This was how independent presidential candidate Nicanor Perlas started his campaign yesterday with a visit to the Ateneo de Manila University campus in Quezon City.
Perlas talked to students at the Ateneo Political Fair, a three-day event sponsored by the Ateneo Student Council, and answered questions on how to balance conflicts of interest in government as well as whom he would vote for if he were not running for president. He said he would choose from the other independents.
“This is a soft launch of my campaign,” said Perlas, who is running on an environmentalist and reformist platform. The actual campaign kickoff will be on Feb. 13 in Cebu City.
Perlas, an Ateneo alumnus, said he made it a point to begin his campaign at Ateneo to encourage students to “assess, compare, study and discern whom they will vote for.”
“Young people are least influenced by traditional politics and, thus, are more open to the ideas of new politics,” he said in a statement.
Perlas said he chose Cebu as the venue for his major campaign launch to emphasize the importance of a less Manila-centric approach to governing the country.
“We want to send the signal that if this country will progress in the future, it will [require] equitable development across all regions,” he said, adding that 70 percent of Filipinos living in poverty are found in the countryside.
“Most of the conflict in the rural areas stems from poverty. At the same time, one source of urban problems is that everyone is migrating to the city,” he said.
On Friday, the Perlas campaign will hold a bike run for clean elections at Quezon City Memorial Circle in Quezon City, in what his handlers describe as “an environmentally friendly and nontraditional” style of campaigning.
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