IT’S ROXAS

By NITZ ARANCON
Correspondent

MAYOR Oscar Moreno yesterday hailed President Aquino’s endorsement of Interior Secretary Manuel Roxas II even as he declared support for the Liberal Party’s declared standard bearer in next year’s elections.

Aquino went public with his preferred successor at the historic Club Filipino in San Juan, the same place where Roxas announced his decision to shelve his plan to run for President to give way to the then senator Aquino six years ago. Roxas subsequently became Aquino’s running mate but he lost to the now Vice President Jejomar Binay. “I am supporting the reform agenda, and Mar Roxas,” said Moreno, chairman of the administration LP here.

He said the endorsement by Aquino reaffirmed the President’s “firm and irreversible resolve and commitment to pursue the ‘Tuwid na Daan’ reform program.”

Moreno said Aquino was given the privilege of initiating the program on account of Roxas’s setting aside his presidential bid in 2010.

He added, “It is also meant to adhere to the path of reform that the team led by PNoy had uncompromisingly pushed. Further, it asserts the paramount importance of competence, integrity, and good governance over such temporary and sometimes misleading attributes as popularity.”

At the Club Filipino, Aquino told his supporters to go for someone who would continue his ‘Matuwid na Daan’ agenda. “Ang paniniwala ko po, ang taong ito ay walang iba kung hindi sa Mar Roxas.”

Aquino said the 58-year old Roxas proved to be the most prepared among the “presidentiables”. Teary eyed, Roxas accepted what he said was the “challenge of his bosses,” and would want to continue the legacy of his forefathers whose name he did want to blemish.

Like Aquino, Roxas comes from a prominent political family. His grandfather Manuel was the 5th President of the country and his father Gerardo had served as a senator.

Roxas was a congressman, a senator, and served in the cabinet on separate occasions––he was the trade secretary of the then President Joseph Estrada and became Aquino’s trade and communications secretary. He was named to his present position following the plane crash that killed Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo in 2012.

Roxas remembered his brother, the late Capiz Rep. Gerardo Roxas Jr., whose death due to cancer in the 1990s made him return from the US to the country to serve as congressman. He worked as an investment banker in New York.