Honorable JOSE DE VENECIA
Who was elected five times as Speaker of the House of Representatives, unprecedented in the postwar Philippine Congress—has been a diplomat, economic counselor, peace-maker, political leader, journalist, lawmaker and business pioneer in oil exploration, healthcare, agriculture and construction in the Philippines, the Middle East and North Africa.
He was called the “Centennial Speaker” in 2007, which marked the 100 years anniversary of the Philippine House of Representatives after its founding in 1907. Former U.S. Wall Street Journal Editor Brett Decker called him a trail-blazer for the Philippines and Asia.
His wife, Gina de Venecia, a social worker, was elected Congresswoman of the 4th District of Pangasinan province in May, 2010 and unanimously elected in January, 2011 President of the 64-strong Lady Legislators Association of the House of Representatives, Congress of the Philippines.
2.) In 1986 after Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino, widow of the martyred Senator Benigno Aquino Jr., led the historic Philippine People Power Revolution that put an end to the Marcos dictatorship and restored Philippine democracy, this became a model for new democracies that cast off the Communist dictatorships in Russia and Eastern Europe. The new Philippine president appointed de Venecia in 1986 special ambassador. Afterwards, he ran in his old congressional seat before Martial Law and subsequently become acting Chairman of the House foreign relations committee.
President Corazon Aquino’s son Sen. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III was elected the 15th President of the Philippines in the first automated elections in Southeast Asia, with a large majority running on a powerful platform against corruption and poverty.
HISTORIC DOLLAR PROGRAM
3.) In 1967, as Minister and Economic Counselor in South Vietnam, he conceived and implemented the historic dollar remittance program for the Philippine overseas workers which program enriched the meager Philippine dollar reserves, killed the Philippine dollar blackmarket, financed the countryside and millions of Filipino families, and which now raises some $18-billion a year, continuously saving the Philippine economy during recurrent crises. The program has become a model for countries like Pakistan, Bangladesh, India, Egypt, Thailand, and Turkey, with large overseas communities. De Venecia also secured Philippine and U.S. government approval for the program. He later received the Central Bank Award and the Jaycees—Roxas (TOYM) Ten Outstanding Young Men Award.
ASIAN POLITICAL PARTIES
4.) He is the founding Chairman of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP) composed of Asia’s ruling and opposition parties, remains Co-Chairman of its 18-man Standing Committee, which includes the Communist Party of China, Congress Party of India, Japan’s ruling Democratic Party and opposition LDP, Russia’s ruling party, Indonesia’s Golkar, Malaysia’s UMNO and the Asean parties, South Korea’s GNP and Democratic Party, North Korea’s Workers Party, and more than 200 other Asian Parties including those of Australia, Turkey, Central Asia and the Arab world.
5.) He is also founder of the Asian Parliamentary Assembly (APA), composed of more than 40 parliaments in Asia and was president of its forerunner, the Association of Asian Parliaments for Peace (AAPP). APA is being developed to eventually emerge as the Asian Parliament.
6.) He also co-founded the Lakas Christian Muslim Democrats (CMD) with President Fidel Ramos and Foreign Secretary Raul Manglapus, became its President and Secretary-General, opposed its merger with the Kampi party. De Venecia says they designed the party to house Christians and Muslims “under one roof in a common political house” in light of the global Christian-Muslim divide emerging in the 20th and 21st Century.
7.) De Venecia is also Vice-President of the Christian Democrats International or the Centrist Democrats International (CDI), which is made up of more than 100 Centrist and Christian Democrat parties in Western Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia. CDI parties have the majority in the European Parliament.
8.) In October 2005, the CDI launched its Asia-Pacific organization and elected de Venecia the first President of CDI Asia Pacific.
1998 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS
9.) In the 1998 presidential elections, upon the end of his second term as Speaker, de Venecia ran for president as official candidate of Lakas CMD in a field of 10, came out second with President Joseph Estrada as victor against the fragmented majority groups. De Venecia’s running mate for vice-president Sen. Gloria M. Arroyo won. To set an example for Philippine democracy, Speaker de Venecia and Senate President Neptali Gonzales, both presiding at the National Canvass, raised President-elect Estrada’s hand in victory one day after the opening of Congress; unlike in the 1992 and 2004 presidential canvass, the proclamation of the presidential and vice-presidential winners took many weeks, threatening a political vacumm by the constitutional deadline of June 30.
An Apostle of Asian Integration
10.) IN THE BELIEF THAT ASIA’S FUTURE depends on its economic and political integration, de Venecia has proposed an ASIAN Parliament, (an expansion of the proposed smaller ASEAN Parliament), an eventual East Asian currency, an Asian Monetary Fund (which he acknowledges was initiated by the Japanese), an Asian Antipoverty Fund or Asian Micro-Finance Fund, and other modalities of cooperation that he hopes will eventually lead to an Asian Community.
