Like most candidates, Manuel “Mar” Roxas II was born on the thirteenth of May in 1957 to a family of politicians. His grandfather is Manuel Roxas who was the fifth president of the Republic of the Philippines. His father Gerardo, more popularly known as Gerry was a former senator himself. Unlike his father, he was not an only child, he has a sister named Maria Lourdes, more fondly called as Ria and former Congressman Gerardo Roxas, Jr. who died young in 1993 of cancer.
He has quite an impressive resume. He went to Ateneo De Manila University of his primary and secondary schooling and headed for Wharton School of Economics in Pennsylvania for his Economics degree. After he finished school, he practiced what he learned through investment banking for a big firm in New York. He put his life on hold to support Noynoy Aquino’s mother Cory during the Snap Elections under the Marcos regime. He then talked the American company he was working for to have an arm in the Philippines that he would handle. He was then based in the Philippines again. A couple of years later, then Congressman Gerry died of cancer. Mar was to succeed him in the family tradition of public service.
In 1993, Mar was the Representative of the First District of Capiz and eventually became the Majority Leader of the House. Most of the bills that caught his focus were on education and consumer rights. In 2000, former President Joseph Estrada appointed him as the Secretary of the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), which led to his resignation from Congress. A year later, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ousted Joseph but the latter kept Mar in his position.
He served DTI for four years. It was then when he earned the moniker Mister Palengke that literally translates to Mister Market, due to his staunch advocacy of fair consumerism. He had numerous programs that provided affordable food and medicine for the less fortunate and closely monitored them to ensure the proper actualization of these programs. His investment banking roots kicked in once again when he pushed for the development of small and medium enterprises. Mar covered all the areas of this matter. Not only did he help the masses, he also enabled the middle class by providing more job opportunities through business process outsourcing. Replicating the move with his previous American bosses, he encouraged foreign investors to outsource some of their labor in the Philippines.
In 2004, Mar stepped up after being elected as Senator. He maintained his duties to trade in addition to new responsibilities such as being in charge of the Optical Media Board with Senator Ramon Revilla, Jr. His main focus can be summarized as follows: education, financial/social enablement of the poor and protection of intellectual property rights.
Mar took another step up the political ladder after agreeing to be Noynoy Aquino’s vice presidential candidate under the Liberal Party for the 2010 Presidential Elections.
He is similar to Noynoy in a way that they can be considered as perpetual bachelors until Mar married broadcast journalist Korina Sanchez last year. He was fifty two and she was fourty four. He has a son named Paolo with 1971 Miss Young Philippines Maricar Zaldarriaga but the two were never married.