BAYBAY CITY- Senator Cynthia Villar said that she does not aspire to become a Senate president.
Villar made this remark in an interview here after she urged the women of this city to become empowered during the culmination program of the Women’s Month celebration Sunday (March 31).
“Ano ang gagawin ko doon (as Senate president).Magma-manage ng mga senador? Gusto ko bumalik sa committee on agriculture kasi ito yung most challenging,”she said during a media interview.
While the House of Representatives has elected a woman for speaker in former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the Senate has yet to produce a woman president.
Aside from Villar, the current women in the Senate are Nancy Binay, Loren Legarda, Risa Hontiveros, and Laila de Lima, now detained for drug-related charges.
The current Senate president is Vicente ‘Tito’ Sotto who is to end his term this June 30,2019.
Villar’s husband, Manny, served as Senate president in 2006 until 2010 where he ran for President, losing to senator Benigno ‘Noynoy’ Aquino.
Villar, in her speech before the 3,000 women who gathered at the city’s gymnasium led by Mayor Carmen Cari, said that she would like to see women become empowered by having their own source of income of their own, thereby lessening their dependency to their husbands.
Sen. Villar asked the women to have their own income adding that there are livelihood programs that they could avail.
“It’s my advocacy, especially for women,” she said.
Villar, among the strong favorites to win based on various pre-election surveys on the May 13 elections, said that she would continue to push for the improvement on the living conditions of the country’s farmers reason why she would like to keep the chairmanship on the committee on agriculture.
“Poverty remains to be the biggest problem of the country,” she said.
(JOEY A. GABIETA)
