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Report of the Chairman Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino National Executive Council Meeting 17 August 2012 | 10am | Manila Hotel Senator Edgardo J. Angara Chairman

It is with great honor that I welcome the members and officers of LDP to our National Executive Meeting. I am humbled by your continued confidence in me as chairman, and unstinting loyalty to our party.

We are coming together at a highly politically charged time. We have removed a Chief Justice from office through impeachment and arrested a former President on charges of electoral sabotage. We are nine months away from a midterm election that many see will be a major referendum on the Presidents leadership.

The Filipino public is smarter, more informed because of the accessibility of massive amounts of information in both traditional and social media. Hence, the electorate is more discerning. They will not be deceived easily with pomp, glamour, and half-baked truths.

I see the politics of patronage and popularity disappearing within this generation, and the new hegemony of reform and ideals rising.

This is both a boon and a challenge to political leaders and parties. It is an opportunity to rise above the perceptions of being traditional politicians and transform the sociopolitical landscapebut only if we are willing to ride the waves of change.

The LDP is, in fact, ready and willing. We have been in the forefront of the fight for change since the beginning. Change is our roots, democracy our foundation. Our partys history bears this out.

All of us here are the torchbearers of that legacy. We have withstood the ebb and flow of political change over the last four decades, and continue to be a strong force at the grassroots.

A total of 139 LDP members were elected during the 2010 national elections. More than 70 percent of them were local councilors. We also successfully fielded candidates for vice

mayor, mayor, board member, vice governor, governor, and representative.

We may not be the biggest and most dominant partybut this is no reason to lose heart. Our continued success only means that our connection with our constituents is strong and enduring, based on a solid track record of service, not on fads. And we are at a lower risk of suffering fair-weathered friends because our members stick with the party based on shared principles and values.

Legislative performance

LDP stands for democracy and development. We have given justice to these core values through the pieces of legislation we have pushed for and passed during the 14th Congress.

The LDP laid the groundwork for sustainable economic growth through banking and financial markets reform that enabled our country to weather the financial crisis that continue to grip the United States and the Eurozone. We revised the

charters of the Philippine Deposit Insurance Corporation (RA 9576) and the Pag-Ibig Fund (RA 9679).

We initiated the creation of the Personal Equity And Retirement Account (RA 9505) and the Real Estate Investment Trust (RA 9856) to deepen our countrys capital market and give new investment instruments to ordinary Filipinos.

Through the Credit Information System Act (RA 9510), we pushed for broader access to credit so ordinary Filipinos will not have to turn to usurious lenders.

We established the regulatory framework of pre-need firms through the Pre-Need Code (RA 9829) to avoid another disaster that robbed many families of the means to send their children to school. Finally we passed the Financial Rehabilitation and Insolvency Act (RA 10142) to update our countrys 100-year-old law on bankruptcy.

The party pushed for greater pay and benefits for our civil servants through the Salary Standardization Law (Congressional

Joint Resolution No. 4), and for women through the Magna Carta of Women (RA 9710).

We also supplemented the Calamity Fund with a P12 million fund for relief, rehabilitation, and reconstruction (Congressional Joint Resolution No. 5).

This 15th Congress, your Chairman is proud to report that the LDP was one of the most productive parties in both the House of Representatives and the Senate for authoring and sponsoring the most numbers of measures passed so far.

We were behind the Kindergarten Education Act (RA 10157), GOCC Governance Act (RA 10149), Rationalizing the Nightwork Prohibition on Women Workers (RA 10151), Extending the Implementation of the Lifeline Rate (RA 10150), and Adjusting the rate of Subsidiary Imprisonment (RA 10159)1.

Two more measures have been passed and are awaiting the Presidents signature: the Data Privacy Act and the Cybercrime Prevention Act.
1 CJEMA as co-author

We also re-passed in the Senate the Early Childhood Care and Development Act and the House will soon vote favorably on it. Meanwhile, the measure creating a Department of Information and Communications Technology will hopefully be taken up at the bicameral level soon.

The LDP is also the primary proponent of an essential political reformthe Political Party Development Act (PPDA).

The weak structure of our political parties has bred traditional politicians and populist policies.

Strong political parties and good governance are interlinked. Hence, a weak political structure give rises to a weak government. And weak democratic institutions breed corruption and boom-and-bust development.

Through the PPDA, we hope to transform political parties into public institutions that are accountable, transparent, and representativevalues the LDP has endeavored to uphold ever since.

Before I end, allow me to thank all of you once more for energizing the LDP and carrying on with its tradition of service and reform. Your faith in the party has not wavered, and so has the partys faith in you.

The coming midterm election is not the real battleground for us, rather what comes after being elected. And I have every confidence that we will be victorious, for ours is a platform deeply rooted in the peoples will.

Maraming salamat at mabuhay tayong lahat!