The disgraced Nacionalista Party By Ronald Roy COMMENT 05/07/2010

The disgraced Nacionalista Party

By Ronald Roy COMMENT 05/07/2010 The Nacionalista Party (NP) is a disgraced political party because its titular head Manny Villar is its disgraced official candidate for the presidency. Villar aspires for the highest office with a dubious rags-to-riches story that he claims to have taught him the ropes in licking chronic poverty. We can give him the benefit of the doubt here, but certainly not with respect to how he has enriched himself by having allegedly used the influence of his office — first as Speaker of the House of Representatives then as Senate President. And we’re speaking of billions of pesos here, and of documentary evidence not bare speculation. No man can claim any moral ascendancy whose self-respect is suspect. On a question of a conceivable lack of integrity alone, Villar should not be taken seriously — not for the highest office of the land anyway. My father Jose Roy was the NP president for 10 years until he passed away in 1986. He brought dignity to this position in the glorious tradition of his predecessors like Jose P. Laurel and Sergio Osmeña. Gone are their days of statesmanship, delicadeza and altruism. Right after he won a congressional seat in the first district of Tarlac after the war, he gave the restive farmers of Nueva Ecija his only agricultural title covering 971 hectares of rice land. He then proceded to author and sponsor the first post-Commonwealth agrarian reform law, the 70-30 (farmer-hacendero) crop-sharing tenancy act. Thereafter he ventured into the lawmaking field of banks and corporations, ways and means and economic affairs to establish probably the greatest legislative output in history. In close to 30 years in both houses, he never lost an election and was annually chosen as one of 10 most outstanding representatives or six most outstanding senators. That’s why he became NP president, Senate Majority Floor Leader and Senate President Pro-Tempore.... MORE Source:  The Daily Tribune   URL: http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20100507com6.html

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