The Road to Malacañang
Unusually shy and coy for a politician, Mar Roxas has never needed to sell himself to the press to gain attention. Topping the senatorial elections in 2004, the former Mr. Palengke is now setting his sights on the presidency. Only last year, he finally assumed the leadership of the Liberal Party, which his grandfather, President Manuel Roxas, founded in 1946. DANTON REMOTO asks why it took him so long
It is 5:30 A.M. at the central market of Iloilo City.
Sleep still sits on my eyelids, and I rub them to wake me up. Two “Mr. Palengke” tarpaulins of Senator Manuel Roxas II had been hung in front of the entrances to the market. As the door of the van bearing the senator opens, the “Mr. Suave” song transformed into the “Mr. Palengke” jingle booms in the air.
Market vendors and buyers stop what they are doing, look to the left and then to the right. A man in electric blue comes towards them, and they rush to meet him. “Tuod na Ilonggo!” they say to each other, a pointed rebuke at recent senatorial candidates who claimed they were Ilonggo but could speak not a word of the language, not even palangga, hala! Then, the market vendors and buyers talk to the senator in the gentle diphthongs of the South. The young men dance, the older women crowd around him and kiss him on the cheek. The photographers’ bulbs flash, the VCR runs, and the crowd around me exclaims: “Magidalagan na sa 2010!”
When I was very young, I was, in Visayan, upod-upod, sama-sama, of my maternal grandfather who was in business . . . I was the one who was carrying his attaché case, who was driving him around, his all-around messenger.”
Mar Roxas has just been elected President of the Liberal Party, and he has promised to bring the party “to victory in 2010.” This is the clearest indication so far that he is running as President in 2010. That morning I saw him, he had flown to the South, to his bailiwick of Panay, to feel the people’s pulse. He talked to market vendors and mayors, street sweepers and students. He inaugurated the Gerry Roxas Market Annex in Santa Barbara, checked the prices of market produce in Pototan, went to two radio stations and attended Iloilo Governor Neil Tupas’ birthday in Iloilo. He had a cold, yes, and coughs tore through his voice as he spoke, but the meetings had been planned weeks before, and the people were waiting to see him. He plunged into the meetings and speeches like a born politico.
CARRY ON. Mar is carried by his grandfather, J. Amado Araneta, while President Diosdado Macapagal looks on.
But it has not always been the case. He may be the grandson of President Manuel Roxas, the son of Senator Gerardo Roxas, and the son of Judy Araneta Roxas, but reluctant politician he seemed to be. He went to the Ateneo de Manila University for his grade school and high school, and took some units in college before he flew to the States to study at the Wharton School of Economics at the University of Pennsylvania.
“Within 24 hours, I saw my father go from being a political celebrity—senator, head of the opposition, possible President after Marcos—to becoming jobless.”
At Wharton, some of the courses he took in Ateneo were credited, but they were not enough to constitute a full semester. So, he basically started from scratch. “Wharton was an entirely different experience from Ateneo. Most of my classmates were driven, focused, and clear as to what their goals were and how they were going to go about attaining them. And it was not just passing school. Their goal-setting included the job, the lifestyle, the city and the house they were going to live in. My experience in Wharton transformed me into somebody who is much more serious about things and less happy-go-lucky.”
Which, as the young man knew, was in contrast to the typical Filipino experience. Here, you cannot even plan your day because you do not know how long it would take you to go from point A to point B because of the mega-mad Manila traffic. “Here,” Mar adds, “if you did what you were supposed to do, chances are you wouldn’t get to where you want to end up. Because many times, the prevailing mechanisms for getting ahead are lamangan and connection and elements other than simply what you would put out. Here, you can work like a dog and still not end up any farther than where you started from.”
He graduated with a degree in Economics from Wharton in 1979 and worked for seven years as an investment banker in New York, rising to become assistant vice president of the reputable New York-based Herb Allen and Co., Inc. At times, he would serve as photocopy operator for the company. But home was not far from his mind.
“I always wanted to come back. It was just a matter of when or under what circumstances. I recall when Marcos declared snap elections, I was watching T.V. like, I assumed, all of the Filipino expatriates were doing at that time. Whenever Marcos would come out, we would always be glued to the T.V. sets. When he announced the snap elections, the very next day, I went to my managing director and told him that I wanted to take a leave of absence because I wanted to work in Cory Aquino’s campaign. I came home and worked for her campaign in my home province. So there I was at the JFK airport on a cold and snowy December 26, wearing overcoat, scarf, and gloves. And by December 31, I was already at the Iloilo airport, hot, dusty, and in summer wear. I stayed for the duration of the campaign. I was here during EDSA. Shortly thereafter, I went back to resume my life in the States.”
It was Mar Roxas’s baptism of fire in national politics. Sure, being the son of the Opposition leader Gerry Roxas, he had some indirect involvement in the protest movement. He was here during the election for members of the Interim National Assembly at the Batasang Pambansa in 1978, the noise rallies, the protest actions against Marcos. But he was not involved first-hand.
“By 1986, my father had already passed away. When my father was alive, he was in the frontline of the opposition. We, his children and his family, supported him. After Cory Aquino became President in 1986, I felt it was 1946 all over again. [The time, by the way, when his grandfather Manuel became the President of the republic.] It was time to rebuild the country. The treasury was bankrupt, so investment was necessary. I was in investment banking, so I thought I could play a contributing role. In September 1986, President Cory went to the U.S. I helped organize a series of investment round-table discussions with the American business community. At that time, President Cory’s name spelled magic. That was the trip when she went to the U.S. Congress and spoke.”
