I am honored to welcome you all to the celebration of the centenary of the Philippine Assembly, the first national parliament in Southeast Asia that set our country on course toward nationhood and independence.

Few institutions in our fledgling democracy have had so great an impact on the nation – and on the colonial world of Asia and Africa – in so short a time.

The forerunner of this House of Representatives, that Assembly of 1907 not only was a spokesman of Filipino nationalism and the vanguard of its new democracy.

More significant is that it was the catalyst for nationalist and independence movements in nations of Asia and Africa still in the thrall of colonial rule.

For that Assembly was the product of revolutionary ideals. The 80 Filipino men who composed it were western-educated – the intellectual heirs of the European Enlightenment, whose inquiring spirit and revolutionary thinking gave rise to the democratic revolution that shaped and directed the modern world.

These men were also the successors of the heroic generation of Filipinos that led Southeast Asia’s first anti-colonial revolution, first against Spain, proclaimed the region’s first free republic, and then fought a long and bitter nationalist war against the then expansionist American Republic.

Even when that Revolution was defeated, its fervent ideals for independence and justice were far from lost. They were incarnated in that Assembly of 1907, called "the most precious fruit of the Philippine Revolution" by its first Speaker, Sergio Osmeña.

Revolutionary that Assembly certainly was, for with it, the idea of the Filipino nation firmly took hold.

That Assembly, more than any other democratic institution, unified culturally diverse Filipinos from our 7,000 islands into one self-conscious nation that the US then supported to help create a democratic nation.

For the first time, Filipino patriots, nationalists, and intellectuals proved to the world – and to our own people – that we Filipinos are capable of democratic leadership and self-governance.

This to me is the greatest triumph and most enduring legacy of the Philippine Assembly, forerunner of our House of Representatives.

Today we stand on the shoulders of that Assembly, a giant of our age.

That Assembly gave our nation the forum and crucible for its aspirations for independence and nationalism – and became the vanguard of its reformist ideals.

That same spirit of reform animates this House today, a hundred years later.

And of its Successor Legislatures

Boldly expanding the limits of autonomy, the Assembly set up a system of universal education for Filipinos – and the beginnings of a national infrastructure network.

It moved to settle the "friar lands" disputes that had helped ignite the 1896 Revolution against Spain.

It started establishing the instruments of modern government: A civil service, a justice system, and a national bank to stimulate capital formation.

And for the first time in our history, it was the first Asian legislature to give women the vote. This was in 1933-ahead of the French Parliament, which waited until 1945.

By 1935, we had a Constitution and a quasi-independent Commonwealth government.

In sum, the Philippine Assembly worked so well that it made Philippine independence inevitable.

And Filipino freedom, restored under the US commitment in 1946, set off the wave of decolonization that emancipated the whole of Asia and Africa.

What are the tasks this generation of the House must accomplish – if it is to keep faith with its illustrious forebears?

Politically, we must turn Filipino nationalism outward – toward full participation in humankind’s adventure of development.

Economically, we must master globalization. We must raise our country’s global competitiveness by making it business- and investor-friendly.

The period after World War II brought a new wave of democratization worldwide, on a scale never before seen in mankind’s history. With freedom, peoples across continents believed that development would follow inevitably.

Little did we realize that liberty does not always result in prosperity-nor does it always banish poverty.

We realize now that if democracy is to bring about prosperity for ordinary people, we must modernize our economy and our politics – and the whole of national society.

This I believe is our primary and most urgent goal: We must create a new wave of reforms to restructure our economy and our politics.

Such far-reaching reforms we in this House already started to legislate. Over the last three years the Expanded Value Added Tax that we approved in concert with our beloved President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo – amid a firestorm of criticism – created an economic breakthrough and put the State’s finances on a sound footing.

As a result, the public sector had its first budget surplus since the 1997 East Asian financial meltdown.

And between January and March this year, our GDP grew by 6.9 percent-the highest rate in 17 years and way above the market’s expectations. President Arroyo and the House of Representatives have been proven right.

