Ni
Kagalang galang Benigno S. Aquino III
Pangulo ng Pilipinas
Sa Kongreso ng Pilipinas
[ipinahayag sa bulwagang sesyon sa kamara de representate, Batasang Pambansa Kompleks, lungsod ng Quezon, noong ika-dalawampu’t dalawa ng Hulyo 2013]
Thank you very much. Please be seated.
Vice President Jejomar Binay; Pamunuan ng Senado Franklin M. Drilon; Tagapagsalita Feliciano Belmonte Jr.; Pamunuan ng Batas Maria Lourdes Sereno and the eminent Justices at the Supreme Court; former presidents Fidel Valdez Ramos and Joseph Ejercito Estrada; honorable members of the diplomatic corps; members of the Senate and of the House of Representatives; officials in local government; members of the Cabinet; uniformed members of the military and of the police; my fellow public servants; and to my Bosses, my beloved countrymen:
Good afternoon to all of you. [palakpakan]
DENR (Department of Environment and Natural Resources)
As for other large tracts of land: We have long tasked the DAR, DENR, LRA, and Land Bank to develop a framework for speeding up the parceling out of land. I would like to remind everyone: Correct data is the first step to the orderly implementation of CARPER. But we inherited a defective sistema ng mga tala ng lupa. This is why, from the start, the DOJ, LRA, DENR, and DAR have worked to fix this system, and now we are at a point where we can guarantee that in the next year, all puna ng panaklob will have been served for lands covered by comprehensive agrarian reform. [palakpakan]
LRT (Light Rail Transit)
We are well aware that, in the past, decisions were made based on politics. Leaders did everything they could just to keep a firm hold on their power, at the expense of the suffering of present and future generations of Filipinos. Let us look at the outcomes of refusing to raise passenger fares for the LRT and MRT. Each trip that one passenger makes on the LRT, 40 pesos. The passenger pays, 15 pesos. This means that