Senator Manny Villar’s stand on environmental issues and other concerns
Author’s Note: Ganns Deen welcomes invitations from Filipinos seeking national office to sit down to discuss issues on environment, education, and family issues, including health care. All political features on GannsDeen.com are meant to inform the public about these public servants’ stands on this blogger’s personal advocacies. In no way are these features intended to be endorsements for any public servant.
Earlier today, I had the opportunity to sit down with Senator Manny Villar to discuss his stand on environmental issues and other concerns. Senator Villar, who has already declared his intention to run for president in 2010, was gracious and open enough to answer many of my questions, the answers to which are provided in summary below.
- General Environmental Stand: Senator Villar has a long history of legislative support for environmental issues. If you visit his website, under the Records section, you will find a substantial list of the acts he has filed in Congress, an overwhelming majority of which are related to either environmental or education concerns. He hesitates on calling himself a Filipino environmentalist, preferring instead to just focus on doing the environment well, and leaving the technical know-how to his colleagues who are experts on those subjects. Ganns’ note: A follow-up question, regarding how many of these acts were actually signed into law, resulted in a promise to update his website with information on precisely that.
- Urban greening programs. Senator Villar claims that, through his terms as congressman of Las Pinas City, private real estate developer (Camella and Crown Asia), and senator of the Republic, he has been involved in the planting of more than a million trees. There were no trees in Tondo, he says, but when he pursued a college degree at the University of the Philippines, he was awestruck by the greenness of the campus. “It was paradise,” he said, “when you come from Tondo.” He loves gardens, apparently, and would support initiatives to beautify urban jungles with the development of inner-city parks and recreational areas for the public; he notes that it increases people’s positive perceptions of their neighborhood. He suggests encouraging volunteer or minimal pay schemes to encourage people to invest in building a local environment in which they would be happy to live; said environment would also promote eco-tourism. (Las Pinas has a bamboo museum.) Ganns’ note: While eerily along the lines of Imelda Marcos and Lito Atienza, I’m inclined to agree with him. Give the people a stake in their surroundings, you give them ownership of the area, and they then become shareholders in the clean vision of and for their homes and workspaces. By encouraging his constituents and making it an integral part of his business, Senator Villar puts his money where his mouth is.
- River rehabilitation. Senator Villar claims a personal stake in the ongoing river rehabilitation in Las Pinas. He says it is the most successful local river rehabilitation in the country thus far. While he wishes it could support life, i.e. fishes and other marine life, it isn’t at that point yet, but he believes it will soon arrive at that point. Ganns’ note: Sen. Villar spoke of the utilization of a unique fishing barge that scooped out waste from the rivers in Las Pinas; I can’t help but wonder if said barge, if combined with an effective information program that stopped Las Pinas residents from dumping their waste into the river, is truly responsible for the river rehabilitation. If so, the folks responsible for the Pasig River rehab may want to sit up and take notice.
- Bataan Nuclear Power Plant. Senator Villar does not support any efforts to revive the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, largely because it is a moot point. We cannot afford the maintenance of the plant and the infrastructure of Bataan isn’t ready to support it. He then expressed a desire to focus instead on urban management, noting that when one develops the countryside, one declogs the urban areas and therefore reduces urban energy expenditure. This, in turn, spreads energy consumption over a larger area and causes less stress on already overworked urban infrastructure and resources. Ganns’ note: I initially assumed Senator Villar was giving me a runaround when he asked me about the BNPP’s viability; he later expressed a personal take in the issue: his mother hails from Bataan.
