Manila Overseas Press Club: Transcript of Interview with Manny Villar

Posted on | November 7, 2009 | No Comments

Q: Your new to your philanthropic work as a successful businessman, so far you have given up at least 6 houses and lot to distress ofws which by now could run from more than a hundred. Are you still within your cost estimate of 4 billion for your presidential campaign?

Villar: I think that’s way ahead of what I envisioned to spend in this campaign, way, way ahead. You don’t have to spend that much to win and campaign. But I gave the 6 houses, cause I really think we should help the OFW’s.  I think I would dream years to build a nation where people will not have to leave the country to find jobs. That I think should be the ultimate dream. But right now we just have to help them to the best of our ability to provide safety nets, that dream we should have in our minds. We have 10 million OFWs and many of them are suffering, we have to provide safety nets. The government has so far been unable to provide that safety nets. We all must help in providing that safety nets, meaning people who sold property, borrowed money so they can improved their lives and it’s really very unfortunate that they experience difficulties in their job. We have to bring them back.

Q: Just to clarify Mr.  Senator, what is a safety net?

Villar: Safety net to me, they should be able to go home, come home whenever they have to. Especially in the Middle East we have a lot of Filipinos there who want to go home, they experienced difficulties, their employers mistreated them, not paid properly, some are jailed, some are abused. And the government has been, so far unable help those people. We should be able to help them. We must assume that for every so many Filipinos there abroad, a certain percentage will have difficulties, a certain percentage will have problems. We must assume that, and the government must provide for that.  Every Filipino must be able to come back, whenever they experienced such difficulties.

Q: I failed to mention about your last weeks activity, when you gave away capital for small entrepreneurs. Corollary to this all candidates that you are limited to election expenses under Comelec’s rules. Will this philanthropic works will be included in the competition of election expenses?

Villar: I have been doing this actually. And I don’t think it should be, I mean, all of us should help our countrymen. Like, I’ve been helping entrepreneurs for about 20 years now and I will continue helping them till I die. I fairly believe that for us to move forward we have to create an army of entrepreneurs. We have to change the mindset of our people that we can be on our own, that we can succeed in business that we do not have to be Chinese to succeed in business.  So far Filipinos like to be employed. We study, so that we can be employed. We were told by our parents to study hard so that one day you can land a job, and you tell your children the same, and our children will tell the same thing. We have become in fact a nation of employees. But we cannot move forward if we fail to change this mindset, we can be on our own, this has got to be the new mindset now. And we have to help the entrepreneurs now, the small entrepreneurs. The vendors in the market place, we have to help them succeed, so that they can provide, they can be the inspiration to the others, so that those who are unemployed if they failed to find jobs they could try to be entrepreneurs. And to me if we fail to change the mindset of our people about entrepreneurship we really cannot push this country forward economically.

Q: For the past several weeks or months we have a guessing game here on who will be your Vice President, will you end the guessing game tonight and tell us who you have chosen as Vice President?

Villar: I wish I can, but no, not yet. We have not finalize to our vice presidential candidate will be, but the party hopes to choose its vice presidential candidate before the middle of November. The last day of filing is November 30, we feel that November 15 is a good deadline and we intend to beat that and at the same time we are also finalizing the senatorial line-up. We are very confident that we can come up with a complete line-up as early as the end of 1^st week of November.

Q: Sir, there have been reports recently that either you have chosen Loren, that was before Chiz resigned from the NPC. So can you say that you have narrowed down your choices to Loren and Chiz?

Villar: Well, it’s hard to say that. There are other possibilities. I would say though that it could be an honor for any presidential candidate to have anyone of this two as his running mate.

Q: Other possibility that you are considering another possible vice president, aside from Chiz and Loren?

Villar: That’s not probable, but that’s possible.

Q: Vilma Santos, are you really talking to her?

Villar: There is a committee that is mandated to select the vice presidential candidate of the party and they are not done yet to the selection of the VP.

Q:   Have you spoken with Chiz after his resignation?

Villar: I have not. He made the announcement yesterday and I haven’t seen him.

Q: Who would be more compatible with you as vice president between Chiz and Loren?

Villar: I don’t mind either Loren or Chiz. I mean it depends on whom the committee will choose. Either way, I think it’s okay with me. They are both very good. The vice presidential candidate should be capable also of running this country just in case.

Q: Who do you think is the man to beat or probably the best competitor you will have in the presidential race?

