NOYPIPOL -- Noynoy Aquino for President

Excerpts from the Archives—

Inquirer interview, 2007:

Am I something special, exceptional or the exceptions to the rule? There
should be a fight, given the fact that it’s in everybody’s interest.
Everybody should be participative in this current crisis that our democracy
is facing.

So in terms of expectations…I have [said] long ago, I will not be able to
surpass what my parents have accomplished, which frees me from the pressures
that I would have had in trying to overcome their achievements, which in
turn I think leads to an efficiency in terms of fulfilling my duties at this
point in time.

I’m not concentrated or concerned with any other factors rather than just
being able to do the best job that I can. I think I am a combination already
of both the traits of my parents.

My father was…tended to be…Though he wasn’t dictatorial, he was such a
perfect convincer of people that everybody was persuaded as to the validity
of his views. Even though he had decided beforehand on a question that he
proposed to everybody, at the end of the session everybody felt that they
were part and parcel in making that decision.

My mother’s style has always been consensus-generating. And I think I’m
somewhere in the middle of both, trying to get the best traits of both and
trying to be even more efficient in terms of championing the advocacies that
I have fought for all this time.

Again, I tend to be more—I’d like to be as thoroughly prepared on any
subject, whereas my father seemed to be like, well, not the most intense
expert of all subject matters, but he gave that impression to anybody.

So before I’m more deliberative and perhaps even more—how should I put
it?—I want to be even surer of any position that I take before I start
having an advocacy, on any particular issues.  So there are differences but
at the same time there are, very great similarities amongst all of us,
especially given the fact that a lot of my perspectives on the world, on
this country, on these issues, system of government, were formed due their
influences.

…Now I feel that with the current crisis, to do otherwise would be to be a
traitor to the legacy of my parents and everybody who sacrificed for us to
get to this stage, and it is high time that we continue again the
effectivity of the Senate—to be an effective check and balance on the
excesses that are being perpetrated now.