Roces to be reappointed MTRCB chief

President Arroyo will reappoint Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB) chairman and STAR columnist Alejandro Roces when his term expires this month.

The President made the announcement as she admitted there were certain "sectors" which have been strongly lobbying for the ouster of Roces from the MTRCB.

Roces, 76, was reportedly being eased out by so-called "progressive" groups in the local movie industry which have supposedly been complaining about the conservative stance of the MTRCB chairman.

The President appointed Roces on March 26 to serve the unexpired term of former chairman Nicanor Tiongson which will end on Sept. 26.

Tiongson was forced to resign after the Catholic Church and other moralist groups denounced the film Live Show as pornographic, a movie that should not have been cleared by the MTRCB.

Roces also served as education secretary from 1961 to 1965 during the term of President Diosdado Macapagal, Mrs. Arroyo’s father.

Meanwhile, President Arroyo said over the weekend that aside from drawing inspiration from her late father, she also draws inspiration from the late President Ramon Magsaysay.

The President extolled the virtues of Magsaysay in her remarks at the Main Theater of the Cultural Center of the Philippines after she awarded this year’s seven winners of the Ramon Magsaysay Awards.

"The life and deeds of Ramon Magsaysay continue to similarly inspire the leaders of our country who came after him including my father and myself. President Magsaysay indeed was a president worthy of emulation," she said.

She cited in particular Magsaysay’s "innovative governance" in solving the country’s problems with available meager state resources.

For example, she said, it was former President Magsaysay who first applied massive employment of the Armed Forces of the Philippines "not only in fighting war but also providing for peace" by using them in civil works, especially in conflict-torn areas of the country where no private contractors dare to tread.

"Following his (Magsaysay’s) example, my father also utilized the engineering corps of the AFP for some socio-economic projects and moved to provide them with better equipment," she pointed out.

"I am also following the example of Ramon Magsaysay in using the Army engineers to do something similar to dredge the lahar silted rivers of Pampanga and bring them back to life," Mrs. Arroyo said.

In a related development, the President also endorsed a proposed measure that would make the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) optional in all school curricula.

The measure was jointly crafted by an inter-agency committee led by Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes.

In endorsing the measure, the President rejected calls for the abolition of the ROTC and instead sustained the recommendations of the inter-agency committee that reforms be instituted in the existing ROTC programs.

Reyes and the inter-agency committee made the recommendations after student groups demanded the ROTC be abolished following the death of university student Mark Chua who was allegedly killed for denouncing corruption in the ROTC.

The President noted that Chua’s father Wilson said his son would not have wanted the abolition of the ROTC but would have liked to have seen reforms implemented.

"He said the death of his son would come to naught if the answer to the deficiencies of the ROTC program will just be swept away instead of genuine reforms," the President said.

"Let us cure the sickness of the patient and not kill the patient. I am now asking Congress to pass a law so that we can do this. Let us use our ROTC for our national security, in citizenship training of our students and for the welfare of all," she said.