11.) He is one of the earliest and strongest proponents of Asian-African partnership, synergy between the First and Third Worlds and between the Eastern and Western peoples.
12.) De Venecia also initiated the Philippine proposal—which the United Nations has approved and began to carry out—interfaith dialogue to help heal politico-religious and cultural schisms in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa, principally those between Islam and the West. De Venecia said the “clash of civilizations is really a clash of religions,” which can and must be avoided.
13.) De Venecia led the proposal of the Philippines, Pakistan, Indonesia, the Universal Peace Federation, and Libya for the establishment of an Inter-Religious Council at the United Nations.
DEBT-FOR-EQUITY SWAPS FOR THE POOREST AND MOST HEAVILY INDEBTED COUNTRIES
14.) yet another OF de venecia’s international initiatives is the debt-for-equity program that the Philippines has proposed to the U.N., the IMF, the Paris Club and the G-20 nations. The formula empowers the poorest and heavily indebted debtor-countries (102 countries) to divert a percentage of their debt-service payments into anti-poverty programs that offer the prospect of profit, and recently for anti-climate change projects. (Reforestation, for instance, can yield carbon credits under the Kyoto Protocol and is a profitable business while contributing to jobs and ecological balance.
B-O-T infrastructure schemes can generate toll charges and road-user taxes.) Creditor states and international lenders would hold equity positions in these projects—recouping their investments and more once these projects mature. The G-77 Countries Plus China have endorsed the proposal. The German government recently authorized a P1.5-billion debt swap for the Philippines, still awaiting implementation. The Italian government has approved it in principle.
De Venecia’s proposal was personally presented to the U.S. Senate by senior Democrat Senator Daniel Inouye, now chairman of the U.S. Senate Appropriations Committee.
Initiatives at home
15.) De Venecia’s pioneering ventures in the Middle East and Africa led to the eventual employment of millions of Filipino workers, doctors, nurses, teachers, technicians and service providers over the years. Nowadays, the dollar remittance program brings in well over $17 billion in remittances yearly from 9-million overseas Filipinos.
Peace Envoy
16.) As Peace Envoy for President Fidel V. Ramos in the early 1990s, Speaker de Venecia reached out to Muslim secessionists in Mindanao, southern Philippines, to mutinous rightist military officers and to the Communist New People’s Army insurgents.
He crossed the North African desert twice to meet Libyan President Muammar Qaddafi, then-patron of the largest rebel force in Mindanao and the MNLF leader Nur Misuari. Qaddafi initiated the 1978 Tripoli Agreement. The peace agreement with the MNLF was subsequently signed in Indonesia in 1996.
17.) De Venecia’s talks with rightist military officers who launched eight coup attempts between 1987 and 1989 led to a ceasefire in December 1992, a peace agreement in 1995 and subsequently to an amnesty program initiated by President Ramos and de Venecia, approved by Congress for Rightist, Communist, and Muslim rebels.
18.) In 1996, seeking the release of three Filipino prisoners who had languished for years in Iraqi jails, de Venecia drove across the Jordan-Iraqi desert—from Amman to Baghdad to Tikrit—to meet with Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, and effected their release in the same day.
Writer of landmark laws
19.) In the House of Representatives, de Venecia, with Rep. F. Payumo, Rep. Victor Ortega, was the principal author of the landmark B-O-T (Build-Operate-Transfer) Law, which has become a model for other developing countries and the formula for “Private-Public Partnerships.” In the Philippines the law has made possible private investments and public-private partnerships in infrastructure projects valued in excess of $30 billion as early as the mid-1990’s.
20.) De Venecia is co-author of the law, which created the Central Bank of the Philippines—a reform that has strengthened supervision of the country’s financial sector and opened banking to greater competition.
21.) Earlier, he had authored the Military Bases Conversion Law, which has turned the former American military bases on Luzon Island—the biggest of them being Clark Airfield and Subic Naval Base—into thriving export zones and free ports. The law also converted the Philippine Army’s suburban Fort Bonifacio into a modern satellite community of Metro Manila, together with Baguio City’s Camp John Hay and La Union’s Wallace Field.
Pioneer of Overseas Contract Work
22.) Perhaps the first Southeast Asian to drill for oil in the Arab world, in the United Arab Emirates, he was one of the pioneers of the first offshore oil discoveries in the Philippines’ Palawan Island in the mid 1970s, and received citations from the Philippine Government and the Palawan provincial government.
23.) As entrepreneur, de Venecia pioneered overseas contract work for Filipinos. In the mid-1970s, his company was the first Philippine prime contractor in the Middle East and North Africa. His companies engaged in port operations in Saudi Arabia, agriculture in Africa, mass housing in Iraq and oil exploration in the United Arab Emirates.