- Urban Waste Management. As mentioned earlier, Senator Villar supports projects to develop outside the metropolis, therefore moving more people away from the cities and reducing urban waste across the limited space allocations for said cities. He co-sponsored and lobbied for the Clean Air Act, much to the dismay of former president Joseph Estrada. Villar claims most members of the majority coalition at the time did their best to block the Clean Air Act (which would result in significant losses for public transport that was non-compliant with the law, as well as oil companies who would otherwise benefit from a Clean Air Act-less society. Ganns’ note: the Clean Air Act has its own Achilles heel: it has resulted in higher urban waste production, a necessary byproduct of our departure from the use of incinerators to deal with garbage. To date, Sen. Villar admits, they are searching for alternative urban waste management solutions. His closest solution: countryside development to reduce urban waste production.)
- Hybrid cars. Senator Villar does not support moves to exempt hybrid cars from taxes if imported into the country. Instead, he advocates the pursuit of local technologies that would reduce local transportation’s dependence on oil and production of air waste, in turn reducing our carbon footprint. He says the technology for electric cars will be a reality sooner or later; he advocates the local production of said forms of transportation once the technologies are more affordable. Ganns’ note: Senator Villar made no bones of it: only the rich would benefit from tax exemptions on hybrid cars given the high cost of these cars in the first place; they can afford to pay the taxes.
With regard to other issues of importance:
- Senator Villar advocates healthy competition. He believes it mandated and acceptable to offer rewards and incentives to top performers across all levels of civil society, from sports to businesses t0 education.
- He does not support RH Bill 5043.
- He would prefer the other Manny staying away from politics. (Y’all know which Manny that is.)
- He denies any wrongdoing in the alleged C5 double-entry issue. (More on that in Noemi Dado’s post here.)
- He believes Noli de Castro’s housing program is “good.” He says we should not suffer a real estate collapse like the United States because we aren’t sub-primed. (Whatever that means.)
- As of this writing, he does not have the means nor has made the decision to accept campaign contributions. He says the law compels all candidates to disclose the list of who contributes to their campaign kitties.
- He feels the need to advertise simply because his name does not elicit the same kind of recognition afforded other aspirants to the presidency, many of whom have storied careers in media to ensure their higher name recall. His latest series of advertisements, he claims, were unscripted and shot at his ancestral home in Tondo. (The outside of his home was not shown, he says, because the MMDA had apparently painted it pink and written “Metro Gwapo” on its walls.)
Quotable quotes:
- “Puno lang ng puno.” So simple, so true. One of the best ways to reduce global warming, from a man who put his money where his mouth is.
- “Entrepreneurial revolution.” Senator Villar believes a long-term solution to our ecoomic woes is to encourage more people to set up businesses. Despite the government’s rather inept system for business registration and maintenance, he says people looking to succeed as entrepreneurs need to move despite the obstacles. (The good senator has obviously never read Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers; he owes his success to a lot more than just a killer work ethic).
- “Develop the passion. Masarap ang may business!” Some people may not be cut out to become entrepreneurs, but the man thinks like one and believes the country should be managed like a corporation.
My personal takes on Senator Villar as a person:
- Senator Villar spoke largely in Taglish, even to primarily English-speaking me. He did not use flowery language. He spoke directly and to the point.
- He dressed simply. If he had any bodyguards, they did an excellent job of staying incognito.
- He made it a point to throw in personal anecdotes or points of conversation that would resonate with the “interviewers” present. When asked about comics, for instance, he went into how he would borrow books from a nearby public library, and used that as a stepping stone to talk about the need to globalize our arts and culture scene.
- His three children joined him for the interview. They struck me as personable, with good heads on their shoulders and a diverse set of interests. Paulo, in particular, engaged me in a discussion on my pet project, urban green roofing as a solution for city warming and flood prevention via runoff reduction, and promised to research more about that with his brother Mark. I didn’t get a chance to talk to Camille. (I usually don’t get to talk to pretty ladies, except to gawk and emit strange noises.)
My thanks to Senator Villar’s team for extending me the invitation to chat with Senator Villar. You may also read about other bloggers’ advocacies in their interviews: Chuvaness weighs in, as does Jude Turcuato, Sonnie Santos, and Jonas Diego. Did you enjoy this blog post? Please read about green roofs.
