‘Mr. Palengke’ is Senator Mar Roxas, the son of the illustrious Senator Gerry Roxas, and the grandson of the venerable President Manuel Roxas whose public service careers have greatly benefited the country.Elected to the Senate in 2004 with a staggering 20 million votes, the largest ever obtained by a candidate in any Philippine election, Mar Roxas has made it his business to champion the people’s agenda on quality education, livelihood opportunities through small and medium enterprises, information technology, consumer welfare and good governance.
His concerns are national and his range international. His consistent performance as an exemplary public official has elevated him with the stature of a respected global leader. The Singapore government chose him as the 16th Lee Kuan Yew Fellow and the World Economic Forum acknowledged him as ‘one of the Global Leaders of Tomorrow who is expected to shape the future.’ ‘One of the young leaders in politics and business who will bring Asia and the Pacific to the forefront of world affairs’ was how the international community described him.
Mar Roxas stamped his mark early at the House of Representatives where, as a congressman, he espoused consumer protection, underscoring the right of every Filipino to affordable medicines, as his personal advocacy.
This consumerist crusade found a larger expression in ‘Presyong Tama, Gamot Pampamilya’ program which he launched during his tenure as trade and industry secretary. The program benefited millions of Filipinos in need of effective but cheaper medicines. In the Senate, this crusade continues with Mar’s authorship of Senate Bill No. 2139, which seeks to lower the cost of medicines by amending the Intellectual Property Code of the Philippines. With the approval of this bill, prices of quality medicines are expected to drop resulting in savings for the poor, and better health for all.
Nursing back the economy to robust health through education, information technology, job creation, and development of small and business enterprises are his other passions, reflected in his work as chairperson of the Senate Committees on Trade and Commerce and on Economic Affairs and as co-chairperson of the Congressional Oversight Committee on the Electronic Commerce Law.
His heart goes for consumers who are shortchanged in buying, among others, defective and substandard products. Thus, he initiated inquiries, with the end in view of strengthening the Consumer Code of the Philippines, on such legislative proposals as the ‘Lemon Law’, proper labeling of milk, toys, and food products containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and stronger safeguards against pyramiding and other similar scams.
When the pre-need industry succumbed to a mismanagement-spawned financial crisis, which threatened to wipe out the investments of thousands of consumers in pre-need plans, he filed a bill, the Pre-Need Act of 2005, to improve and strengthen industry regulation and safeguard consumer interest. Senator Mar’s leadership at the time provided pre-need plan holders a veritable lifeline.
Guided by lofty ideals yet gifted with the common touch, Mar Roxas adheres to the philosophy of ‘palengkenomics’, which considers the palengke as the economy’s weathervane and the mirror by which its over-all health can be seen and measured.
Senator Mar conducts weekly monitoring of the prices of prime commodities and maintains strong linkages with suppliers, traders, and vendors in the different wet markets. “Price is an important economic indicator. It is a crucial determinant of activity in the market place,” he said.
Information and communications technology has found in Mar Roxas a staunch advocate. Hailed as the ‘Father of the Call Center and Business Process Outsourcing Industries’, he saw—and cultivated—the potential of the Philippines as a global e-services hub. As trade and industry secretary, he launched ‘Make IT Philippines’ and organized the first IT-enabled services (ITES) to the US which inevitably led to the biggest global industry names to invest in the country, thereby creating thousands of jobs for Filipino IT workers.
In education, he authored the ‘PCs for Public Schools Project’ to provide student and teachers IT access. To date, the program has distributed 30,000 computers to over 2,000 public high schools nationwide, opening doors on hands-on computer training to 500,000 students yearly and reducing the computer backlog in public high schools by more than half, from 69 percent to 31 percent.
For Roxas, the exercise of public leadership entails accountability and transparency which should bring about people empowerment. He has called for a paradigm shift in policy-making, rejecting incrementalism, or the tingi mentality, which has resulted to ‘doing a little bit of everything to please a little bit of everyone.’
“People can hardly feel the impact of incrementalism. Government must target the people’s most pressing concerns and focus its resources on completely addressing these problems. We can’t be doing what we used to do in the past simply because if we did, there is no reason to expect that the future would be any different,” he says.
He complements his youth and dynamism by listening to the voices of the common Filipino, reaching out to them through personal interaction, the media, and various IT tools. His website, www.marroxas.com, is a sampler of his IT inclination, an interactive site that dispenses user-friendly information and serves as repository of public sentiment.
Mar Roxas has distinguished himself as a public servant in his own unique way, following the imprints of his forbears yet with the courage and competence to carve his own path as a national leader.
source: http://www.marroxas.com
