Independence from poverty is the new war to be won, says Villar

Nacionalista Party President Sen. Manny Villar said there is a need to wage and win a new war that will free the country from poverty as a way to fully enjoy the rewards of democracy.

During the New Leaders Event of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs in New York, Villar said that in poor countries like the Philippines, there is a need to understand the effects of pervasive poverty on the quality of democracy and considers pervasive poverty as the new Iron Curtain.

"Think about it: When a man's family is going hungry, how can he even think of the country? When a man's today is not even secure, how can he even think of the future?," Villar said.

"If you look around the Philippines, it is easy to see that the problems of yesterday, indeed of ten, twenty, fifty, even a hundred years ago, are still our problems today. We have been running in place for so long," he added.

One hundred and eleven years after declaring ourselves free from Spain, the Filipino people prepare to exercise their right to vote as free men living in democracy. Yet in many ways we are not free, especially from problems that have been with us for decades, he said.

The former Senate President said part of the reason for the problems in the country is that "elections in the Philippines are never a clash of vision but a clash of personalities."

"Another part of the reason is that the electoral process has been more a matter of form over substance. For so long Filipinos have equated elections with political freedom, and political freedom with democracy. But attaining political freedom is only the first step in establishing a truly working democracy," he added.

Villar said he believes that democracy is both about securing political freedoms and expanding economic opportunity. Fail in one area and you negate the advances in the other.

"This is what has been missing in the Philippines over the decades. We have concentrated far too much on the form of democracy but have missed out on its substance. Democracy is all about empowering the powerless; empowerment not only through the exercise of the right of suffrage but also through the opportunity to maximize one's God-given potential," he said.

"Having risen from the ranks of the poor, I fully understand that this new war for independence from poverty must now be waged by government with the right resources, with an unwavering focus -- and with an understanding of the every day reality of a poor man's plight that perhaps only someone who has been there can have," he said. Villar as a young boy used to sell fish and shrimp at the Divisoria market with his mother.

"We need to invest in infrastructure and have roads criss-cross our archipelago. We need to invest in housing and in building new communities. We need to build more schools. Improve our hospitals. We need to spur our economy and secure for our people their freedom from poverty to go hand in hand with their cherished political freedoms," he said.

"The responsibility is primarily with government. But it must tap the private sector to supplement its efforts. This is best done by providing private enterprise an environment for healthy competition while stepping out of the way," Villar said.