Leadership for the house
24.) De venecia’s leadership of the House had hastened the passage of such radical-reform legislation as the Consolidated Tax Reform Package in 1998, which cushioned the impact of the East Asian financial crisis on the Philippine economy and provided income-tax exemption for the overseas Filipinos. He came through once again in 2006, when he steered through the House the Expanded Value- Added Tax Law, which averted a threatened collapse of the State’s finances; reduced the fiscal deficit and strengthened the peso. The E-Vat Law started off a series of economic gains for the Philippines and earned it a heightened measure of respect from the IMF, the World Bank, and the international investment community. However, de Venecia vehemently opposes increasing the E-Vat tax from 12% to 15% and stresses focus instead on honest tax collection and anti smuggling.
25.) Apart from his continuing co-Chairmanship of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP) and President of CDI Asia Pacific (which has now become the Centrist Asia Pacific Democrats International) he was elected and also served in the 1990s as President of the Asia Pacific Parliamentary Forum (APPF), President of the Asia Pacific Parliamentary Union (APPU), twice President of the Asean Interparliamentary Organization (AIPO) and President of the Association of Asian Parliaments for Peace (AAPP), now the Asian Parliamentary Assembly (APA).
26.) He is also Chairman-Emeritus of the New York based Universal Peace Federation; Trustee of the Gaddafi Foundation, together with the former Prime Ministers of Italy and Greece, international economists, and former Nobel Prize winners; and Member of the Board of the U.S.—based Global Peace Festival Council. Currently, he also serves as Co-Chairman to the World Ecosafety Organization.
FOREIGN DECORATIONS
27.) De Venecia has written a book, many pamphlets and articles. He has received foreign decorations—from President Jacques Chirac of France, with the French Legion of Honor, King Juan Carlos of Spain, President Teodoro Obiang Nguema of West Africa, the Knights of Rizal, the California Legislature, and honorary doctorates from universities at home and abroad.
28.) De venecia is married to Georgina Perez, a volunteer social worker, who was elected with a large majority Congresswoman of the 4th District of Pangasinan, in the May 10, 2010 national and local elections. Mrs. De Venecia was elected in January, 2011 President of the 63-strong Lady Legislators Association in the House of Representatives. She has led Congressional spouses in building 17 women’s centers nationwide that have treated almost 20,000 raped and abused women, carried out a parallel program with regional branches for drug-dependent street children in Metro Manila and the provinces, and a Senior Citizens Complex in the Rizal mountains, who have been abandoned by their families. Recently, Georgina de Venecia established a Center for Mothers, (INA) who have lost their children, in partnership with the Department of Social Welfare. Her successful initiatives for women and children have earned admiration at home and abroad.
29.) Their children, Alexandra Haner, finished with a Doctorate in Chemistry in Princeton University, after graduating from Wellesley, married to Mark Haner, also with a doctorate from Princeton; Leslie, finished in Yale with Masters in Columbia University and a columnist of the BARRONS economic magazine in the U.S.; Vivian Garcia is a graduate with Masters in Social work at Smith College, married to Dr. Dennis Garcia, who finished at Harvard; son Joey de Venecia III, who was a scholar and finished his MBA and was assistant professor at Fordham University, and youngest son Christopher, who finished at the Ateneo University and youth columnist of the Philippine Star; and stepchildren Carissa C. Evangelista, former Trade Undersecretary and graduate of Boston University; married to Executive Juju Evangelista, and Felipe Cruz III, who finished at the Ateneo and now taking his masters in publishing at New York University.
GLOBAL FILIPINO
30.) De Venecia’s recent authorized biography, the “Global Filipino,” was published by Regnery Publications in Washington D.C. and authored by Brett Decker, a former editor of the Wall Street Journal, and presently OP-ED Managing Editor of the Washington Times.
31.) Presently, he is Co-President with the French Ambassador of the French Legion of Honor and National Order of Merit in the Philippines, whose members have received highest awards of the French government, initiated by the Emperor Napoleon.
32.) De Venecia led with Co-Chairman Chung Eui-yong of South Korea, former Sen. Mushahid Hussain Sayed, and Cambodian Deputy Premier Sok An in the cooperation agreement between Asia’s ruling and opposition political parties (ICAPP) with the political parties of Latin America and the Caribbean under COPPPAL, led by senior Latin America regional party leaders Gustavo Carvajal of Mexico and Antonio Cafiero of Mexico.
33.) De Venecia has addressed the United Nations General Assembly, the U.N. Security Council, the European Parliament, the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the Paris Club, Conferences in the British Parliament and in the French National Assembly, in the Belgium Parliament, in the Italian National Assembly, the California and Guam Legislatures, the Japanese Diet, conferences in China’s Great Hall of the People, and the Asean Summit of Presidents and Prime Ministers.
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