Villar: The man to beat need not be the best competitor. The man to beat is the most popular, not necessarily the best. But you could also be the best, of course. I’m just saying that there’s still seven months to go and a lot of things can happen. In fact, a lot of things have been happening lately with the pronouncement of Chiz, Loren and Erap declaring his intention to run. I expect some more announcements in the next few weeks. I mean, finalization for example of the slates. These are things that are very important in assessing one’s chances. Also, by November 30, all of the locals will have filed their certificates of candidacies. My view is that politics will shift to local, primarily be local after November 30. They will know the organizational capability of each candidate by then.

Q: With you in the Top 3 of surveys are Sen. Noynoy Aquino and former Pres. Joseph Estrada, between the two who is more of a threat to you in the coming race?

Villar: That’s not a fair question. I consider every candidate as a threat. Certainly, the more popular you would consider as the bigger threat. But there is always the matter of time. In April, President Erap might be the bigger threat, we don’t know that. Things can change, things happen.

Q: Some critics are saying that your popularity is heavily anchored on your infomercials and without these, you won’t stand a chance in the presidency?

Villar: The infomercials merely mention what I have done. Nothing there was untrue. For example, that I was born in Tondo, that I used to sell shrimps. In fact, the infomercials so far have failed to state exactly all my accomplishments. But to be fair, I’m up against people who have been in the showbiz for a long time, either married to, related to or an actor himself. The infomercials are just my way of leveling the playing field. That is the only way. And this is the only way that I wish I could tell people what I have done. I think it is very important to inform the people who you are, what your experience is, what you are capable of doing and why you can run this country better. We owe it to our people.

Q: Some people are saying they will not vote for Sec. Teodoro because of the Arroyo corruption allegations, what do we expect from Mr. Manny Villar if he gets the presidency in regards to the Arroyo Family’s corruption allegations?

Villar: I will not lift a finger to defend the Arroyo Family. I will let justice take its course. It is very important to say that under our system, the Judiciary is not under the President. The president is the head of the Executive Branch. If people will file cases against President Arroyo, then they will have to defend themselves. By the way, I also would like to talk about corruption. To me, it is also important to talk about corruption. When you talk about eradicating corruption, it is very important to establish that you are capable of doing it. Have you done anything in the past that will show that you are capable of doing something as difficult as eradicating corruption? Because otherwise, it will just become an empty platform, an empty claim. You must show that you in the past have done something, have made a decision that make you capable of doing something as tough as eradicating corruption. You must have a game plan, not just say that you will not be corrupt, or you have never been accused of that. You must be explicit about how exactly you’re going to do that. I can. Year 1, month 1, you must show that your term will not be characterized by corruption. You open all the bids, televise it, and invite everybody to examine all of the projects to be bided out, let them scrutinize everything, ask questions and then on television, open the bidding. Invite all investors. Because you first must establish, year 1, month 1, that your term will not be characterized by corruption. You must set the example as president. And we should be asked exactly how we are going to do these things. We must be able to explain this in detail and show that we are capable of doing this. Otherwise, it will just be an empty statement.

Q: You said a while ago that you intend to keep the Filipinos in this country. How about those who are living abroad, we know there is a recession in the US. There are many Filipinos who would like to come home.

Villar: It should be our ultimate objective for people to have a choice. They can come here or they can stay there. But when they come here, they must be able to find jobs. They must be able to go to business, they must be able to have opportunities here. If they want to stay abroad, they can or if they want to stay here, they can. It’s not that I want to keep them here. I think most of them don’t want to leave the country but they have no choice. They have no jobs here. That is a dream. I have to say that it is going to be extremely difficult to achieve that in six years because the first thing that we must to is to provide enough employment to absorb our graduates and all of the unemployed here before we even talk about bringing home the 10 million overseas Filipinos. But that will be a good start. That should be the objective; we must start a sustainable economic growth for our country. 7 to 8% I think is a decent objective consistently in maybe six years. To me, it can be done. Other countries have done it. Why can’t we do it? We have been mismanaged all these decades. I submit that this country have not moved forward because we have been mismanaged. We have never used leadership and managerial ability as basis for electing a president. Our presidents are always been chosen on the basis of popularity purely and on emotions. Why is leadership important? Leadership is important because there are so many institutions in this country; you have media, the church, the AFP, the Congress, the local governments, the judiciary. You must be able to persuade all these institutions to move towards one direction, without declaring Martial law of course. If you have no leadership, you cannot do this. How do you show the people that you have leadership, you must at least have been elected, once in your life or so many times in your life you must have been selected by your peers.

