President Aquino leaves for US on Obama invitation

President Benigno Aquino III will leave today (Sunday) for an official visit to the United States upon an invitation by US President Barack Obama and Brazil President Dilma Rousseff that he participate in a new multilateral initiative for transparency and against corruption.

Mr. Aquino will attend the official launch of the Open Government Partnership in New York on Sept. 20 and will also keynote an OGP-related forum called “The Power of Open: A Global Discussion.”

Obama and Rousseff are the cochairs of the partnership.

The OGP, according to the Department of Foreign Affairs, is a new global initiative to fight corruption, promote transparency, empower citizens and harness new technologies to strengthen governance. The Philippines is one of eight countries and one of only two from Asia in the steering committee of the OGP.

The DFA said the steering committee members were selected based on their countries’ levels of fiscal transparency, access to information, disclosures related to elected officials.

Mr. Aquino will attend the Open Governance forum even as he took out the enactment of Freedom of Information measures from his administration’s list of priority legislation.

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,” Mr. Aquino said during the summit.

The President is also expected to highlight the administration’s economic agenda and accomplishments after a year in office, meet with present and possible US investors, apprise members of the Filipino community of the Aquino administration’s accomplishments and share with them 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, a multi-stakeholder, ministerial-level conversation on the role of openness in improving responsiveness, fostering accountability, creating efficiency and fighting corruption.

The Asia Society also invited the President to deliver a speech on his domestic and foreign policy thrusts.

Mr. Aquino will also keynote the IBM Centennial Forum titled, “Think: A Forum on the Future of Leadership,” staged to mark IBM’s 100th anniversary.

The forum is expected to draw more than 700 leaders from government, business, the academe and science from across the globe.

Fordham University in New York will confer a Doctor of Laws, honoris causa, on the President. The university had also conferred an honorary degree on his mother, former President Corazon Aquino, in September 1986.