By Ducky Paredes
NOW, that the Vice President has been losing his grip as a favored presidentiable, it is time for those who have a chance to the presidency to come forward.
The other leading candidate is someone who does not want the job. Senator Grace Poe’s performance as a new Senator is admirable. She is hard at work on her committees and attends to every citizen with a request. She also has the right attitude towards her work as a legislator, ever exhibiting the proper way to regard the things that Senators should be concerned with without having hidden motives.
As a Senator, the newbie is great but Grace is correct to reject the higher post of President for now. She does not yet have the experience yet to be able to do well in the higher post.
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The Vice President, who has been the number one choice for President for the longest time and has been salivating for the Presidency, together with his wife, a former Mayor of Makati City (facing graft and corruption charges) has recently been under suspicion and is in danger of losing his place as the number one pick for 2016 with every passing day and every new survey for popularity and trust, even among the lower classes with which he identifies.
Thus, there seems to be a need for those who may have the right qualifications and who have not been forthright in putting themselves in the race for the presidency, We actually have a lot of politicians who would make good presidents. They have the political skills to survive six years of being the nation’s leader and, more important, the desire to come forward, if the need arises.
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In previous columns on possible candidates for President, I mentioned former Senator Ping Lacson, who has done a good job, , according to the International Disaster Community, as Yolanda rehab chair and who had also had a previous run for the presidency. Ping,
however, says that this time, he is not interested and will probably run for another term as Senator where he is almost a sure thing. Ping is one of only two senators who never touched his Priority Development Assistance Funds (PDAF) and tried each year to delete these funds for lawmakers from the National Budget.
As a Senator, Ping looks like a sure thing and, of course, he will surely do as well as he did during his earlier Senatorial terms.
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According to the Philippine Constitution, the third in the line of succession to the presidency is the Speaker of the House.
While there have been Speakers who wanted to move up to being President and failed, Feliciano (Sonny) Belmonte, Jr. is a different kind of House Speaker. He is more of a friend to his Congressmen who will more probably campaign for Belmonte as a presidential candidate since he is regarded as a personal friend (more than as a Speaker).
In 2001, he won the election for the position of Mayor of Quezon City, and was re-elected in 2004 and in 2007. As Mayor of Quezon City, his nine years of prudent fiscal management, aggressive tax management strategies, as well as increasing efficiency and growing discipline in the management, and use of City resources has made Quezon City the most competitive city of Metro Manila, and second in the Philippines today.
These are rankings made by businessmen in the Philippines in studies of the Asian Institute of Management, in cooperation with international agencies. Quezon City was cited for the dynamism of its local economy, the quality of life of its residents, and the responsiveness of
the local government in addressing business and other needs.
In 2007, Quezon City was ranked No. 7 Asian City of the Future, based on a survey commissioned by the London Financial Times, through a consultancy based in Singapore.
In a 2008 Tholons special report on global services, Quezon City ranked as the number 21 emerging global outsourcing city, the highest among all nine new entrants.
Then-Quezon City Mayor Sonny Belmonte during a meeting de avance. Belmonte successfully ran for a fourth term in the House of Representatives.
Belmonte was a long-standing member of the administration Lakas-Kampi-CMD party from his first term in Congress in 1992 until November 2009, where he last held the position of senior vice president for externals. On November 19, 2009, he and his vice mayor, Herbert
Bautista, were sworn in as members of the opposition Liberal Party.
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What, to me, distinguishes Belmonte, as a politician from another former Mayor of another Metro Manila City is that there are no charges of graft during Belmonte’s terms as Mayor and even as congressman and now, as Speaker. He is also someone who has long-time
friends from those he met as a police reporter, as a Junior Chamber International President, as a manager of GOCCs during President Cory’s term and as the Philippine Airlines President and CEO and recently as a congressman. He is, at least, clean. He does not use people as a lot of politicos do. Would that make a good President? Why not?
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