Cynthia Villar top UP alumna/Lilia de Lima 2017 RM Awardee

Sen. Cynthia Villar was awarded the Most Distinguished Alumni Award by the University of the Philippines Alumni Association (UPAA) during the homecoming and awards ceremonies at the Bahay ng Alumni in UP Diliman, Quezon City.

Villar in receiving the award said, “I am truly honored to be among the awardees this year and to be in the company of such line-up of distinguished alumni, who are most respected and considered as experts in their fields of endeavor.”

Aside from Villar, Supreme Court Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio and Department of Budget and Management Secretary Benjamin Diokno also received the alumni award. Some 20 others were also named as professional awardees.

 “This recognition encourages me to carry on with my advocacies and it also serves as a validation of my continued efforts to inspire and help our fellow Filipinos. The award is really a bonus. It feels good to be recognized. But it feels even better to know that you are making a difference in people’s lives,” she added.

As the current chairperson of the committee on agriculture and food, Villar is pursuing poverty reduction as her legislative priority.

Together with her husband, former Senate President Manny Villar, she established the Villar Social Institute for Poverty Alleviation and Governance (Villar SIPAG) which allowed her to provide assistance to overseas Filipino workers,  support environmental protection, and establish livelihood projects and farm schools all over the country.

Villar earned her bachelor’s  degree in business administration from UP and  her master’s degree in business administration from  the New York University.

She was elected  representative of Las Pinas in 2001 and served for three terms until 2010. In 2013, she was elected as senator. Aside from the agriculture committee, she is also the current chairperson of the committee on environment and natural resources.

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ON ANOTHER FRONT: On  its 60th year, the Ramon Magsaysay Award for 2017 goes to  a Filipina, a Philippine-based theater organization,  a Japanese, an Indonesian, a Sri Lankan, and a Singaporean.

Established in 1957, the Ramon Magsaysay Award is Asia’s  highest honor.  

The 2017 awardees, says Ramon Magsaysay  Award Foundation president Carmencita Abella, “are all transforming their societies through their manifest commitment to the larger good. Each one has addressed real and complex issues, taking bold and innovative action that has engaged others to do likewise. The results of their leadership are palpable, generating both individual efficacy and collective hope.”

A woman I most admire,  Lilia de Lima, is a 2017  Ramon Magsaysay  Award recipient.  The RMAF  board of trustees, after a long, careful review of nominees, cites her as  “a career public servant who, in over 21 years, has built (a failing government agency) into a showcase of successful regulatory  reform, a model institution of honest and committed public service, and a key contributor to the nation’s economic growth.”

Lilia was born on Aug. 6, 1940,  to a family of public servants in  Iriga city, Camarines Sur province.  She finished her bachelor of laws at Manuel L. Quezon University in 1965 and  went into private and government law practice.  She is a fellow of the Academy of American and International Law of Dallas, Texas. In  1971 she was elected  delegate to the Philippine Constitutional Convention representing the now 3rd and 4th districts of Camarines Sur.  

From 1981 to 1987 she was director of the Bureau of Domestic Trade (DTI)  and concurrent executive director of the Price Stabilization Council, and chief operating officer of the World Trade Center (Manila, Philippines), and commissioner of the National Amnesty Commission.

In 1995 she was appointed  the first director general of DTI’s  Philippine Economic  Zone Authority (PEZA), and held the position for 21 years – under four  Philippine presidents.   

She came on board PEZA  when the country was burdened by endemic poverty and  a weak, corruption-ridden economy.  The government then  took a major shift when it pursued a policy of liberalized, export-led, globally competitive growth.  Thus it  created PEZA  to revive the country’s export processing zones.

Bucking tremendous pressures and threats, De Lima single-mindedly pursued a program of reform.

According to the RMAF trustees,  under her leadership, PEZA enabled the rise of the Philippines as one of the region’s top investment destinations.

PEZA’s accomplishments have been nothing short of spectacular. The number of PEZA ecozones  increased by 2,000 percent, from the initial 16 she inherited to 343 by 2016; the number of registered enterprises rose from 331 to 3,756; investments reached P3 trillion; and ecozone exports totaled $629 billion. Also during her tenure, PEZA remitted to the national treasury P16.6 billion in corporate income taxes and dividends, and paid off the P4.6 billion debt of its predecessor agency. What is most deeply gratifying to de Lima, is that PEZA has generated in direct and indirect employment, some 6.3 million jobs for Filipinos.

The smart-looking executive  who during her free time enjoys singing and dancing, reflects on her accomplishments  modestly: “I cannot solve the problems of the world but if in my own little area I can make a difference, then I must make that difference.”

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The  2017 RMA organization awardee is the Philippine Educational Theater Association. Now on its 50th year, PETA  was founded by  the artist beyond compare Cecile Guidote-Alvarez,  with the initial vision of creating a “national theater” in the Philippines.  

The RMA judges retells the PETA story. Working out of a theater in the old ruins of Intramuros,  the non-profit organization rose to prominence with groundbreaking productions in Filipino, that were remarkable for their artistry and social relevance, at a time of resurgent nationalism and deep political crisis  in the country. After Martial Law was declared,  PETA stayed active, together with other groups, in staging theater as a medium for protest and conscientization even under a dictatorship.

PETA, note the judges, “has grown way beyond its early traditions as a theater company. It is today an integrated, people-based cultural collective engaged not only in performance but also  in training, curriculum development,  national and international network building, and mobilizing communities using a participatory approach that is rooted in local culture and responsive to real issues in the larger society.”

The collective of “artist-teachers”  has its own permanent home in the PETA Theater Center. 

Its development engagements outside the Philippines include leading the Greater Mekong Sub-region Partnership, which mobilized, mentored, and supported a host of performing artists from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and Southern China to  undertake advocacy-through-the arts on issues that included gender health, sexuality, and HIV-AIDS.

Over five decades, PETA has produced 540 original, translated, or adapted plays, reaching an audience of close to a million across the nation and abroad. It has helped form more than 300 community-based culture collectives and conducted training workshops that have involved 4,650 artists, school teacher, community leaders, and  development workers.

 PETA president Cecilia Bulaong Garrucho asserts, “Our vision is to have a nation of fully actualized citizens, creative, and able to find a way, a solution, even when it seems like there is none.”

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 The six 2017 RMA recipients  will be conferred the award during formal presentation ceremonies on Thursday, August 31, at the Cultural Center of the Philippines.  The public is invited to the event.

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