dominates in the Pulse Asia survey
Less than four weeks before election day and Liberal Party standard bearer Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Aquino III still leads in the presidential polls, despite the constant accusations and black propaganda hurled by rival candidate, Manuel Bamba Villar Jr.
In the Pulse Asia survey conducted on 3,000 registered voters nationwide last March 21 to 28, Aquino scored 37%, a twelve-percent lead over Villar, who went down four points since the February survey, to 25%.
Deposed president Joseph Estrada got 18%, while official administration candidate Gilbert Teodoro still lags in single-digits at 7%.
According to Pulse Asia, Aquino leads in most areas and socio-economic classes.
Edwin Lacierda, spokesperson of Aquino’s presidential campaign, said this was proof that the people are fed up with Villar’s propaganda of lies and transactional politics and that “Aquino is the only candidate capable of uniting the country under clean and honest governance. The bandwagon of support has begun because the volunteers have dared to come out in numbers. Our message—walang corrupt, walang mahirap—has been resonating. It is the only way to wake our country up from its coma.”
“The people have realized that the Villarroyo tandem is no fabrication. Villar is the administration’s secret candidate,” Lacierda added. “The connections are becoming clearer everyday.”
In the vice-presidential race, LP’s Sen. Manuel “Mar” Roxas II leads with 43%, 20 percentage-points over closest rival, Sen. Loren Legarda, who came in at 23%.
According to Florencio “Butch” Abad, general campaign manager of the LP, the Nacionalistas have hurled everything including the kitchen sink at the Noy-Mar tandem, and yet their popularity remains high. “The Nacionalista Party continues to pour ludicrous amounts of money into both their air war and ground war, but the resolve of Aquino’s supporters is strong,” he said. “What more can Villar do?”
Abad said the LP tandem will continue to spread their message of good and honest governance.
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