DnD chief to speak at MOPC

Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr. will be the guest of honor and speaker at the “MOPC Defense Night“organized by the Manila Overseas Press Club, Asia’s first and oldest press club on Jan. 23, 6:30 p.m. at the Fairmont Makati Hotel Ballroom in Makati City.

Teodoro is expected to discuss his plans, projects, reforms and updates on military, defense and security and related geopolitical issues including domestic insurgencies, terrorism, the West Philippine Sea, the Indo-Pacific strategy and an update on SEATO and the UNCLOS enforcement. A lively open forum will follow his speech moderated by MOPC chairman Tony Lopez.

For more information, contact the MOPC Secretariat at 0920-2049229.

Lopez, publisher of Biznewsasia, described Teodoro as “the fightingest defense secretary.”

On the issue of the West Philippine Sea, President Marcos has tapped 1989 bar topnotcher and Harvard-educated Teodoro to assert Philippine territorial sovereignty and sovereign rights.

Teodoro’s strategy so far is to be assertive toward China, the intruder into the South China Sea territorial and sovereign rights claims of the Philippines, and to boost the country’s naval weaponry.

Teodoro bristles at China’s swarming tactic “to unilaterally pound into submission other countries” to accept their “definition of what international law is with respect to the law of the sea.”

He served as defense secretary from 2007 to 2009 under then president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. He was the nominee of Arroyo’s Lakas–Kampi in the 2010 presidential election, which he lost to his second cousin, Noynoy Aquino.

Teodoro studied commerce at De La Salle University, and law at the University of the Philippines, where he graduated top of his class and went on to top the 1989 Bar exams. He then earned his Master of Laws degree from Harvard Law School.

Teodoro finished elementary in 1977 and high school in 1981 at Xavier.