MANILA, Philippines—It’s in intimate, town hall-style meetings where Sen. Manuel Villar feels right at home.

Away from the glaring lights of televised forums for 2010 presidential hopefuls, Villar fielded last week questions on how he planned to tackle problems besetting the country should he be elected president in 2010.

The setting was a community forum at the upscale Valle Verde 4 clubhouse in Pasig City aimed at getting to know the presidential aspirants up close and personal, and at enabling the residents to raise concerns peculiar to their status.

What to do about corruption, poverty, the economy, and lack of budget for healthcare and education were among the concerns aired by the homeowners.

The former Senate president said he had the “highest probability of getting things done” in an already crowded 2010 field.

“If there’s one thing I can say, I get things done. I’m very proud of what I did in the past,” Villar, 59, said during the open forum.

Recently besieged by allegations he was behind the double-funding of the C-5 road extension project in Las Piñas City, Villar wondered whether other presidential aspirants had built barangay (village) roads in their home provinces.

Role of Cynthia

Asked what role his wife Cynthia would play if he won the presidency, Villar said: “I always treat my wife as a coequal. She is a professional and if she becomes first lady, she knows what to do.”

Cynthia, who accompanied her husband to the town hall meeting, took her turn and said Filipinos had a bad experience with a very “high-profile” first lady.

“In the Philippines, it is not accepted that women have a very aggressive role,” she said.

Cynthia, daughter of the landed Aguilar family of Las Piñas City, is on her third and last term as a member of the House of Representatives.

Relaxed

She said that if she became first lady, she would continue her advocacy of helping find livelihood projects for women and out of school youth.

The Villars joined Valle Verde couples and residents at a dinner marked by a familial, relaxed atmosphere at the clubhouse.

Later, the senator agreed to answer questions in an informal forum. Cynthia listened intently to her husband’s answers, and did not shy away from giving her own two cents worth when questions were thrown her way.

“I like this better than (televised) debates,” Villar said before the open forum, adding that the intimate setting was a good venue to hear the concerns of the community.

Already a successful real estate builder, Villar served three terms as congressman of Las Piñas and is now on his second term as senator. As Speaker of the House of Representatives, he made possible the impeachment of then President Joseph Estrada in 2000.

No. 1 problem

The village residents asked Villar what he thought the country’s No. 1 problem was and what he intended to do about it.

There is no doubt that poverty is the biggest problem, he said.

Villar said this was spawned by factors, such as insufficient revenues, funds lost to corruption, lack of support for agriculture, mismatch between courses taken by students and demands of employers, inefficient governance and even politicians and officials’ propensity for “talking and talking” instead of doing.

“If you neglect agriculture, you affect the lives of 40 to 50 percent of our people,” he said.

Corruption

Villar said solving corruption, particularly in the collection agencies, could increase government coffers by 14 to 17 percent or as much as P200 million a year.

“That would go a long way to jump-start (projects),” he said.

Doing away with corruption, he said, and restoring collection level to even only at par with the Ramos administration’s record would encourage foreign and local investors to invest their money in the country and win the people’s trust in the government.

“Now what guarantee do I have that I can do all these things? I cannot give guarantees. All I’m saying is that on the basis of what I had done, I have the best chance of being able to do these things, probability wise,” Villar said.

Doer, not talker

He described himself as a doer, instead of a talker.

“I’d love to say I am 100-percent sure I can do these but no, I can only say I have the highest probability, that’s for sure,” he added.

Villar, who built a real estate empire now worth billions, said he had planted over a million trees without trumpeting he was an environmentalist, and also built more than 200,000 homes.

“I have built so many roads, including C5, and I’m proud of it. I get things done,” he said.

‘Best project’

He said there was a need to generate labor-intensive jobs, build infrastructure to facilitate the movement of goods across the country and decongest traffic in metropolitan areas.

“Can this be done? I can do it. I already did it with C-5. I just got entangled (in controversy). I got a lot of criticisms for C-5, but I’m telling you this is probably the best project that happened in Metro Manila in the last six years,” he said.

He said the C-5 extension project would benefit the people of Cavite province and the cities of Parañaque, Las Piñas, Quezon, Makati and Pasig without having to pass the congested EDSA (Epifanio delos Santos Avenue).

“I got a lot of flak (from that controversy), but in the end, the question is ‘Who can do these things?’ For example, the other presidential hopefuls … they have not even built barangay roads. What provinces did they come from? Capiz? Sorosogon? Mindoro? What have they done for their provinces?” he said.

Double funding ‘untrue’

Villar claimed that allegations about the road’s double-funding and realignment to increase the value of his real estate assets were untrue.

He told the gathering, which was also graced by Pasig Rep. Roman Romulo, that his Nacionalista Party was planning to field a complete slate for 2010, including as many local candidates as possible.

Asked who he was considering to be his running mate, Villar said he would have to “wait for those who will slide down” from the presidential slot.

Asked if he feared the Commission on Elections, he laughed and said he had concerns about the automation of elections.

But Villar said he was hoping that he and other 2010 hopefuls would go about campaigning when the time was right so that this would ensure that the elections in May would become irreversible.

One last assurance he left the Valle Verde residents was that he was not a lackey of anyone—be it Estrada or businessman Eduardo Cojuangco. “Pwede pang bata ni misis,” he quipped.