Enthusiastic Fil-Am community awaits Pres. Aquino in Chicago on May 6

CHICAGO — Philippine President Benigno C. Aquino III is making his first visit not only of his presidency, but also personally, to the Windy City on Wednesday, May 6.

“This will be an overnight stay—sort of a first stopover from Manila on his official visit to Canada,” said Ambassador Generoso Colonge, the Philippine Consul General in Chicago on April 22.

Colonge gathered leaders of the local Filipino American community on Friday, April 24, on the 16^th-floor Consular Offices at 122 N. Michigan Ave., to discuss the details of president’s brief visit.

The official entourage is scheduled to arrive mid-afternoon of May 6; a dinner meeting with the members of the local community is planned pending approval from Manila.

“We will propose a possible meeting with mainstream business leaders after he has rested from his long flight. Perhaps just before meeting the members of the community,” said Colonge.

President Aquino and his entourage are booked at the J.W.Marriott Hotel at corner of Adams and La Salle Streets at the heart of the financial district in the Chicago Loop.

All recent Philippine presidents visited Chicago during their incumbency. Elaborate preparations were accorded to the visits of Presidents Fidel Ramos, Joseph Estrada and Gloria M. Arroyo.

Ramos attended engineering classes at the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois. Then San Juan Mayor Estrada spent longer stays in the 1970s, using Chicago as location for a movie. Estrada also visited as a senator in 1990 and as a vice president in 1997.

Arroyo was also a frequent visitor, as a cabinet member of President Cory Aquino, as a senator and then as a president in 2004 and 2008. She accompanied her father, former President Diosdado Macapagal, when he visited in 1979.

President Cory Aquino never visited Chicago except for a brief stopover at O’Hare Airport on her way home to Manila after her husband, Ninoy, was assassinated on August 21, 1983.

Although Ninoy was a regular guest in Chicago of the Anti-Martial Law activists during their U.S. exile from 1981-1983, Cory and her son, the incumbent president, never visited the city in those years.

Asked in an interview in 1999 on why she never visited the Windy City, she replied with a smile,”Hindi naman ninyo ako inimbitahan,” (“You never invited me.”) Cory said this during the Habitat for Humanity build up at Maragondon, Cavite where the former president joined former U.S. President and Mrs. Jimmy Carter as volunteers.

Replying to a question on why President Benigno Aquino is coming to Chicago this time, ConGen Colonge said, “Well, he knows that the community here is always supportive of his presidency, besides this city is near Toronto which is the first city in Canada that he is visiting.”

In Chicago, Filipinos who voted in the 2010 Philippine presidential elections went heavily for the Aquino-Roxas ticket and again in the 2012, they voted most of the senatorial candidates that the President endorsed.

Suffering from his lowest approval poll numbers in five years, President Aquino is perhaps going to the right place to boost his popularity ratings, if the enthusiasm of those who attended the April 24 preparatory meeting of his visit serves as an indication.

Mariano “Anong” Santos is the editor/publisher of PinoyNewsMagazine.com

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