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Friday, March 29, 2024

Two good Filipinos

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This week, we celebrate the memory of two good men who have made an impact on the lives of both past and present generations of Filipinos.

Last Monday, Nov. 16, was the 125th birth anniversary of a jail warden’s son who, more by accident of fate than ambition or design, became President of the Republic.  Today, had he not been cut down by cancer, a man born with the pedigree of leaders in his veins, would have been celebrating his 87th year.

Elpidio Quirino y Rivera was vice president and secretary of foreign affairs when on April 16, 1948, the first elected president of the Republic was stricken by a massive heart attack after delivering a speech at Clark Air Base, then-territory of the former colonial master of the islands which was the United States of America.

When a military aide rushed into the bedroom of Quirino that fateful morning to show him a radio message of the tragic news, the vice president was stunned, blurting out, “I don’t believe it; someone must be joking.”  The following day, after weeping at the side of Roxas’  bier in Malacañang, he was sworn in as the country’s fifth president, the Third Republic’s second.

Much has been written about the man who presided over the rehabilitation and reconstruction of the country that was so devastated by the Pacific War.  He jumpstarted an economy laid to ruins; he fathered the foreign service; he built some of the most enduring public infrastructures, many of which remain of service to the people until today.  

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He was scorned and vilified by his political enemies, some of whom belonged to his own Liberal Party, but maintained his dignity and self-respect throughout.

One of the most ridiculous black propaganda charges leveled against him was that he used public funds to buy a golden bedpan (orinola) and a P5,000-brass bed (at the time a princely sum).  The truth later came out from the records of the budget office.  They had to buy a bed for him because the widow of the former president brought the bed with her when she left Malacañang for the new occupant, and it cost a fraction of the alleged amount.  And the “golden” orinola was made of stainless steel.

There are a thousand and one stories that could detail the greatness of Quirino, from how he rebuilt the economy, to how he insisted on regaining much of Philippine territory that the Americans used as military bases, as well as vignettes of his honesty and character.  Let me choose something quite apropos to the times:

It was President Quirino who chose a brash young “mechanic,” Ramon Magsaysay to become secretary of defense in 1950.  “I gave him all the support he needed to succeed…I assigned him all the necessary patronage and appropriations, gave him the credit for everything done, even where not directly attributable to his personal efforts, so that his prestige might grow and acquire national value.” (from the book of Raissa Espinosa Robles, “To Fight without End,” a biography of Elpidio Quirino, 1990, a book I keep reading and re-reading).

On a cold January morning in 1953, the president sat talking to his defense secretary, who was being prepared by Quirino’s political enemies and the American “pro-consuls” to run for president against his benefactor.  The two were quite close, like a father to son.  (Quirino was then 62, Magsaysay 46.)

He recounted a story about then Senate President Manuel Luis Quezon, against whom a political coup was being engineered and his position offered to then Senator Quirino.  The latter refused, even if the position was “in the bag,” telling the plotters, “I might get to be President of the Senate…but I would not be a man.”

It was all about gratitude, all about honor.  But Magsaysay ignored the lesson Quirino was trying to impress upon him.  In that year’s elections, where American CIA operatives so visibly and blatantly interfered, Magsaysay defeated the man who appointed him and gave him the break of his public life.

How many such stories have peppered Philippine political life since?  Of “made-to-order” presidents and ill-prepared men and women propped-up by either foreign puppeteers or the oligarchic elite?

* * *

Salvador Laurel y Hidalgo was born Nov. 18, 1928, to a young politician who would soon rise to become a revered statesman and President of the Second Republic, Jose P. Laurel of Tanauan in Batangas.

The things I could write about him are so plenty, having worked under him closely during the dark yet inspiring years of the struggle against authoritarian rule.  Enough to fill a book which I plan to write in the near future.

Days before the start of the “snap election” deadline for the filing of candidacies for president in 1985, Ninong Doy asked me, his niece Fely Laurel and nephew Benjie Laurel, to join him in a brief, overnight “meditation” at his Matabungkay beachfront house.

The nation was then caught in political frenzy.  Laurel had earlier been proclaimed by the largest opposition party, the UNIDO, which I helped him organize and strengthen throughout the country, as presidential candidate against Ferdinand Marcos.  Meanwhile, a clamor was building up for Ninoy’s widow, Cory Aquino, to be the candidate of a “united opposition” against Marcos.

Doy had to make a fateful decision—whether to run and split the opposition against Marcos, even trigger a massive poll boycott; or support Cory.  There in the serenity of his home province, with cool breezes fanning his “meditation,” I could sense that he would make a “supreme” sacrifice.

At one point, when only he and I were in the porch facing the sea, Tito Doy told me about the pain and humiliation that his father suffered after the war, a pain that he, then a young man shared with Ninoy, whose father Benigno Sr. was also incarcerated, labeled as “collaborators” by the triumphant “liberators.”

Wistfully, he said, in firm but low voice:  “Alam mo Lito, like Papa always told us, when it becomes a choice between self and country, self has to surrender.”  “Ang bayan, higit sa lahat,” he quoted his old man.

At that point, with tears welling in my eyes, I knew he had already made a decision.

Days after, towards midnight, he and Cory joined each other to file their candidacies at the Comelec office in Intramuros—the latter as president, and Laurel as her vice president.  It was one of the most memorable moments in my own life, to be a witness to history.

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