Because if you have never been elected or selected by your peers, you have never been a president of the homeowner’s association, what makes you think you can run this country?

We need leadership. That is the reason why we are chaotic. This might be self-serving because I have been Speaker of the House, Senate President and a leader in the housing industry but I think that is very important. When you hire a CEO, you ask this question, his leadership capability because he will lead the company. Managerial ability is a must. Our economy has been mismanaged but why are we surprised that our economy has been mismanaged when we never ask, we never use managerial competence as a basis for electing our president? Why are we surprised that our economy has been mismanaged all these decades? It is high time that we stop this incompetence for the sake of our people. We must use these two.

Q: Do you think Noynoy is incompetent?

Villar: I’m not saying that. I will not comment on that.

Q: Can you give us an idea of your ideal vice president?

Villar: The vice president should subscribe to the objectives of the president and the objectives of the party. This is a Nacionalista-led coalition and our primary objective is to get this country out of poverty. The focus would be on achieving prosperity.

Q: What would be the role of your vice president in your government?

Villar: Luckily all of the possible vice presidents are very capable and very clearly can become members of the Cabinet.

Q: Can you give us an idea what Cabinet post would you offer?

Villar: Certainly their preference. That is, if their preference is environment.

Q: The Senate reporters are telling me you are pro-environment?

Villar: I like the environment. I’ve never claimed to be an environmentalist but I have planted more than a million trees in my lifetime. I’ve been planting trees for the past 25 years and as of my latest count, I have crossed the million mark. I like trees because they beautify the surroundings. I started planting trees even before we started talking about global warming.

Q: But Puno have already withdrawn from the race. So that qualifies Loren?

Villar: There are other environmentalists.

Q: You have built 250,000 houses here, you have planted one million trees, you build a $1 billion enterprise from scratch and that is competence?

Villar: I have achieved a lot of dreams. But the one dream, the ultimate dream of bringing this country out of poverty that is what I want to achieve.

Q: Noynoy has never planted one million trees, 250,000 houses has not built any kind of enterprise outside of selling Nike shoes and shorts in his younger days and he has not been Speaker of the House or Senate president. Just to clarify, your choices for vice president are A. Loren Legarda, B. Chiz Escudero and C. Other unnamed people.

Villar: The unnamed people are also very competent.

Q: Can you name some of the letter C?

Villar: No. Let’s just leave it at that.

Q: At this late a stage, I think you can’t pick out someone from nowhere to be your vice president. Raul Roco did that and he was defeated.

Villar: Yes, that I understand very clearly.

Q: So you are back to A and B?

Villar: (laughs)

Q: By the time you assume the presidency, hopefully for you on June 2010, the global financial crisis might have settled a little bit down already. Can you give us an idea of your formula for bringing back the Philippine economy back on its track?

Villar: We have to consider the fiscal crisis; the next president will be facing a very serious fiscal crisis. Right now I’m looking at P300 billion, possibly it could hit P325-350 billion. It’s coming from less than a hundred last year. That is a very serious one especially if nothing is done, the next year could even be worse.

That is why I said the next president should be able to manage this country from Day 1 because if we will have an OJT or an on-the-job trainee, the fiscal crisis is something that could deteriorate. Our country could really be facing very serious economic problems. Our tax revenues have gone down, deficiency from a high of 17% during the time of FVR to 12% right now. That 5-percent drop translates to about P300-P350 billion and that’s a lot. The next president should immediately give the highest priority to this, of bridging this gap. We are recovering from the economic crisis yes and no but the next president has no time to practice. He has to start; he has to hit the ground running from Day 1. He must know how to manage the country.

Q: The deficit will be P300 billion next year, how can you achieve 7 to 8% GDP growth per year to create enough jobs for people to be employed and attract those people who are abroad?

Villar: Next year will be tough, achieving that will be tough. I don’t think we can pump prime the economy right away. But there are some areas that can immediately be improved. The collection, for example can be improve. We can persuade Congress and this is where our advantage, having been a former Speaker and Senate president, will come in, they can be persuaded to have some tax measures, rationalize fiscal incentives. When you take over a government, or any company, there are normally inefficiencies that you can immediately address and this is your source of spending money. If you have no leadership, you have to buy loyalty. This is what is happening now to our country. Loyalties of congressmen and local government officials are being bought through projects. This is a tremendous waste of limited resources. If this is not done at the first year, this gives us a lot of savings. This is probably an area where we can draw some spending leeway. But 7 to 8% of course, admittedly, will be tough in the first year.

