The Official Website of Bayani Fernando

BAGUIO City—The transformers. This is what they call themselves. Sen. Richard Gordon and Bayani Fernando, former head of the Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA), were the last duo who declared their presidential and vice-presidential candidacy.

“We are transformational leaders. We represent change,” they told the local media in a quick weekend sortie.

Ranking low in the surveys, Gordon announced he is not at all perturbed by this, as they came late in the game. “Surveys are but snapshots and are but management tools to see weak spots,” he said.

Like the rest of next year’s candidates for the top two government positions in the land, Gordon and Bayani had heart-warming promises for change. But Gordon said their achievements speak for themselves, citing Olongapo and Subic as examples. 

“I transformed [Olongapo] from a sin city to a model area, with an employment of 200,000,” Gordon said.

The duo said they complement each other, Gordon with his legislative background and Fernando with his engineering skills.

Fernando said that when he lost his party nomination, he had gone to see Gordon to convince him to be his vice president. “It turned out I was the one convinced to be his vice president,” he said. Fernando was quick to acknowledge that with Gordon’s 33 years in public service, compared with his 17 years, Gordon will make the better president.

“I will take care of the technical aspect,” he said.

Fernando said 60 percent of government spending goes to technical and engineering projects, and that this is also where most corruption takes place.

“So we can put to good use technical expertise,” Fernando said, stressing that corruption is more technical than anything else, and therefore needs a technical solution.

Fernando also said the big reason for the nation’s poverty is the lack of productivity. Fernando said if he would compare the Philippine worker to a Korean, he would size the Filipino as 30 times less productive than his Korean counterpart.

“A Korean worker would earn P100,000 a month, while the regular Filipino worker earns P3,000 a month,” Fernando said.

Gordon said his running mate was too humble in calling him the better man.

“I got the idea of making Subic into a model city from Marikina,” Gordon said. Marikina, once a crime-infested city, won several awards as a model city under the watch of Fernando as its mayor.

Gordon said precision in engineering will save the nation money and, that with Fernando at his side, he would be able to sleep easier. “We lose millions to designs lost to typhoons,” Gordon cited, among other examples.

For the Cordillera region, Gordon said tourism should be the centerpiece and that there must be a swifter passageway to the region, likening what he wants to see happen here to the progress of neighboring nations.

“If Hong Kong and Japan can build tunnels under rivers and through mountains, why are we building magnificent highways by the side of the mountains?” he said.

On the peace-and-order situation in resource-rich Mindanao, Gordon said that arms must be brought down and replaced by ships to bring their goods to Manila.

Gordon said Filipinos must be entrepreneurs and lamented the fact that many Filipinos are doing menial jobs. Gordon cited how he transformed Intramuros from a squatter-rich area to a now-economically viable place where native products are sold.

Entering the highest executive jobs in what can be deemed as a very dark period in the nation’s history in the intertwined aspects of economy, environment, politics and morals, both Gordon and Fernando were emphatic that they are out to transform the nation.

But with the overwhelming tasks in this transformation, Fernando said that it will be premised on building character.

“My running is symbolic,” Fernando said, adding that it will be a term where laws will be implemented. He added that his sidewalk demolitions were symbolic for obeying laws and said the nation’s problems stem from the fear of leaders to implement laws and displease the people. So laws, which are solutions to problems, become useless impositions, he said.

Gordon, meanwhile, said there is a need for moral infrastructure, that instead of sending more people abroad, more investment must be invited into the country.

He said children who are left behind are made to think that the movement abroad is because leaders have failed them and the solutions lie abroad. BUSINESS MIRROR