Gawad Kalinga for President

If I could, there are a few things I would like to change about GK. It talks too much about patriotism and faith, for example. But what they have shown is that those two things are not deal breakers for them. Gawad Kalinga—an arm of the Catholic lay group, Couples for Christ—builds communities even in Muslim areas of the Philippines and is expanding to other countries as well. I believe that the members of GK here are not building housing for the poor because they are Filipinos, but because they are human beings living in poverty. And for all their talk about GK belonging to every god fearing patriot, in fact they will take help from whomever will give it. GK seems motivated by an all-abiding love for humanity.

Their program is almost exactly what I think the government should be doing. They are building strong clean housing, focusing on community to reduce violence and drug addiction, providing basic healthcare, and giving livelihood to people who were previously squatters in the worst kind of filth. More than that, they provide basic education complete with textbooks! I personally think that education is one of very few services that is better handled by the private sector, so GK is doing both what I think the government should do and what the citizens should do. They only thing, sadly, that they are conspicuously lacking is a reproductive health program. I would vote for Tony Meloto if he ran for supreme dictator of the free world, or alternatively, President of the Philippines.