Q: Gong back to the environment and the trees, you said you like them and Loren is running on a green platform. Does that give her an edge?

Villar: To be fair, environment is a very serious, very important objective. But that is not the only objective. Capability as a president is also very important. I will not immediately rule out the other possibilities.

Q: Should Chiz Escudero subscribe to your goals, would you still accept him for VP despite what he has said about you?

Villar: To be fair, he is not applying. I can work with anyone of them.

Q: Do you still expect any surprises from the administration, which could derail the holding of the elections as scheduled?

Villar: Automation. It’s not fair for me to say that that will be a problem and I’m worried about it.

Q: You are worried because it’s new?

Villar: It is new and one cannot be sure that it cannot be…

Q: Also because you could be cheated?

Villar: Yes, I’m more worried about the second one.

Q: What is your back up system?

Villar: We are trying our best to come up with controls, we have our own computer experts but then again we realize that it’s going to be tough.

Q: By the way, the Comelec is brand new. They have never managed an election. The Chairman and the commissioners, they are all new.

Villar: Actually we have not computerized anything before as big as this.

Q: In connection with your fears about the automation, do you think there is the possibility of failure of elections?

Villar: If it breaks down, it could be failure. But we cannot go around and spread this that we are going to have failure of elections because we want everybody to campaign to discourage anybody from tampering the election results or trying to stop the elections. It is important for the process to continue. It is important that people campaign and people guard their votes so that the system will work. The more difficult it is to tamper, the less is the probability that there will be tampering.

Q:  Is it necessary that your VP will come from your party?

Villar: It is not necessary that he or she come from the NP. What is important is that he subscribes to the objectives of the party.

Q: The NP is the oldest party, and Amang Rodriguez once said politics is addition. There have been a lot of defections to your party.

Villar: I have been talking about what I have built in the past and they form part of my credentials. But the one credential that I have done which shows that I can build. I’m building the party from practically nothing. When I took over the party, there was no elected member.

Now we have more than 2,000 elected members. Just in the last month, we have more than 150 municipal and city mayors that joined us. Many governors have joined us in rapid succession. There are congressmen who joined us and committed to join us. More governors have committed to join us; hundreds of mayors have committed to join us. We are confident that we are ready. One thing that I am proud of is that I think at this point we have rebuilt the NP. This is the party that fought for our political independence. Now, after a hundred years, this party is fighting for our economic independence. We have successfully rebuilt this party and we are all set to reclaiming the leadership of this country.

Q: What is your edge over them?

Villar: There is this unique advantage of having experienced poverty, having come from a poor family. I’ve experienced what I have been preaching, sipag at tiyaga. At the same time, I can present my credentials as an experienced person. I can show my experience and say private sector leader, I rebuilt from nothing my business which became the largest, became Speaker of the House. These experiences are not easy to do. I don’t know anybody in the country who has had that kind of experience from the private sector and became Speaker of the House and Senate president. That to me is an advantage. I don’t want to brag about these things. I’m just saying, that combination is something that I’m very proud to show our people. I firmly believe that many candidates in the past can only talk about one or the other. My advantage is that I have both.

Q: You are saying you a success in business and you are a success as a political leader.

Villar: That’s what I’m saying and also I have experienced poverty and I have experienced entrepreneurship. These are the things that I have been espousing.

Q: What makes you more profound than the others?

Villar: When you have experienced it, it’s something else. Experiencing hunger, for example, is something. Experiencing not knowing whether or not you will have something to eat the following day, not knowing where to get money to go to a doctor, seeing a loved one unable to get good medical treatment because you have no money, not knowing where to get the next matriculation fee. These are things that I have experienced. When you talk about choosing a president, when we make mistakes that are all right we don’t feel it because the A will still eat. But the people, we have to realize that in any mistake that we do in electing a leader, it’s the poor people who suffer. This spells whether they will eat or not, whether they will be getting medical treatment or not, whether they will get jobs or not. That is why I feel that we have no room for just using emotions here.

Q: Every candidate has an audience that they claim to have for the election. Does Manny Villar have a specific region, provinces or sector that you can call your own?

Villar: The Ilonggo. My father is from Iloilo. I normally get very good score in Visayas. My mother is from Pampanga but traditionally I get extremely high votes from Region 6, Ilonggo speaking regions. And some parts of Mindanao.

