Benigno “Bam” Aquino IV answers questions from the media about his candidacy for the Senate under the Liberal Party. MATIKAS SANTOS/INQUIRER.net
MANILA, Philippines – President Benigno Aquino III’s cousin, Bam Aquino, was welcomed as a “fresh” candidate in the official senate ticket of the Liberal Party (LP), Senator Francis Pangilinan said Monday.
“Bam is a welcome addition not just to the LP Senate slate, but also to the Liberal Party itself, as we are confident that his youth, his dynamism, and his innovative ideas would help to reinvigorate the party,” Pangilinan said in a statement released after the LP’s team was announced by President Aquino.
Bam is the youngest senatorial candidate of LP at 35 years of age. He was previously the chairman of the National Youth Commission and was the founder of the multi-awarded social enterprise “Hapinoy.”
Pangilinan said that Bam’s youth will help their slate in pushing for reforms and for good governance. He will “breathe fresh life into the Aquino administration’s push for reforms,” Pangilinan added.
“Bam represents a new breed of Filipinos who look at society’s problems and say, ‘What else can be done about this? What new approaches can we take? How can we do things better?’ We need precisely that kind of mindset and that kind of reform candidate as we push good governance and accountability to greater heights in this administration,” Pangilinan said.
LP announced their senatorial lineup from a coalition of six groups: LP, Akbayan Partylist, Nacionalista Party, Nationalist People’s Coalition, Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino and National Unity Party.
Bam will join former senators Ramon Magsaysay Jr. and Jamby Madrigal, former representatives Cynthia Villar and Risa Hontiveros, MTRCB chairman Grace Poe-Llamanzares, Aurora representative Juan Edgardo Angara, Senators Alan Peter Cayetano, Francis Escudero, Aquilino Pimentel III, and Antonio Trillanes IV, make up the senatorial slate.
Bam said in a separate interview that he wanted to give the youth a voice in the Senate and that he will be a fresh face that they can relate to.
Pangilinan said that “what is foremost in the 2013 elections is for more reforms to be institutionalized, and for the Aquino administration’s good governance policies to be continued.”
“We cannot sustain our current growth pattern if we go back to our old ways, so candidates such as Bam and all those who will embrace the President’s reform agenda are what this country needs in order to achieve developed nation status in a decade and a half,” he said.