LAOAG CITY, June 30 (PIA) – The 16-minute inaugural speech of the newly installed President Rodrigo Roa Duterte on Thursday has drawn positive feedback from different sectors in Ilocos Norte.
Most of the Ilocanos here were pleased and inspired by Duterte’s words as well as his simplicity during his oath taking ceremony as the 16th President of the Republic of the Philippines.
Workers and entrepreneurs in the private sector commended Duterte’s stand to abolish criminality and said they believe in his sincerity.
“Malaman ‘yung speech niya. He started it with his advocacy and campaign about his love to his country and people. I believe in his sincerity,” Mike Jordan Arconado, private engineer in Piddig town, said.
General Valdez, an entrepreneur representing the business sector in Laoag City, said that he weighed Duterte’s speech in favor to businessmen like him because of his advocacy to push for a stricter implementation of government laws.
With this, Valdez said, under the table transactions may soon be eliminated.
Workers in the government also lauded Duterte’s speech saying that it is, so far, the best speech of a President.
Dr. Joel Lopez, officer-in-charge of the City Schools Division in Laoag, admired the inaugural speech of Duterte.
“(It was) so direct, comprehensible, with sense and full of hope,” Lopez said.
Richard Agbayani, a college instructor at a state-run university in Batac City, said Duterte’s speech gave him hope for an actual change for the common good of the country.
Further, member of the academe and young professionals also shared their high hopes of achieving change.
Benjamin Torres, a law student at the Northwestern University in Laoag City, said that the speech was simple but it encompassed all aspects of the nation’s current issues.
Torres believed that change must come from the administration, so he hoped that the new president will eradicate graft and corruption in the government.
Further, social media enthusiast Gwyn Fryd Miranda said Duterte’s speech, like his Barong Tagalog, was plain and simple.
“It is refreshing to hear na wala siyang masamang nasabi o pinatamaan na tao sa kanyang speech,” she said.
However, to schools superintendent in Batac City Vilma Eda, change must begin from oneself.
“I believe that in order that change to come, every person must engage in changing themselves first. Because as long as we are dominated with our self-interest and corruption resides in our system, change can never be achieved. So change yourself first,” said Eda.
Eda also urged the public to participate and fight corruption which she believed is most pressing problems in all government offices.
“Change is all of us, change must not only in the president, or in public officials but to all of us,” she said.
True to this, Pres. Duterte’s opening statement in his speech said: “No leader, can succeed at anything of national importance or significance unless he has the support and cooperation of the people he is tasked to lead and sworn to serve.” (Cherry Joy. D. Garma/PIA1-Ilocos Norte)
