EDU PERFECT MATCH FOR GIBO / NOYNOY DARED TO BARE LAND REFORM STAND
SINGAPORE, NOVEMBER 16, 2009 (STAR) By Marvin Sy - An intelligent man aside from being popular as an actor.This was how Press Secretary Cerge Remonde described the administration party’s vice presidential bet Edu Manzano.
Remonde said Manzano’s wit and intelligence would complement the administration’s presidential candidate, outgoing Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro.
Remonde said he found Manzano to be an intelligent man when he served under him when the actor was still the chairman of the Optical Media Board (OMB).
“I found him at that time to be a very efficient and dedicated worker,” Remonde said.
Remonde told reporters at the Carlton Hotel here that Manzano has always been a good performer, whether as the former vice mayor of Makati City or as OMB chairman.
But when asked if he felt that Manzano’s wit could match the high level of intelligence that has been attributed to Teodoro by the administration, Remonde could not help but be less serious.
“If you allow me to be flippant, if you are a game show host, you should be intelligent, asking all the difficult questions and seeing to it that all the correct answers are given all these years,” Remonde said.
Years after his work on the big screen, Manzano shifted to television where he made his mark as the host of at least two popular game shows.
Manzano used to host the Philippines’ version of the international quiz show “The Weakest Link,” and is now the face of “Pilipinas, Game Ka Na Ba?”
Militants dare Noynoy to make public stand on land reform By Reinir Padua (The Philippine Star) Updated November 15, 2009 12:00 AM
MANILA, Philippines - Five years after the infamous “Hacienda Luisita massacre,” leftwing groups are challenging presidential candidates to make public their stand on land reform.
Anakpawis party-list Representative Rafael Mariano said agrarian reform should be discussed ahead of next year’s elections.
“This should serve as a big challenge to the presidential candidates to come up with a clear stand and put social justice in their platforms,” Mariano said in a press conference yesterday.
Activists have urged Senator Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III – a scion of the Conjuangco clan who owns the sugar plantation in Tarlac – to work for the immediate distribution of the property among farmer beneficiaries.
The government had revoked the estate’s stock distribution option scheme, which gave farmers stocks in the company rather than actual parcels of land. The management of the plantation questioned the decision before the Supreme Court, which later issued a temporary restraining order against the distribution of parcels of land to the farmers.
Bagong Alyansang Makabayan secretary general Renato Reyes Jr. said administration standard-bearer defense secretary Gilbert Teodoro, who is Aquino’s second cousin, should also bare his position on land reform.
“Most of those running for the highest positions in the country are landowners or somehow connected with families that own lands,” Reyes said.
On Monday, a thousand supporters of the farmer beneficiaries of the sugar estate will go to Hacienda Luisita to commemorate the violent dispersal of protesting farmers that left seven dead on Nov. 16, 2004.
Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas deputy secretary general Randall Echanis said other leaders and supporters of the farmers in Hacienda Luisita were killed after the massacre.
“The brutality towards the Luisita farmers and farm workers went beyond the hacienda and Nov. 16, 2009. We are also calling for justice for them,” he said.
Chief News Editor: Sol Jose Vanzi
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