In a bid to capture the online media and the local online communities, Senator and presidentiable Mar Roxas recently organized a forum for famous names in Philippine blogging.

Held at Annabel’s in Quezon City, the forum was meant to address the various socio-political issues plaguing the country, as well as those thought to have been brought on by the current administration.

It was also the senator’s way of touching base with blogging and bloggers, a growing online phenomenon that is being regarded by some as an emergent and powerful fifth estate.

Senator Roxas started the forum by recognizing the need to regulate, and give importance to, the Internet, which he called the wave of the future. The senator fielded various challenging questions from the gathered bloggers, and he gamely answered them all.

Among the pressing issues tackled at the forum was the value-added tax (VAT) on oil. Roxas said that he supported the scrapping of this particular tax because of the current administration’s possible applications for the collected money. For the bloggers to better understand the process on the collection for the oil VAT, he drew an analogy between it and a homeowners’ association.

Roxas insisted that the collected funds, technically called “savings,” should have been earmarked for specific projects, instead of going into the government’s common funds. The money, he continued, could possibly be used for their own unscrupulous ends.