Q: They say in the past elections, only four places decided the president, Pampanga, Pangasinan, Iloilo and Cebu. Are you no.1 in those places?

Villar: Pampanga, I’m not sure but Iloilo, yes. I get very high votes from Pangasinan. Metro Manila, not so.

Q: What do you think about moves to change the Constitution, is there any chance?

Villar: Amending the Constitution is something that people should decide it should not be the leader. But I am not afraid of any Constitutional change or amendment. It is just the Constitution. For me, what is important is the leader and personally, I can work with a parliamentary or a presidential or a federal. I don’t think it’s that important.

Q: How do you alleviate poverty when you yourself said the deficit next year would reach P300 billion?

Villar: 70% of the poor in the country are in the agriculture sector. If you want to very quickly address poverty, you must focus on agriculture. It is also one of the most corrupt departments. So if you can focus on addressing that problem, then you will have some excess to spend on agriculture. I am looking at repairing first the irrigation systems instead of coming up with new ones. We can immediately jumpstart the agriculture. This is what I call agricultural renaissance because I really feel that agriculture should be given a second look now with the changes in the commodity prices. And we have no choice, 70% of our people are in it. We are to address poverty immediately despite our increase in fiscal deficit; the agriculture should be given highest priority.

Q: You said that it only takes P80, 000 to rehabilitate per hectare of irrigated land. How much money will you devote to irrigation?

Villar: Using the budget of agriculture should be enough. Actually, right now there is the AFMA Law that gives P20 billion more to agriculture that has not been implemented. I think we can squeeze another P20 billion to implement the AFMA. Although maybe even half of that should be enough for the first year. Because to me, just maximizing the budget of DAR and the DA, if you rationalize these two departments, and add maybe about P10 billion, we should be able to jumpstart our agricultural renaissance.

Q: What is your foreign affairs policy?

Villar: Our foreign policies, they have not changed in the last few decades. We have not really incorporated the changes in the world order, for example, the growth of Russia, China, Brazil, India. There is a very clear change that is happening now. This is a movement away from the US, calls for currency other than the US, calls for more representation from developing countries led by these nations. The growing strength, the growing economy and influence of China, India in Asia. All of these must be taken to consideration but we should not also forget that we are a nation with 10 million overseas Filipinos. They must be incorporated in our foreign policies now. We must be very active in negotiating bilateral treaties or agreements with other countries for the protection of our overseas Filipinos and for the improvement of opportunities there. Right now we are not proactive. The location of our embassies must be altered taking into consideration the new realities of the world. In terms of manpower allocation, I guess we just have to allocate more to countries where there are more Filipinos to be taken care of. DFA can play a big role in economic development also. For example, there are some countries where we must be very active in getting investments for example, from China, Taiwan. US are very far and there is really nothing wrong with looking at the new possible sources of investments. I think that this can be done without hurting our relations with the US. It is very important for us to maintain an independent foreign policy. I think we can regain more respect from US, China and all other countries if we maintain an independent foreign policy.

Also, we must consider that we will be given the importance in this area only if we are also important economically.  That is why I think our big population is something that can really make us even a great nation. It is not a liability. If we can push our economy to have 7 to 8% growth in six years, average, with this kind of population, we can be respected; the other countries will start listening to us. With the kind of economy that we have, with the kind of problems that we have, whatever we do, we will not be given the importance that we like to get from them.

Q: Our country with a population of 90 million, we are no. 12 in the world.

Villar: In fact, if we can significantly increasing the purchasing power of this 90 million people, we will have a huge market.

Q: As a group the OFWs remit more money than all foreign investors combined in a year. They remit $17 billion, the biggest that we have had for foreign investment is $2.5 billion.

Villar: This is also an area that has to be addressed. We need to be consistent in the application of our rules. We have to improve infrastructure. We have to extend the NLEX to Rosario, La Union. We have to extend the SLEX to pass Lucena. We have to connect SLEX to NLEX. These things have to be done very quickly so that we can impress the foreign investors and show them that things are happening in our country very quickly. We must be able to impress them Year 1. And also we must inspire our bureaucracy Year 1.

Q: What are your views on the VFA?

Villar: It can be reviewed but you cannot have a unilateral review. An agreement has to be reviewed by both nations. Nevertheless I think negotiations can be done with the US govt for the improvement of the interpretation of this agreement. Scrapping this immediately is not necessary at this time. It needs improvement.

