The businesswoman

"She will calculate the odds before taking the plunge."

Most politicians in this country like to portray themselves as having “poor” origins.  Some of these are true, notably so in the case of Diosdado Pangan Macapagal of Lubao, Pampanga who became the fifth president of the Third Republic.

His successors in office were either of wealthy parentage or of the middle class—Ferdinand Marcos, heiress Cory Aquino, Gen. Fidel Valdez Ramos, movie actor Joseph Estrada, Macapagal’s daughter Gloria, who was born when her father was already a lawyer, followed of course by Benigno Simeon Aquino III y Cojuangco, to the manor born and to wealth bred.

Rodrigo Roa Duterte was never poor, although at one time, in search of greener pastures, his father who belonged to the political Durano-Almendras-Duterte clan of Danao in Cebu, moved to Mindanao, eventually settling in Davao City, where he eventually became governor of then undivided Davao. One could best classify the provenance as middle class eventually becoming upper middle.

Because the majority of our voters are poor, politicians love to tout contrived or exaggerated poor origins, with their wealth or success due to hard work and/or brilliance.

I was in grade school when I heard a former Senate President, classified as wealthy because his father was a pioneering industrialist, ask in a television interview (then still black and white with a corner-curved screen), “Why do we glorify poverty, as if it is badge of honor?”

That was Gil Puyat, a statesman who had a distinguished legislative career. He wanted to be the Nacionalista Party candidate against Macapagal in 1965, but along with Fernando Lopez, he gave to Liberal Party import Marcos his first round convention vote. Marcos eventually defeated Macapagal in the elections.

But enough of historical trivia.  This article is about the topnotcher in the last senatorial elections of 2019, Cynthia Aguilar Villar, who received an amazing 25 million votes in her second term.

There was a time when Senate election topnotchers were immediately perceived to be potential presidential candidates.  That was the time when the Senate itself was such a hallowed institution regarded as training ground for presidents.  

Before the Cory Constitution prescribed term limits, names like Recto, Laurel, Tañada, Diokno, Puyat, Paredes, Primicias, Kalaw, Salonga, Manglapus, among other political illustrati, could stay senators forever.

Ferdinand Marcos was bar topnotcher, senatorial election topnotcher, and then Senate President before being elected President.  So was Jovito Salonga, but he was defeated by a career military officer, FVR, who was anointed by Cory Aquino to succeed her.

So when Cynthia Villar, heiress to the huge landholdings of the Aguilars of Muntinlupa and Las Piñas, itself a political family that has controlled Las Piñas for the last 40 years, topped the elections on her second term, everyone started looking at her as “presidentiable.”

She is also married to Manny Villar, former Speaker of the HoR and former Senate President, and is now listed by Forbes as the richest man in the Philippines.  Together they control the largest real estate and housing development enterprise in the country, and have since branched out to other ventures.

The senadora is quite hardworking, diligently attending and presiding over substantive committee hearings, especially where her particular interests—in agriculture and the environment—are concerned.  

She has little patience for incompetents and laggards, and her candor can be cutting- edge, abrasive even.  Those bureaucrats who have been unable to give cogent and sensible responses to her questions have been met with her trademark, “maloloka ako!” and instantly dismissed with derision.  

Observers do not feel sympathy toward the objects of her candor, but instead gleefully remark, “buti nga!”. She does not particularly care about the “political correctness” of what she says as long as she speaks her point.

When once she asked why government spends so much on research, particularly on agriculture, the academic community bent fury upon her.  What she perhaps meant was why despite all the funds spent on agricultural research, our productivity is still in the doldrums.

She can be super-passionate about environmental issues, not so much like the late Gina Lopez, although she has single-handedly prevented reclamation projects in Manila Bay that would endanger the habitat of migratory birds on the estuaries of Las Piñas and environs.

The impression she cuts is that of a stern school teacher, better yet a disciplinarian mother.  She would make an effective cabinet secretary or even an executive secretary who would always call the attention of peers when they do not deliver on promises or schedules.

She shows genuine and consistent interest in helping the marginalized not by dole but through livelihood projects, training them “to learn how to fish” instead.  Her foundation’s livelihood projects have truly helped families to augment their incomes.

Apart from the deep pockets, she and her husband control the grand old party, the historic Nacionalista Party which before martial law and the Cory constitution, was one of the traditional duopoly in Philippine politics.

Would she parlay these advantages into a stab at the presidency in 2022?  

Her staff has been quite busy in sending out chronicles of her activities, sometimes photo-shopping her presence in activities where she was not.  This has caught the attention of activists in social media who then created memes of her bordering on the hilarious.  

But nary a word has come from the 70-year old senator that would show interest in the presidency—yet.  Talk is rife about her wish to have her son, DPWH’s Sec. Mark Villar, to be the vice-presidential teammate of the president’s daughter come 2022.  

The President, for his part, has always had good words for the Villar family, and even when he decried instances of corruption at the infrastructure agency chiefly tasked with his pet “Build, Build, Build” program, he praised the integrity and diligence of the young Villar.

Truth is, when he was seriously considering a run for the presidency in 2015, Mayor Duterte kept telling us that he preferred to run as a Nacionalista, which was the political party of his father.

Only the drama of the Comelec deadline that he did not beat in October 2015 pushed his candidacy towards the banner of the PDP-Laban and that substitution effort which all the more raised public interest in the Duterte candidacy.

Many ambitious political personalities do not have the personal wealth or the flag of convenience that is a political party in the Philippine setting.  These Sen. Cynthia Villar already have. But being a businesswoman, she is not the type to be hearing “voices from above.”

She will calculate the odds before taking the plunge.