Reelectionist Senator Bong Revilla Jr. looks back at his showbiz career and being a public servant for 3 Decades

Sunday, March 02, 2025

Reelectionist Senator Ramon "Bong" Revilla Jr. held a Mediacon at Quezon City last March 1 as he shared his continuous journey on being a public servant for three decades which started at the provincial capitol of Cavite.

He started his statement by sharing how he started serving the public even though he is also busy being an actor.

Although he was a rookie in public service, he boldly championed and executed anti-drug initiatives as the Chairman of the Cavite Multi-Agency Anti-Drug Council (CMAC), resulting in the largest drug seizure and arrests in the Philippines at that time. His dedicated efforts in the fight against drugs earned him a Medal of Valor and an International Award of Honor from the International Narcotics Enforcement Officers Association, Inc.

In 1998, these groundbreaking accomplishments served as the foundation for his election as provincial governor. Throughout his tenure, he successfully transformed Cavite's reputation from that of a notorious murder capital to one of the most peaceful provinces in the nation.

He was also appointed Chairman of Videogram Regulatory Board (Optical Media Board) in 2002 wherein he had 3, 480 major operations including seizing of pirated discs and videotapes across the country.

In 2004, he was then elected as a Senator and by 2010, he was able to garnered the most number of votes when he was reelected.

Some of the landmark laws which Senator Bong Revilla authored co-authored are:

Mandatory Helmet Act, Open High School System Act, Unified Student Financial Assistance System for Tertiary Education (UniFAST) Act, Magna Carta of Women, Anti-Child Pornography, Legitimation of Children Born to Parents Below Marrying Age, Granting Additional Benefits and Privileges to Senior Citizens, Defining and Penalizing the Crime of Photo and Video Voyeurism, Reducing the Rate of Amusement Tax, Philippine Disaster Risk Management Act of 2009, GOCC Governance Act of 2011, Night Work Prohibition of Women Employees, Release of Retirement Pay Within 30 Days After Retirement, Decriminalizing Vagrancy, Foster Care Act, Anti-Drunk and Drugged Driving Act of 2012, and Prohibition of Children Riding Motorcycles Act, among others.

Notwithstanding the political persecution he encountered as his second term was nearing its conclusion, he was re-elected to the Senate in 2019.

According to Sen. Bong, his RA 11982 or the Expanded Centenarians Act is close to his heart because he loves the elderly and his happiness when serving them gives pure joy to him, just recently he celebrated the first anniversary of the enactment of the law with the elders and gave out their respective awards in a simple ceremony at the Malacañang and 16 other sites throughout the country, seniors aged 80,85,90,95 years old were awarded P10,000, in addition to the P100,000 they will receive upon reaching 100 years old.

Aside from this, Sen. Bong also expressed that he is still very keen on continuously helping the Entertainment industry. He was also very happy and emotional to see again Manay Lolit Solis who was there for him though his ups and downs in his entire career.

When asked about his "budots" jingle which is making waves across the country and even abroad, he was elated that people enjoyed the song, his budots jingle before and his new jingle now. He said that he just wanted to spread good vibes and felt happy that other aspiring public servants are also following his sample by creating a budots jingle.

One of the highlights of his statement about helping the industry is by doing something about the ticket prices of the cinemas, he noticed that with the amount of almost 400, not many Filipinos will be able to watch a movie especially the whole family, this is why we can only see a number of people watching come MMFF or if there's a really good film everybody is excited about like the blockbuster Hello, Love, Again. He also stressed that he wanted to expand the Eddie Garcia law so that more people in the industry can benefit from it. He shared that he is still looking forward to creating more sitcoms and movies in the future, there's a lot of preparations for having a comeback film and he doesn't want viewers to be deprived of a good and quality film.