No Philippine president has been more serious than Mrs. Arroyo about giving landless Filipinos a home, De Castro said Wednesday in a speech after which he awarded certificates of entitlement and land awards to 215 families who had settled in Barangay Camp Tinio here.
He said he and Mrs. Arroyo are working hard to achieve good governance for the people who most need their services.
Referring to insinuations that he was a "president-in-waiting" as impeachment hearings against Mrs. Arroyo are set to start next week, De Castro said he would continue to ignore political squabbles and "go on with my work."
"We will serve out our respective terms until 2010," he predicted.
De Castro said the Arroyo administration was not being distracted by allegations of poll fraud and irregularities and the reported involvement of the President’s relatives in jueteng payoffs.
The Vice President was welcomed by Cabanatuan City Mayor Cesar Vergara and Cabanatuan Gov. Tomas Joson III, who has openly expressed support for the Arroyo administration.
De Castro has been making his presence felt in Nueva Ecija lately, underlining Mrs. Arroyo’s absence in the province. Prior to the May 2004 presidential election, she visited the province more than 20 times to court political support there.
The President has since shied away from Nueva Ecija after she was beaten by her closest rival, the late actor Fernando Poe Jr., by more than 315,000 votes despite her alliance with the Joson family. De Castro was bested by Poe’s running mate, former senator Loren Legarda, by a 266,000-vote margin.
The land grant is part of Mrs. Arroyo’s goal of providing land to landless Filipinos. On June 30, 2003, she issued Proclamation 418, setting aside 38.91 hectares for 2,800 families in Camp Tinio, which is located in the eastern part of the military camp.
The families who received land grants settled within the camp and have tilled the land there since 1951.
De Castro later visited the Fort Magsaysay Military Reservation in Palayan City, home of the Army’s 7th Infantry Division, where he was met by incoming Army chief Maj. Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr.
He told some 200 soldiers there that he will help them obtain housing loans from the government-owned financial institution Pag-IBIG Fund.