Presidential candidate Manuel “Mar” Roxas II. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/LYN RILLON
LAPU-LAPU CITY, Philippines—Eat your heart out, Scout Jojo.
An animated Mar Roxas yesterday caught members of the media by surprise when he suddenly babbled the boy scout’s law in an apparent swipe at his fiercest political rival, Vice President Jejomar Binay.
The administration presidential aspirant visited a shipyard here at the start of his two-day campaign trail in Cebu, the province which has the largest voting population in the country.
The shipyard of Evercat Asia Inc., composed of skilled Filipino engineers and ship builders, has been manufacturing interisland ships and other small boats which it sells to Singapore and other Asian countries.
Asked if he would court the leaders of religious groups which are known to hold sway over their members, Roxas said: “I think the religious leaders also want a righteous [candidate] because they belong to a religious group, right?”
Scout’s mantra
“I don’t know of any faith or religious groups which promote immoral behavior,” he said.
Talking a mile a minute, Roxas then recited the boy scout’s mantra: “Even in the boy scouts, [it requires one to be] trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, clean [and] reverent.”
“That’s complete. Those are the qualities we’re looking for. The first thing is to be trustworthy. It means you are someone who can be trusted and worthy of that trust,” he said.
Asked how long it took him to memorize the line, Roxas replied: “I’ve known that since I was young.”
It was an obvious dig at Binay, who had led the Boy Scouts of the Philippines for more than two decades before he relinquished his post as national president two weeks ago.
Binay, who beat Roxas by a slim margin of 700,000 votes in the 2010 national elections, has been facing a firestorm of corruption allegations, including the alleged unlawful sale of a one-hectare prime property in Makati in 2008.
Using President Aquino’s anticorruption agenda of “daang matuwid” as a springboard of his bid for Malacañang, Roxas claimed that voters would elect candidates whose name had never been implicated in the misuse of taxpayers’ money.
Trailing Binay
However, Roxas continued to trail Binay in the voter preference surveys for the next President.
Roxas, a Wharton-educated investment banker before joining the public service, said creating more job opportunities in the country would be among the top priorities of his presidency.
He said improving the loan facilities for potential investors and creating a more business-friendly environment in the country are keys to enticing new business enterprises.
If elected to succeed President Aquino, he said he would make sure economic policies would be consistent to provide a more stable investment horizon for businessmen for a longer period of time.