Q: You said one of the challenges of genuine leaders is how to beat the popularity syndrome. Is this the reason why you are with showbiz folks like Willie Revillame to foil the Kris Aquino and Boy Abunda team? Do you ever consider Willie to be VP?

Villar: To be fair to Willie, he has not applied. It never entered his mind to enter politics. I think he is doing quite well in Wowowee. But this is the game; this is precisely the system now. To me, if you want to reform the system, first you have to be elected. Otherwise, you can just dream. But you have to do something about that dream, and to do something about that dream you have to first get elected.

Q: FPJ had 30% advantage over GMA. By the last week of election campaign, that was even.

Villar: I’m just saying here that none of the other candidates is Fernando Poe and I’m not GMA.

Q: Do you intend to give your reply on the double insertion issue?

Villar: I am very happy to report to you that all of the witnesses that they invited, all of them said, not guilty or the accusations were simply not true.. That is why it is now established that;

1. There is no double entry; it’s not possible to have double entry

2. There is no realignment because there are two roads and,

3. There is no overpricing because it’s based on the zonal value.

I am very happy that the witnesses all cleared me because this is the only issue so far raised against me. I am very proud of this road because this shows that I am capable of building this kind of infrastructure. I have not made a single peso from this. I would like to make that clear. In fact, if you will review all the records you will see that the only people who made negative comments about C-5 are all presidentiables.

Q: And some of them will become your VP.

Villar: Because they called for an investigation. But they heard the witnesses and a lot of them have changed their minds already. Somehow the issue has become clear to them that there is nothing wrong with that project and I am not guilty of anything. In fact, I’m very proud of that project.

Q: What role do you intend for Cong. Cynthia to take in your administration?

Villar: I’ve always considered my wife as an equal. I’ve always respected her views. My wife is very competent and she would know what to do. I don’t have to tell her.

Q: What do you attempt to achieve in your first 100 days?

Villar: First is to establish that this term will not be a corrupt one, at least, the Office of the President. Then there are a lot of things that can be done in each department. That is why it is very important that the next president will be capable of multitasking. You cannot be addressing one issue and say ‘okay, I will address education first, then after that I will address the Mindanao conflict, and then the health problem next.’ You cannot do that. You got to address all. In fact, I would want as many projects that can be finished in the first 100 days. It is very important to perform well in the first 100 days in terms of all areas. There must be visible improvements in all areas of government because it is very important to inspire the bureaucracy. Once you fail to inspire the bureaucracy, your term will have failed. Not only the first 100 days. The first 100 days is the first milestone, the first year is the second milestone. Hopefully you can bid out already some very important projects on television, transparent, to establish the trend. There are so many things that can be done. Competitiveness, for example very quickly, you immediately must create a competitive environment. In all of the heads of departments, you have to tell them that you have to compete. You have to tell college presidents to compete using quantifiable basis.

For example, you have to tell them you have to be rated according to how your graduates perform in board examinations… You as president must be prepared to be rated, compared with other presidents of the region. If I make it as president, I would be willing to be compared with the presidents of other countries. It is important that the president agrees to be rated.

There are so many indices abroad, the Human Development Index, Competitive Index, Corruption Index; we must aspire to improve our standing in all of these indices. These are the things that foreign investors will look for. If they see dramatic improvements in all of these indices then they can see that the country has suddenly become competitive. 100 days you cannot accomplish all this but you can lay the groundwork.

Q: What are the weaknesses of Manny Villar?

Villar: I’m not perfect. What I am just saying here is for all of my inadequacies, inefficiencies, I have a lot of failures in life, I have experienced difficulties. But when you look at me, you are looking at Manny Villar, what you see is what you get. You’re not looking at my mother, my father or the tycoon behind me. You are looking at Manny Villar.

Q: Are there more houses and lots to be given away?

Villar: I actually give houses and lots from time to time. I have been doing this for the past 10 to 15 years now. I will continue doing that probably for the rest of my life. If I make it as president when I retire, I will continue doing this kind of work. If I lose, I will continue doing this kind of work.

Q: What step will you take to ensure that your real estate empire will not benefit from any government policy of protection?

Villar: We have laws on this; divestment etc. and they will have to be followed. But to me, everything will be transparent. It is important for things to be transparent to avoid these kinds of problems.

Q: Your son Mark will be running for Congress, if he wins will he be another Mikey or Dato?

Villar: I don’t want to comment about Mikey or anybody but I am saying that I am very proud of my son. He is a very hardworking son.

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