Aquino off to US Sunday
MANILA, Philippines—President Benigno Aquino is scheduled to leave Sunday for an official visit to the United States, following an invitation extended by US President Barrack Obama and Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff for him to participate in a new multilateral initiative for transparency and against corruption.
Aquino will attend the official launch of Obama and Rousseff’s Open Government Partnership in New York on September 20 and will also keynote an OGP-related forum titled The Power of Open Governance: A Global Discussion.
The OGP, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs, is a new multilateral initiative to fight corruption, promote transparency, empower citizens, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.
Obama and Rousseff are the co-chairs of the partnership.
The Philippines is one of eight countries and one of only two from Asia in the steering committee of the OGP. The other seven countries are the United States, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Indonesia, Mexico, Norway and South Africa.
The DFA said the steering committee members were selected on the basis of fiscal transparency, access to information, disclosures related to elected officials.
Aquino will attend the Open Governance forum even with sectors in the Philippine media calling for the enactment of a freedom of information measure that has since been left out of the Aquino administration’s list of priority legislation.
Aquino last week said told the First Integrity Initiative conference among government officials and business executives that the government has done its share in promoting good governance through the appointment of officials with integrity and measures that ensure transparency.
He said he would tell the OGP about the integrity pledge entered into by representatives from the bureaucracy and the private sector.
“I will be proud to tell him (Obama) as well as the representatives of several other countries, how in the Philippines, the effort for integrity in governance—the effort for creating a transparent relationship between the people and their government—is one that is shared by the government and the private sector,” President Aquino said during the summit.
The DFA said Aquino’s attendance is expected to “enhance the country’s strategic profile by underscoring the Aquino government’s demonstrated commitment to its good governance and anti-corruption agenda, and to increase awareness about the government’s domestic and foreign policy thrusts.”
Aquino is expected to highlight the administration’s economic agenda and accomplishments after a year in office, meet with US investors, apprise the Filipino community of the Aquino administration’s accomplishments, and share the latest developments in the country.
He is the only head of state invited to address the opening ceremony of the OGP forum, The Power of Open Governance, a multi-stakeholder, ministerial-level conversation on the role of openness in improving responsiveness, fostering accountability, creating efficiency, fighting corruption, and similar themes.
The Asia Society also extended an invitation for the President to deliver a speech on his domestic and foreign policy thrusts.
Aquino will also keynote the IBM Centennial Forum titled Think: A Forum on the Future of Leadership that marks IBM’s 100th anniversary.
The forum is expected to draw more than 700 leaders from government, business, the academe and science, as well as up-and-coming leaders from across the globe.
Fordham University in New York will confer an honorary doctor of laws degree on the Filipino President.
The university also conferred an honorary degree on his mother, former president Corazon Aquino, in September 1986.
Aquino’s name would be carved alongside that of his mother on the steps of Fordham’s Terrace of Presidents. More than 30 world leaders have been conferred degrees and have their names on the terrace steps.
President Aquino will also meet with top business executives belonging to the US-Asean Business Council, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the Philippine-American Chamber of Commerce.
In Washington, President Aquino is expected to deliver a public lecture during the IMF-World Bank Annual Meetings upon the invitation of WB President Robert Zoellick.
Aquino’s lecture will be about citizen empowerment, good governance and fighting corruption as agents of poverty reduction before an audience composed of finance ministers, central bankers and country representatives.
President Aquino will also visit US Senate President Pro Tempore Daniel Inouye to thank him for his continued support of Philippine causes in the US Congress.
Aquino will also meet for the first time with the Filipino communities in Washington, D.C.; Maryland; and Virginia. There are approximately 110,000 in the area.
