Villar in the Senate: Not for women only

For her first media appearance  after her election to the Senate,  Cynthia Villar  chose to be the guest at  the Bulong Pulungan sa Sofitel – to thank the media forum’s core group (who had all voted for her)  and talk about her advocacies. She said the idea of running as senator  prior to the 2013 elections had never crossed her mind, but she naturally had given 1001 percent support  to husband Manny’s earlier  bids for the Senate, at the same time  doing legislative work  during the three terms she was a member of the House of Representatives.

First thing she did during the opening of the 16th Congress was file five bills (the protocol this time asks legislators to file only five bills the first time, and more later).  The first seeks to create one independent department that will consolidate agencies working for the concerns of our “new heroes”  (more than 12 million of them, most of them in the Middle East),  and the second, to secure their retraining for livelihood skills upon their return to the country. On the latter, Senator Villar points to the Ople Center (headed by the late Labor Secretary Blas Ople’s daughter Susan), as a cooperator in matching  and training workers for work opportunities.

A big help in the realization of the senator’s desire to create a one-stop-shop for processing of OFWs’ issues through the creation of an independent department is Cynthia’s son, Representative Mark Villar,  one of three Villar children who have attended schools abroad for graduate studies and prepare them to help run the Villar business concerns.

Villar Foundation is known as coming to the succor of OFWs, be they documented or undocumented, in need of money to come home, and attend  training  sessions on putting up a  business. Cynthia didn’t say how much money the Foundation has given, but it sure is substantial.  More than the workers’ repatriation, their  livelihood training is like the proverbial saying not giving them fish, but teaching them to fish.

 The three other bills she filed are on trade and industry, agriculture and education.  She finds a direct connection between  agriculture, technology and education; one can’t be done without the other. In agriculture, for instance, there is a need to improve our current irrigation system, the inadequacy of which is a primary reason for the poor agricultural state of our country.

During her stumping tour prior to the election, Cynthia saw that two-thirds of our population are dependent on agriculture.

With an improved irrigation system, farmers will earn more with hefty harvests.  But one doesn’t stop at planting, she said; processing and marketing systems must be developed to help farmers sell their products.

Cynthia ‘s “marketability” as a Senate asset was her personal as well as the Villar Foundation’s insistence on helping people  improve their lives through their “Ang Sipag” program that emphasizes industry and innovativeness.

As  top initiator of income-generating projects, Cynthia has helped women — and their men — produce sellable handicrafts from the water hyacinths clogging Paranaque’s rivers and esteros and fertilizers from the barangays’ basura or kitchen wastes and once-considered useless coconut items like husks , shells and fronds. 

Cynthia wants to create such waste-managing  and income-generating plants nationwide, and though it may take time to realize this, she knows it can be done. “If there are things I want done, I do them, and make things happen,” she said at Bulong Pulungan.  It is this determination to help people help themselves that won votes for this feisty legislator.

A possible solution to the conversion of waste materials is the production of plastic chairs using waste products — an invention of a young Davaoeno Cynthia met during one of her countryside tours.

What’s Manny doing now that he is a “private” person, and his wife, the “public” figure? “Oh, he’s very happy,” Cynthia enthused. “He feels free and happy about being able  to  do things that he’d like to do.” That means Cynthia (and son Mark) are the ones sponsoring laws while Manny, the billionaire who started  from scratch, is paying the bills.   

The Bulong Pulungan girls did right by voting Cynthia  as senator in  the 16^th Congress.

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Now, here’s another champion, not in boxing, but in having a good heart.  During a  July 4  party, Rachel Donaire,  wife of Filipino boxing superstar Nonito Donaire Jr.,  saw the child of a friend fall into the water. Without a second thought, the nine-month pregnant Rachel jumped to the water to save the drowning child.

After her heroic gesture, Rachel was taken to the hospital for fetal monitoring. “She’s full term, but not due for another 17 days,” said Nonito after the life-saving act of his wife.

Rachel is expected to deliver the first Donaire baby in two weeks time.  

Thank you Rachel. You are a hero.

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At last, Wimbledon 2013 is over, and us tennisters (or just trying very hard)  can now rest in peace, having seen our favorite players slug it out with all their talent and might.  We saw  and felt the victors’ smiles, and the losers’ tears.

Upsets were tormenting for champions who lost to very, very low ranking players. Roger Federer,  Rafael Nadal, Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova lost in the early rounds to players who could not believe they had smashed and volleyed  out kings and queens of court.

Imagine how Serena Williams, that  awesome  World No. One player, American Wimbledon champion  losing to German Sabine  Lisicki.  And then, when Lisicki played against   Marion Bartoli, No. 15 in ranking in last Saturday’s women’s singles final, Lisiki could not hold back her tears as the feisty Bartoli beat her easily in two straight sets.

 Last Sunday’s men’s singles final was the most awaited by tennis buffs.   Serbian Novak Djokovic, No. One world player, was to play against  Andy Murray, No. Two world player. The Wimbledon games were held in London, and  hopes were wild that Andy, a British,  would grab the championship trophy. The last British to win the championship was Fred Perry 77 years ago; would Andy make history by reclaiming the crown?  Yes he did!

That Andy, who hails from Dunblame, Scotland,  was the  presumably- mostly English crowd’s favorite,  was manifested by the cheering and clapping after each winning shot by Murray. Djokovich lost the first set, won the second set and tried to get to the third set, but failed.  It was a cliffhanger,  but in the end, Murray won as Djovich smashed  his last shot out of court.  The game, said commentator Veejay, was fantastic, the best he had ever seen in his lifetime. 

As I watched the games, I was taken back to the time I went to Wimbledon in the late 1980s.  I took the train to London, and when I reached the famed Centre Court building, the first thing I did — you guessed it --- was touch the grass! Oh Wimbledon of my dreams, I said to the smiling official escorting me. The feeling was akin to feeling and licking the first snow flakes that fell on  my face one day in November of 1966 in Evanston, Ill.

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