Mar's agenda

Sen. Manuel Araneta Roxas II, or Mar for short, is a man with a mission and vision. That is, as far as I could size him up from the time I first came to know him. Through the years while still pounding the beat, I learned more about Mar as a person driven with a purpose in life. So it did not surprise me when he announced last year that he would join the May 2010 presidential elections.

It was a big surprise, though, when he announced his sudden decision to back out as the presidential candidate of the Liberal Party (LP). Mar slid down to run instead in the vice presidential race. As it is turning out from the mock polls where he has consistently topping his eight rivals in the vice presidential race, Mar obviously made a wise decision.

Mar was the featured vice presidential candidate during a forum at The STAR that we dubbed “A heartbeat away.” He came all the way from a day-long campaign in Pampanga where the LP bets invaded the home province of President Arroyo.

I actually first met Mar as a young neophyte Congressman from Capiz. That was sometime in 1995 when he first set foot at the Senate and was introduced to us reporters by then Senate president Edgardo Angara. Angara was profused with praises of Roxas as someone who would perhaps someday follow the steps of his late grandfather, former President of the Republic Manuel Roxas.

Angara’s prophetic words almost came true if only Mar decided to push through with his original plans to run in the presidential race. But as Fate intervened last year, Mar gave way to his partymate Sen.Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III to become LP’s presidential standard-bearer. Ironically, though, Angara is not supporting Mar’s bid but one of his archrivals in the race for the country’s No. 2 post.

Angara’s Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino (LDP) has adopted and endorsed the vice presidential bid of Nationalist People’s Coalition (NPC) candidate Sen.Loren Legarda. As the running mate of Sen.Manny Villar, Legarda also enjoys the full backing of the Nacionalista Party (NP). With less than a month before the elections, the LP headed by Mar as party chieftain has kept the pressure on the Commission on Elections (Comelec) not to officially recognize the NP-NPC coalition as the dominant minority party but accredit LP, instead.

Nonetheless, the LP chieftain remains focused on the much bigger battle he has to deal with, and that is for the Noynoy-Mar tandem to win big in the elections next month. While both of them have been consistently topping various mock polls, Mar and the LP are not taking their guards down to prevent what they fear could be large-scale attempts to thwart the will of the Filipino voters in the country’s first-ever automated nationwide elections.  

It was his almost four years of being a Cabinet member of President Arroyo that I came to know Mar up close. Being one of the most trusted economic advisers of the President, as the Department of Trade and Industry Secretary, Mar was a regular member of the presidential delegation in all her state visits and official trips abroad that I have covered.

But Mar first became DTI Secretary during the administration of former President Joseph Estrada for about two years. He resigned a few months before Estrada was ousted from office during the EDSA-2 in January 2001. He recalled it was during Estrada’s administration that he first started his advocacy for cheaper medicines in the country through parallel importation and establishing the Philippines as call center site that has become now a major source of domestic employment here.

Mrs. Arroyo counted on Mar’s inputs during her important meetings with fellow heads of state. In one of these trips, I distinctly remember when the President cut in my chat with Mar while on board the plane bound for Singapore. She asked him to draft for her pronto a policy statement on trade matters she would like to raise with fellow Asean heads of state.  

Excusing himself from our small talk, Mar got his laptop and started working on a draft policy statement for the Chief Executive. An investment banker by profession before he joined public service, he came up in a jiffy with the draft policy statement which he tested by reading it to me aloud before he gave it to the President. That’s why I knew it was Mar’s own ideas when the President read it verbatim in her speech at the Asean summit. Mar was definitely a fair-haired Arroyo Cabinet member, short of being called a ”teacher’s pet.”    

That’s why I asked him during our forum what has made him so angry with his former boss. After he won as one of her administration-backed senatorial bets, Mar turned into an all-out Arroyo-basher. He explained it was because the Arroyo administration has become “abusive and destructive,” blatantly ignoring the rule of law, and runs the government on “subjective whims of GMA and her cohorts.”

Mar promised he would not allow such kind of governance he hated so much to happen under a Noynoy Aquino presidency and he as Vice President. But what if another presidential candidate wins? Having a mandate of his own, Mar pointed out, the Vice President does not owe anything from the President whether or not he is appointed to a Cabinet position. 

 As Vice President, Mar vowed he will not be a “yes person” or be co-opted just to get along with the President and the Cabinet. He, however, clarified a Vice President must also be mindful that he must cooperate to ensure the success of the President’s program of government that will benefit the people in general.

“I have an agenda and my agenda is, I really want to make a difference. I want my life to have significance and the way to do that is to accomplish things that have an impact much larger than just for myself,” Mar stressed. He clarified the agenda he refers to is a list of important things he wants to do. I needled him if that “agenda” of his included “2016” or the next presidential elections in the country after six years. He, of course, hemmed and hawed and cited we must take things in steps one at a time. They must first win the elections.

Mar will be 53 years old three days after the elections next month. Whenever he prays, he intimated to us, it is always full of “pleases” and not “thank yous.” For a man with an agenda, Mar needs to do a lot of that prayers.