Thursday, January 21, 2010

Academic credentials vs integrity, the Presidential election

There are lots of noise to emphasize “academic credentials”, “legislative track record”, and related concerns in choosing the next President of the country in the coming May 2010 elections.

Those making such noise are more often than not, rooting for the candidate of the administration party. A UP law graduate, bar topnotcher, has Master of Laws from Harvard Law School, been a defense secretary, etc.

So what with all those Harvard degree/s? Gloria Magtatagal Arroyo also went to the US for her university studies where former US President Bill Clinton was her former classmate. And Gloria has a PhD Economics from UPSE.

Good academic performance, "efficiency and political experience" will kill you if the person has no integrity, like Gloria, like Marcos.

Any presidential candidate who talks about good governance but is silent about the corruption and dishonesty in the current government, has little integrity in the first place. Even if he has double masters and triple PhD somewhere.

About "legislative track record", my bias is: those who introduced the least number of new laws for more government intervention and regulation is the better candidate.
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The Liberal Party’s (LP) presidential candidate is keeping the liberal spirit. No price control, no IPR confiscation, no govt. auditing of private corporations in a particular industry, etc. That's great. See news report below.

LP's Presidential candidate is keeping the liberal spirit, while its VP candidate is moving away from it and embraced some populist-socialist policies. The two are united mainly on anti-corruption crusade.

http://www.philstar.com/Article.aspx?articleId=542640&publicationSubCategoryId=200

Noynoy assures free, fair competition for businessmen
By Dino Maragay (philstar.com) Updated January 21, 2010 03:54 PM

MANILA, Philippines – Wooing the nod of the business community, Liberal Party standard-bearer Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III today vowed to provide businessmen a “level playing field” free of cronyism once he is elected as President in the May 2010 elections.

Speaking before members of the Makati Business Club (MBC) during the organization’ s inaugural “Presidential Candidate Series” forum, Aquino said if elected, his administration would not interfere with companies in carrying out their daily businesses.

“We will encourage free and fair competition in a level playing field. One not need be a crony in order to succeed in the field of business,” ....

“More importantly, (the) government will not compete with business. Nor will the government use its regulatory powers to extort, intimidate and harass,” Aquino added....

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