These passive investments abroad by Filipinos will come back once the country succeeds in carrying out meaningful governance reforms, and once we achieve political stability and sustained economic growth.

It's hard to rely on promises when it comes to wage increase because we don't know what would happen to [the proposal] at the Senate.

The destructive effects of corruption is most evident in smuggling, which is possible only with the collusion of rotten officials at the Bureau of Customs and elsewhere. Jobs are being wasted as domestic industries stagger from the atrocious and ruinous activities of smugglers.

The problems of rampant corruption, smuggling and crime, for example, are essentially due to weak and inadequate law enforcement. And deficient law enforcement is a manifestation of poor governance.

It is this negligence and indifference by the two departments that has precisely emboldened the oil firms to freely increase their prices, often in concert, as if they were operating like a cartel, at the expense of consumers.

There's great participation, there's great enthusiasm and there's a great calm in the country... It will strengthen our democracy, and that will allow the country to continue forward.