Presidential bets urged to tackle national issues in campaign

INSTEAD of engaging in character assassination, candidates eyeing the presidency in 2016 should focus on pressing national issues like crime and corruption, Senator Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III said on Thursday.

Pimentel, president of the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino- Lakas ng Bayan (PDP Laban), said this was the consensus of various political parties, party-lists and non-government organizations when they recently met in a political caucus at the historic Club Filipino in San Juan, Metro Manila.

“Rampant criminality and breakdown of law and order and other peace and order problems became the top issues identified in the caucus followed closely by widespread corruption that should be discussed by declared presidential candidates,” he said in a statement.

Pimentel said equally important is for the presumptive presidential bets of the different political parties to tackle issues on the need for structural, political and economic reforms and the electoral process that has been both bloody and expensive in the past.

He said the multi-party political caucus also saw the importance of tackling various pending proposals to amend the restrictive economic provisions of the 1987 Constitution, and called for the adoption of a parliamentary system of government in favor of the current presidential form.

How to end generational poverty, lower the high-cost of living, raise the quality of life, and attain inclusive economic growth, he said, are also among urgent issues that should be prioritized in the discussions of these politicians from opposing political parties.

Pimentel said PDP-Laban has been advocating a federal form of government to end decades of separatist movement in Mindanao, and decentralize government’s resources to hasten development in a country that is divided by several islands.

He said PDP-Laban would conduct more caucuses in the different areas of the country as part of the party’s consultative and participatory democracy.

“PDP-Laban is always guided by its principle of consultative and participatory democracy to identify the leading national issues in collaboration with other political parties and groups in the country,” said the senator. Maila Ager