“If experience will be the sole basis of our choice, then my nominee has served five terms in this House, and has worked on both sides of the aisle, as majority leader and as independent fiscalizer.”
By Rep. Ralph G. Recto
Mr. Presiding Officer, my dear colleagues, fellow workers in government, ladies and gentlemen.
In 1992, one of my first acts as a freshman in this House was to swear in the Speaker, an honor given to me as its youngest member.
Thirty years and thirty pounds later, I have returned to the Bigger and Better House, no longer a totoy, but a tito, not to swear in the Speaker, but to sell who among us is the best man for the job.
But the colleague I am nominating requires no hard sell.
If experience will be the sole basis of our choice, then my nominee has served five terms in this House, and has worked on both sides of the aisle, as majority leader and as independent fiscalizer.
This means he can shepherd the bills that can help our country as skillfully as he can stop the ones that harm our people.
If work outside politics will be the voting guide, then he has chaired a big profitable bank, or two.
I chose to cite this among his many corporate jobs if only to underscore the stewardship that such requires—and that is to always earn the trust of its clients because it is the only way for the business to earn money.
If educational credentials will be the criteria, then his Cornell diploma and Harvard studies, his UP Law degree are more than proof of his surviving the rigors of academia.
Rounding up his PPP experience—private, public—is philanthropy, such as the foundation that produces doctors.
His giving to good causes is, however, mostly done in private, because he believes that the best form of altruism is done anonymously.
But there are many traits of the man which are not attested by certificates.
One, he is a workhorse, in a political culture which tempts many to become show horses.
While others chase headlines, he searches for good bills instead, and whenever he finds one, he does not loudly annotate a work in progress through tweets, but lets the finished product speak for itself.
Well, brilliance has no need for a bullhorn.
My candidate for Speaker knows the policies that need to be crafted—after all he has an eye for details, and for beauty, as attested by his lovely wife—and the pragmatism to get them passed.
This involves consultation, consensus, and compromise, if need be, of which he is a master of.
I am confident that with him, a constitutionalist, at the helm, he will keep the plenary a hospitable space for all opinions, while keeping the conveyor belt of laws moving.
He will act on bills promptly, because a people tired of being promised can no longer afford to wait, while allowing full discussion because a legislature ceases to be deliberative when it begins to shun debate.
My dear colleagues:
When I entered this very hall 30 years and 30 pounds ago, a crisis in many fronts awaited us.
We were grappling with the devastation of Pinatubo, the Baguio earthquake, a parade of typhoons, an energy crisis, and the economic fallout of military adventurism.
In many places, when you open the taps, there was no water. You try to catch a plane, there was none. You lift the phone, you get a busy signal. You switch on the lights, there was no power.
But many of these were remedied by groundbreaking legislation, by the House, and if you don’t believe me—hindi po ito chismis—you can ask the former congressman who will be delivering his State of the Nation Address later because we joined the House in that same year.
But the crisis we confronted then were brushfires as compared to the raging firestorm all around us now.
Our economy has cratered, a generation of learners has been incarcerated in their own homes, food is expensive, jobs are scarce, and commuting one hell of a calvary.
Well, I may have just spelled out the job description of this House, and that of the Speaker, the one who shall marshal our collective will and wisdom in tackling the brave and bold things that must be done.
And in this sea of talent that surrounds me today, there is one man who can best do the above.
He is the gentleman from Leyte, Ferdinand Martin Romualdez, whose experience in working across the corporate world, across the globe, across the political divide is the skill set a leader must possess today.
It is therefore my honor to nominate him as the Speaker of the House of Representatives of the 19th Congress, as leader of the House that will heal this nation’s many wounds, whether inflicted by COVID, the economic crisis, or politics that divides its people.
Magandang umaga po at maraming salamat.
(Rep. Ralph G. Recto, is Congressman from the 6th District of Batangas. His nomination speech was delivered before the start of the State of the Nation Address of President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr. Monday.)
