Sen. Cynthia Villar’s down-to-earth concerns

It’s always refreshing to have Sen. Cynthia Villar “chat” with members of our Bulong Pulungan media forum as she brings us to down-to-earth issues like how much farmers should be earning and earning more by going to a farmers’ school, converting water lilies into indestructible school desks, helping thousands of families in Tondo have toilets, and guarding protected areas from land grabbers.

Chair of the Senate committee on environment and natural resources, the senator and some fellow legislators made a visit to Boracay, and her sensitive environmentalist eye focused on the structures built over wetlands and the sewerage and garbage problems. She spoke about the decline of the once-tourist haven as caused by the failure of local executives and the private sector to observe building requirements. As to whether the “cesspoll,” as President Duterte called Boracay, should be closed for rehabilitation for six months or one year, as recommended by several government agencies, will be made known shortly. 

The garbage problem is not limited to Boracay. Plastic materials float mercilessly on Manila Bay and clog the esteros of Manila. In fact, the senator said, plastic garbage is a global problem. Precisely, she had residents of Las Piñas, her municipality, collect plastic bags (from shampoo sachets to cellophane market bags) which were later manufactured into heavy, durable school desks which are now in use in public schools. 

The  chair of the Senate committee on agriculture and food said the passage of Senate Bill No. 1233, An Act Creating the Coconut Farmers and Industry Trust Fund, addresses the age-old problem of using the trust fund to benefit coconut farmers. Along with other senators, she pushed for the inclusion of a provision in the P100-billion coconut levy fund that will mandate its investment only in Philippine government securities to ensure its safety and assured returns. Part of the fund will go to the construction of farm-to-market roads, planting and replanting , intercropping, research and development, and marketing of products. 

“How much do farmers earn?” she asked. “Only P1,500 a month. And yet, a family of five needs P6,500 to survive.” Farmers, she said, should be taught to raise their income through modern methods of farming. The bill promotes the propagation of hybrid coconut seedlings that can produce 150 nuts per year, intensive effort on intercropping of alternative farm crops such as cacao, coffee and banana, livestock raising, and the establishment of Coconut Industry Farm Schools (CIFS) in every coconut-producing province, with the help of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority. Already two such farm schools have been set up by the Villar family’s VillarSipag foundation in Las Pinas and Bacoor, Cavite, for students including farmers and would-be-farmers. Small farm owners are encouraged to make their farms tourist destinations.

There are eight million crop farmers in the Philippines, Senator Villar said. Of these, 3.5 million are rice farmers, and 3.5 million are coconut farmers. They comprise 90 percent of all the crop farmers in the Philippines. “If you solve the problem of the rice and coconut farmers, you solve the problem of majority of our farmers,” she said. 

For several years now, the Villars have been helping in the social and physical development of Baseco, an informal settler’s community of 10,000 families in the port area of Tondo, Manila. Only 5,000 families have toilets, and the processing of the Flavier-type toilets continues.

Cynthia comes from a family of politicians, but developed her own entrepreneurial skills and pursued her commitment to public service. Her father, Filemon Aguilar, was a long-time mayor of Las Piñas and a congressman. Cynthia ran and won overwhelmingly for a seat in the House of Representatives representing the Lone District of Las Pinas from 2001-2010. She is a sister of LP mayor Vergel Aguilar and Muntinlupa Barangay chair Elizabeth A. Masangkay. Her husband is billionaire and former senator Manny Villar, and their son, Mark, the current Secretary of Public Works, has served as a congressman.

Is she running for senator again? Cynthia smiled and readily said, “Yes.” 

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Last week, I had a chance to bond with a niece and her barkada from the University of the Philippines College of Law. Given this opportunity to interact with the young and idealistic lawyers of the future, I decided to ask them what their plans were for their careers. I’ve known this niece of mine since she was a child, and both she and her parents can best be described as overachievers. Fortunately, their family balanced a good and virtuous foundation with scholastic excellence.

Not surprisingly, most of them told me that they intended to pursue a career in private law practice. I was pleasantly surprised, though, that majority of them already had a clear idea about what they wanted to specialize in, and a sense of what they intended their career arcs to look like. This was certainly far from the stereotypical “millennial mindset” that the media characterizes as skeptical, indifferent, and equivocal.

In fact – and this was quite an eye-opener for me – almost all of them already had a particular law firm in mind that they wanted to apply to. “Tita, we are studying hard, and praying for divine intervention to get into Divina Law,” my niece said with an obvious play on words. “That’s really our first choice, but since their firm is the sole Philippine member of Lawyers Associated Worldwide, the competition is pretty intense,” she explained. I later learned that Lawyers Associated Worldwide is a top-rated international association of over 100 independent law firms from more than 50 countries.

Of course, I had heard of Divina Law – it’s headed by Atty. Nilo Divina, who is very well-regarded among his peers in both the corporate world and the academe. Divina is currently the dean of the University of Santo Tomas College of Law, so he inadvertently found himself in the eye of the storm brought about by the Atio Castillo hazing death. After attending each and every hearing, as well as being instrumental in convincing the key witness to reveal the facts that eventually cracked the case, Divina was fully cleared by the Department of Justice of any involvement in the crime.

What I didn’t realize about the firm is just how highly regarded it is among aspiring lawyers. “Tita, it’s not just our generation. The dynamic lawyering they advocate in Divina Law is almost changing the way law is practiced in the country nowadays. Their clients become their best word-of-mouth ambassadors, and that kind of unsolicited promotion really makes waves in the legal community,” my niece noted.

It turns out that by clients, she meant the very top companies in the Philippines, covering an entire spectrum of industries: banking and finance, manufacturing, retail, power, oil and gas, education, health care, and insurance. Moreover, from what I heard afterwards, it appears that there’s a long list of clients waiting to be represented by the firm.

Perhaps their name has something to do with the success and blessings that have come their way, but I surmise that it is also complemented by exceeding their clients’ expectations at every turn. Whatever the case may be, the sky – or more appropriately, the heavens – seems to be the limit for Divina Law.

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