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WHO DESERVES YOUR VOTE? Exclusive Interview With Dick Gordon (Second Of 5)


Posted on March 10, 2010 08:00 am by Cosmopolitan
Photo: Sonny Ramirez
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Cosmo: A lot of our girls have lost their jobs. What are your plans?

Gordon: You have to negate the cycle of disaster and poverty. You have to be smarter. You have to move people out of harm's way so you don't have to be feeding them all the time; you have to foster a culture of self-reliance.

Mayon will erupt. Why will you let them go back to the slopes? Get them a new place that's safe. Let the men go up there if they want to, so that when the volcano erupts, only the men go down, and they have a house to go to downtown, and they don't have to live in squalor or use the schoolrooms.

You know it's flooded; you have to fix up your drainages and remove all those blocks in the drainages. You have to create new development sites so that people don't crowd in Manila. You can develop other places, rebuild communities, and build new communities.

For example, you have three airports and two seaports--Subic, Clark, and Manila--and a third seaport in Batangas, plus another airport in La Union. We built this new infrastructure, a highway that makes Clark and Subic 25 minutes apart, and Clark and Manila only more than an hour apart. You can actually move universities and bring them over there so that there'll be movement toward these areas. And new townships can be built, new investment parks can be built, so that people will have jobs, people can bicycle to work, [and] quality of life will improve. You don't have to wake up at four o'clock every day just to go to work, then come back from work at eleven in the evening, dead tired, and not see your children.

So all these things, we can do, including lessen corruption, lessen smuggling, lessen taxes. You have to have incentives for the factories, so you have to be strict [about] corruption and smuggling. You have to make peace in Mindanao. You should be smart enough to do so, that that's why I'm running for President. How come these bozos who become presidents, they never had peace, they never stopped the war? I'd like to do that, that's a challenge. You go now to the other side.

I'd like to help you. I want your kids to be healthy. I want them to be free of diseases. I want doctors to regularly check them out. I want x-rays, mobile x-rays. I want kids to be checked all the time. I want food in the schools so that they can buy rice from the farmers, and they can feed the kids out there, especially those who are poor, and give them the fees to finish school. Dentists, dental care at school--I don't want them to lose their self-respect or self-worth because they're bungal na forever.

Agriculture. We don't have to import rice if we finish up the irrigation system. Part of the irrigation system will go to market roads so it will be easy, like in Jolo.

Then you go to Tourism. Tourism creates jobs, I know that. I've been the secretary of Tourism; I put Tourism back into the map. We can create jobs for women in restaurants. Tourism creates jobs for women; not in the sex industry, but as entrepreneurs who make barongs, cut flowers, who can speak Japanese or Chinese, who can be chefs, can build their own hotels. These are things that can be done. Guide people to cultural tourism. Pick Papaya Day or Pick Sugar Cane Day. That experience, that's tourism in other countries.

Many have information technology; women are more advanced than men. In my community, it is not unknown for women to do welding, even when the bases were there. They did construction works, they can even drive trucks if they want. There are many things which women can do, not just being secretaries or whatever.

There are women who write songs, books, and software. These are things that you can do, and if you focus on the things that you can do then we'll go back to our status as a great nation.

Also, [there has to be] education that focuses on teachers: total effort on improving the teaching capability, giving the teacher teaching aids, and, at the same time, letting the teacher feel that she is important because she is important. Our children are with their teachers eight hours a day while we work. So the values, the education, they get from them. So dapat ilagay mo dun ang pera mo. Taasan mo ang sweldo nila para they don't have to complain to their students na wala silang pambili ng eraser or chalk, na wala silang pambili ng uniporme nila. Taasan mo ang sweldo because kung education ang number one, dapat bigyan mo ng number one na priority.

When you get married, ano uunahin mo, education o bahay? So mag-iipon ka [para sa] bahay. So habang wala ka pang anak, ipon ka nang ipon so habang regular na ang income mo, uutang ka, makakabayad ka, magtatabi ka ng pang-education also. So kung gusto mo ng education, therefore sasabihin mo sa mga anak mo laging primary sa'yo more than bahay [ang] education. Education niya, pagkain niya, health niya.

Ganun din ang gobyerno: you have to teach them vision and values. Be conscientious about the less privileged people in our country so they could help. They have a duty to be successful. Women have a duty to be successful, be independent, self-reliant so they will be treated with respect by the men. Ayokong umaalis ang mga babae tapos ang lalaki tatamad-tamad lang dito, nag-aalaga lang ng bata. I want to find ways and means for our country.
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Tags: politics,Philippines,2010,candidate,president,Richard Gordon,elections,presidentiable

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