Thank you Mat Caparas, the past president of Rotary International and the first Filipino to occupy such a prestigious job. I would like to great also our special visitors to the Philippines, the president of rotary international Dr. Clifford Dochterman, I say hello to all our fellow Rotarians and their ladies all over particularly those from the Senate of the Philippines, Senator Bert Romulo whom I have been courting for the last 50 days and our esteemed co-workers in the House of Representatives who are chasing rainbows at this moment. And we hope you find that pot of gold at the end. Other special guests present, lalung-lalo na ang ating mga kapitbahay sa Alabang, sa Bagong Paraiso at sa araw na ito ay tumanggap ng napakahalagang titulo sa mga lote na kanilang inuokupahan sa pamamagitan ng tulong ng special project of the Rotary Club of Alabang. Magandang umaga sa inyong lahat.

I also greet our friends from overseas who are here to observe and to help. We hope you make your visits more frequent and also bring your friends who surely would want to invest in the Philippines at this time.

My dear friends, indeed this is a very special occasion for all Rotarians in the Philippines and the occasion of the visit of the president of Rotary International.

I would like to assure you Dr. Dochterman that we have a very high percentage of Rotary members in our officialdom. You heard the figures and I would like to quote to you one more statistic in the case of the office of the president of the Philippines “the membership in rotary is 100 percent.”

Today we witness many initiatives on the part of our service organizations especially the rotary which, among the so many national and international service organizations, fraternities, sororities, and associations, is the first to be nationally organized and certainly the one that has developed the greatest influence of all among the leaders in the private sector.

This partnership therefore that you have manifested with government and the direct support you are now giving to our people not only in terms of housing as we have seen today but in many other fields constituting the basic services needed by our people, medical health, education, training, livelihood and so many other worthwhile activities have become the focus of organizations such as Rotary.

We in government welcome this. Because this is a government that is now addressing the needs more intensively of our ordinary Filipinos. This is an administration that is dedicated to the empowerment of the people. That is not mere lip service in this administration because after having attained freedom, democracy and the political empowerment of our ordinary citizens, we now turn our attention to the second phase of the empowerment of the people, which is their economic empowerment, so that they can live more decent lives, they can plan better for the future of their children and they themselves can contribute more adequately to the development of their respective communities and to the economic development of the nation as a whole.

And so president Dochterman may I ask you to take a close look at the Philippines during your visit here. Because it is not only in terms of this prize-winning project initiated by the Rotary Club of Alabang which won a medal in the last Rotary International Grand Assembly in Mexico City that would deserve the recognition and the appreciation of our rotary community all over the world among so many years. It’s unfortunate that those coming from the far-flung areas of the Philippines aside from Manila cannot also speak about what they have done. I am witness to many of these projects. And as I mentioned to you earlier this includes the delivery not only of medical services but the performance of major surgery operations in some of our mountain villages even where there are still communist guerrillas roaming around.

The giving of training and therefore special skills to really impoverished village communities far away from any metropolis is another outstanding and worthwhile endeavor being undertaken by some of our Rotary Clubs.

Here in Metro Manila, aside from what has already been mentioned, I am happy to inform everyone that Mayor Bunye, in his capacity as the Chairman of the Metro Manila Authority and the Office of the President, and various service organizations, people’s organizations and non-government organizations, have gotten together so that we will strive to spearhead the clean up, the greening and the beautification of Metro Manila. Chairman Bunye are you still around?

Well, he does not realize he has a bigger job on his hands than he knows.

But we did agree that on the 29th of August, barely a week from now, we shall kick off this clean- up drive. This is not really garbage collection but it is cleaning up the debris that some of it has remined for many years in our streets helping to green metro manila. And I am happy that Rotarian mayor Fred Lim has already started this in his own bailiwick and eventually the beautification of the entire metropolis will have to be done with the total effort of everyone.

There are many such initiatives that are now going on and we call on service organization like rotary to help us in this effort.

This is part of our program to reform government, to reform our communities, to reform society as a whole for indeed there is very little time left for real reforms to be put in place.

We are therefore mobilizing the entire communities especially the organized associations and service organizations in the private sector to help us in this job. Reform includes not just cleaning up the environment. It also includes cleaning up the government, cleaning up even our attitudes and behaviors.

And so if Rotary was successful in getting some of our poorer communities to pay for their delinquencies in their amortizations to their land developer, maybe we can also ask Rotary on a voluntary basis to help us in our drive to make the delinquent taxpayers pay up with the help of Joe Ong here.

We therefore depend on all sectors of the society and all agencies of government. The judiciary in regard to the administration of justice, the legislature in regard to the support of national goals and, we’re getting this i would like to assure you, as well as the people themselves especially the people who have, who can help the have nots, the people who are in position of influence and affluence who can assist and support the initiatives as they may be of the more underprivileged among us.

I say this in the presence of our good president of Rotary International because I see that this is a need all over the world. Whether we are talking about the advanced western democracies or the more impoverished countries of the Third World there is that need for people to work through their various organizations, and government to unite and work together.

I also take this occasion to make one announcement before I close. And that is, on the basis of a lot of processing and searching and consultations I have decided to appoint as acting Secretary of the Department of Tourism effective September 1, 1992 one of our Rotarians and he happens to be here. He may not know this yet but he’ll know it now and I am referring to Vince Carlos. Thank you Vince for accepting this call to duty. You were just you were just volunteered by some of your colleagues in rotary.

But may I close by again thanking all of you fellow Rotarians, thanking you Cliff Dochterman the president of Rotary International for joining us of the Philippine government or joining the Filipino people in trying to work out a better future for all.

Thank you very much.