Together we have done a great deal-but much more need to be achieved.

At the turn of the century, we in this House looked to the world outside and launched small initiatives in the hope of making a small contribution to the cause of multi-cultural peace and the battle to defeat poverty.

One is the Global Christian-Muslim Interfaith dialogues as a way of mediating civil, religious and ethnic conflicts. For we have come to realize that there can be no peace among the nations without peace among the great religions.

Another is the global debt-for-equity program as an approach to defeat poverty, in line with the U. N. Millennium Development Goals of halving global poverty by 2015. Our program proposes to convert 50 percent of the debt of some 100 countries into equity in mass housing, education, reforestation, food production, irrigation, health care and clean environment.

Both initiatives were endorsed in December last year by the UN General Assembly. The fate of the global debt-for-equity program should be considered by the G-8 nations, now meeting in Germany, and the Paris Club.

Through programs like these – in concert with other emerging states – we seek to promote the global interest-while, in our Asian homeland, we pursue our dream of a continent without dividing lines.

Through its membership in the 10-member ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Association (AIPA), this House leads with Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia and Thailand the movement toward one Southeast Asian Parliament.

Through the 38-member Association of Asian Parliaments for Peace, we promote with Iran, Pakistan, and ASEAN the concept of an Asian Parliamentary Assembly, transforming the Association of Asian Parliaments for Peace into the Asian Parliamentary Assembly.

Yet looking forward to the next 20 years, we see the Asia-Pacific as the hemisphere still with the greatest risk of conflict.

And the only lasting solution we see for these tensions is to embed all our countries in a network of economic, political, and security relationships-in an Asia-Pacific community of consent.

At home, we need to do more.

To sustain our economic gains, we must speed up market-opening reforms; reduce the cost of doing business in our country and raise the productivity of our workforce.

There is a new wave of growth building up in East Asia that we must catch.

The emergence of once-closed economies-in China, India, and Russia-the new resurgence in Japan-the rise of South Korea-and the continuing vigor of the Southeast Asian economies-are redrawing the geography of trade.

The center of economic gravity is shifting from West to East. This new wave of growth we must catch-or become for decades a backwater in the world’s fastest-growing region.

We need to undertake economic and political reforms simultaneously and not sequentially. For the economy works best under a set of rules-and these rules are defined by politics.

We have seen crisis after crisis rock and pummel our country. We know that development can come about only when there is sustained political stability.

Political instability inflicts collateral damage on the economy and on our people’s perceptions of the future.

And we must do all we can to ensure we have stability at home and in the region-for instability anywhere in East Asia will burst the bubble of development that has made it the world’s fastest-growing region.

The reforms that we put in place over the last six years we must enhance.

We in this House will continue to seek constitutional remedies for our endemic political infirmities-the worst of them being the periodic gridlocks caused by the rivalries among the branches of government.

We believe the lasting remedy lies in a shift from the presidential to the parliamentary system.

And our politics must begin to transcend partisan interests-in a collective and cooperative effort to make both our country and ourselves better.

For our politics must speak only for the highest aspirations of our national community

The presence of leaders of parliaments from Asia, Latin America, and Europe at these celebrations not only exalts this House.

It also reminds us that national parliaments can no longer work in isolation from their fellow – legislatures.

We have all come to realize that every state is threatened by anarchic forces in the world-system; and that poverty, oppression, injustice and despair anywhere must become the concern of all.

Individual states must attune their policies to those of neighbor-states-if they are to deal effectively with problems that go beyond national boundaries.

This is why we are seeing everywhere in the world regional movements toward federation and community.

In closing, let me say that, like the first Philippine Assembly, we in this House are connected intimately to our people’s aspirations for themselves and their posterity.

By tapping into popular reserves of idealism, we hope to create a new politics-one impelled by our need to help achieve great things under God, for the Philippines, for Asia, and for the world.