| PGMA's Speech during the 14th General Assembly of the League of Municipalities of the Philippines (LMP) |
Fiesta Pavillion, Manila Hotel, Manila (02 December 2004) |
| Thank you. Thank you, Secretary Ermita. Mayor Guico and the other officers of the League of Municipalities of the Philippines, friends of the LMP, mayors, ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Let me begin by thanking the mayors who supported me in the last elections. Daghang salamat, salamat gid, dacal a salamat, dios mabalos, dios ti angina unay, maraming salamat, thank you. Secondly, let me thank the mayors who offered to defer 50 percent of your IRA to help solve our fiscal problem. This is purely voluntary, but for those who will help us in this way, in return you will spend this one million, as Monching said in your manifesto, to help fulfill my 10-point legacy agenda. I also want to thank the mayors who've been going to the congressmen and the senators that you helped get elected to fast-track the revenue measures needed by our country. Because you have been campaigning with them, and because of their own sense of urgency and patriotism, I'm confident that Congress will pass the revenue measures we forwarded which will mean that hopefully your towns may not need to take the IRA cuts after all. I would also like to congratulate the League for your other proposals, as mentioned by Monching in his statement, that reflect the goodwill of our mayors to cut across party lines in pushing economic development, and as was said in the prayers of Cora, I offer my condolences to the families and the mayors of the towns stricken by the rush of typhoons in the past three weeks. At the moment, we have teams working to save lives and teams planning out the infusion of resources to where these are most needed. Calamity funds will be applied quickly to basic needs such as food and medicine. Our local disaster coordinating councils headed by the mayors were quick to respond, in coordination with the military and the police and to the mayors who responded quickly, congratulations and thank you. The painful lessons have come to full light. We are enforcing a crack down on illegal loggers and the reassessment of logging permits in potentially hazardous areas. There is also a big stake for national security in this effort, as many of you who know your own localities have noticed, that these accidents lately in this last typhoons and storms where the logs went down and killed the people. I've been informed that the New People's Army has been involved heavily in illegal logging activities in those areas. In this regard, I am appointing retired General Victor Corpus not only as the principal overseer of all reforestation programs of the government nationwide in his capacity as chairman of the National Resources Development Corporation but in addition to this being in charge of reforesting, I am also making him the principal executive to lay out and implement a special operational plan with the full support of the Armed Forces as I have just instructed General Abu to do to stop the illegal logging activities especially of the NPA and to take all their cohorts into account. The insurgents should not be allowed to plunder our forests to raise funds to undermine our democracy. This is a matter of ecological balance as well as national security. I call for national solidarity of the highest order and with deepest conscience. But misfortune has been balanced by a stroke of good news. Yesterday, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the mining act. This is act of statesmanship done in the national interest. We are now poised for an investment take of never seen in the recent past. The rural infrastructure under you will take a new shape. You know, I have just been to a mining country. While I have just interacted with the prime ministers of mining countries. Canada, and Australia. Do you realize that we have the potential to be the fifth largest mining power in the world. We shouldn't be poor. Globally, we rank number three in gold, number four in copper, number five in nickel, number six in chromite deposits. Our mining potential is ten times our annual gross national product. It can easily wipe out our foreign debt and yet leave more for future generations, mining will even mitigate the deadliest of disasters because the poor will not have to ravage the forests to survive and this time we will fully enforce responsible and environmentally sound mining practices. We are now in the 21st century and all these new mining technology will certainly make our mining sustainable. And the more relevant part as far as you the mayors are concerned is this, the provision in the mining act is for mining companies to pay specific percentage of taxes and other duties to the host communities from the provincial down to barangay level. In addition to what it pays the national government. I have another piece of good news for the nation. Yesterday, we were able to sell, on the best terms, the Masinloc coal plant in Zambales for 561 million U.S. dollars, way above the House estimate capitalization, we were hoping to get 300 million dollars, we're getting 561 million dollars. I congratulate the Department of Energy and its agencies for the success of the bidding. Today, I join you with a vision of a better Philippines and a better world. I just come back from APEC and the ASEAN summits where the new leadership in Asia, the newly-elected leaders of Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines reached out across a renewed leadership in the United States and move forward the dream of an East Asian Economic Bloc that will drive the energies and hopes of millions within ASEAN, Japan and Korea. I have concluded an economic partnership with the prime minister of Japan on fair, liberalized trade arrangements. Prior to this agreement our nurses and our caregivers were not allowed to go to Japan. Now, with this agreement Japan is opening its doors to our nurses and caregivers, as well as I.T. workers and even agricultural products which is still not doing for other countries in Southeast Asia. But economic prosperity is the handiwork not only of economists and diplomats or high functionaries, economic prosperity is built, first and foremost, in vibrant, enterprising and self-reliant communities for instance, Japan is opening its doors to a very wide range of Philippine agricultural products, but it is you the mayors who will have these products planted in your communities. In this spirit, I thank the mayors for your faith in our common ideals. Ngayon, uuwi kayo, meron ngang kailangan umuwi noon pa, kagabi pa para mag-asikaso sa mga sakuna sa inyong mga lugar. Dito rin sinabi ko kay Secretary Ermita ianunsyo natin na kalahating araw lamang ang opisina itong araw na ito para paghandaan naitn itong napakalakas na thphoon "Yoyong" na dumarating. Ang mananatili sa mga opisina ay yung mga gumagawa ng batayang serbisyo. Magtulungan tayo sa kinabubuti ng ating bansa at pamayanan. Magtulungan tyao sa itong mga oras at araw ng hirap ng ating mga bayan-bayan. Magtulungan tayo bukas sa kinabukasan, gawin nating tunay, masigasig ang ating kaunlaran para sa wakes ay matalo na natin ang problemang matagal nang hinaharap ng ating bansa. Maraming salamat, Mayors. Mabuhay and thank you. |