PRESIDENT Benigno Aquino III said Friday he will not give any unsolicited advice to the next president of the country after he steps down from office in June 2016.
“One would hope that the person who replaces me does such a great job that there is no need to criticize or to fiscalize,” said Aquino during an interview at the Bulong Pulungan Forum at the Sofitel Hotel in Pasay City.
“I guess I inherited it also from my mother. I’m really not one to offer unsolicited advice. I would rather not. I would not want to put my successor in the same situation of having to deal with a lot of times, well meaning, but unfortunately not very good advice,”Aquino added.
Aquino said he would pray that his sucessor build upon the foundation that his administration has laid down.
Aquino said that he watched his mother, President Corazon Aquino, at work from a distance, he assumed he had some knowledge of the demands of the presidency.
“But having even that inkling was not enough for all of the challenges that we had to surpass. At the end of the year, you know Christmas season when you want to relax…we had a lot of the most difficult challenges,” he said, citing the calamities such as typhoons Pablo, Sendong, Yolanda, the Zamboanga siege and the Bohol earthquake.
With only six more months in office, the President said he looked forward to visiting Boracay and staying longer, after he steps down.
“On day one, I probably will get up sometime in the late afternoon. I will not read any newspaper. I will enjoy feeling no pressure whatsoever on that day. Then, of course, I will have to try and touch base again with the old neighborhood… which probably means eating a lot of fast food in the neighborhood. Hopefully, I’ll get to all of them on the same day,” Aquino said.
“Everybody in the Philippines would probably have a Bora experience. Hopefully, it is still an experience that I can experience… Let me contextualize that. One of the best pictures my mother ever had was really being at peace walking at the beach in Bora,” Aquino said.
“To be honest, I had the same opportunity to visit Bora for a total of about 40 minutes. We had to inaugurate the Caticlan airport’s improvements… but I never got to the beach. I never got to the water. [The next time] I will stay for longer than an hour,” he said.
Aquino, a bachelor, said that with more time on his hands by then, he plans to visit the Saint Jude Shrine near Malacañang to pray to the patron saint of lost causes for his love life.
“It might help,” the President said, drawing laughter from the crowd. “When we’re alive, everybody should have hope.”