President Ferdinand ‘Bongbong’ Marcos Jr. with Speaker Martin G. Romualdez at the ASEAN Summit. File photo by VER NOVENO
Speaker: Leaders embraced PBBM
SPEAKER Martin G. Romualdez has described President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. as among the more “magnetic” personalities in the ongoing Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Summit, with fellow heads-of-state seemingly excited to rub elbows with the Filipino leader.
“It makes me feel proud to see our President being warmly received by his fellow leaders in the region. He has been welcomed and embraced. Other leaders in Asia are looking forward to meeting him and talking business with him. Dare I say, the President has been like a rockstar here,” Romualdez said.
Romualdez, the Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats (Lakas-CMD) President, further noted that Marcos, during his stint at the ASEAN, has been receiving invitations left and right to attend future foreign meetings and forums.
“Leaders from around the world are drawn to the Chief Executive and this bodes well for the Philippines, for practical reasons. We in government intend to build on our 7.6 percent economic growth in the third quarter based on our gross domestic product (GDP). The President will strive to turn these interactions on the international stage into tangible benefits that can trickle down into every Filipino home,” Romualdez said.
The Leyte 1st District congressman is in Phnom Penh, Cambodia as part of the official delegation of Marcos in the 40th and 41st ASEAN Summit and related summits.
Among the headline-grabbing reports to come out from the summit was Chinese President Xi Jinping’s invite for Marcos to come over for a state visit to China in January next year. China is the Philippines second biggest trade partner, next only to the United States.
Another tantalizing January 2023 affair that Marcos was invited to was the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland. The WEF is an independent international organization committed to improving the state of the world by engaging business, political, academic and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas.
The Philippine leader still has a handful of working visits abroad to attend to before year’s end.
