Philippine Free Press 101st Anniversary Edition

I got my copy at Caltex-Julia Vargas, also available at 7/11 and National Bookstores, or you can call 844-2316, 844-2251, 844-2275, 0919-583-8487 for orders.

From Erwin Romulo:

A Hundred and One

The FREE PRESS celebrates its 101st anniversary in this issue. We also take this occasion to pay tribute to the late President Corazon Aquino. Cory!—the private woman who was thrust out of her domesticity to the arena of politics, the prison cells of the Marcos regime, the parliament of the streets, the leadership of the Philippines and the world stage. Manuel L. Quezon III’s “Filipino of the Century” is an inspired retelling of this now-legendary story—one that resonates even amid the flamboyance and machismo prevailing in our culture, as the late FREE PRESS editor Teodoro M. Locsin pointed out in his eloquent editorial on Mrs. Aquino. The highlight of Mrs. Aquino’s international acclaim is, of course, her triumphant 1986 address to the US Congress, which we reprint here.

A tribute to Mrs. Aquino also serves as a tribute to her martyred husband, Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr., whose association with the FREE PRESS is underscored by Locsin being thrown in jail together with Aquino (and nine other critics of the Marcos regime) in 1972. Teodoro L. Locsin Jr.’s interviews with Aquino are fascinating chamber pieces that hint at Marcos’s impending dictatorship. Another cellmate of Aquino and Locsin Sr. is the brilliant political analyst Napoleon G. Rama, whose article on martial law has unfortunately become more relevant in our time. With the articles by Rama and Locsin Jr., we also reprint the classic political cartoons of former FREE PRESS art director E. Z. Izon.

Former FREE PRESS executive editor Gregorio C. Brillantes wields his lyrical journalism as he takes a retrospective look at Rolando Galman, the much-overlooked casualty in Aquino’s assassination in 1983. We also look back to the body of work of the FREE PRESS and some of the writers who helped shape it. “The Ruling Money,” by the late associate editor Nick Joaquin (writing as Quijano de Manila), is an exhaustive business story as only he could write it—and a departure from his reporting on politics, history and pop culture. Kerima Polotan’s “The Woman of Fashion” is a quiet critique on the thriving bourgeois scene of the Sixties and its devotees at the time. Then there’s the other side of that milieu, lauded by Jose F. Lacaba’s now immortal “Notes on Bakya,” an inventive variation on Susan Sontag that counsels against elitism in art and culture. Finally, here too is Aquino’s soul-searching poetry, written during his eight years in prison. The themes are familiar to victims of political persecution like Lacaba, Locsin, Rama and this magazine, which was padlocked on the eve of martial law and revived in time for Cory’s historic presidential campaign."

You can view several classic Free Press articles (including those over sixty years old) reposted here.

The Underrated Genius of Carlo J. Caparas

Carlo J. Caparas was the director who showed us a bustling Ayala Avenue (complete with Rustans and Twin Towers) and superimposed the title “Singapore” underneath. (Victim No. 1: Delia Maga [Jesus, Pray for Us]). Yes, the National Artist for Visual Arts and Film introduced massacre as a film genre, raised the bar for movie titling with The Maggie de la Riva Story (God...Why Me?), and gave us Tasya Fantasya. Mock you will, as I did when I used to watch his films to satiate my urge for cheap laughs.

Nonetheless, my favorite ever scene from a Carlo J. Caparas film is a daring bravura setpiece of intense psychological complexity hitherto unseen in Philippine cinema – rivaling the exquisite sophistication of Ophuls or the tolerant humanism of Renoir. It was gifted to us through The Marita Gonzaga Rape-Slay: In God We Trust!, a deceptive “massacre movie” starring Sunshine Dizon and future Senator Jinggoy Estrada.

The setup. The film begins with the ill-fated Marita Gonzaga (Sunshine Dizon) celebrating her 18th birthday with a decadent debut, complete with gowns and waltzing, which somehow fails to faze the saintly Sunshine. After the ceremonies, Marita, her father (Tommy Abuel), mother (Maggie de la Riva) and several older brothers take respite at the sala, where the center table hosts all of the debutante's birthday presents gift-wrapped in pink and laces. After a few pleasantries, the scene evolves into something like this:

Abuel: O hija, buksan mo na yung napaka-raming regalo ko.

Sunshine: (smiling demurely) Salamat itay, pero sa wari'y ko hindi ako nararapat tanggapin ang mga regalong iyan. (turning to her several elder brothers) Oh mga kuya, sa inyo na lang ang mga regalo ko.

Mga Kuya: Uy, tenk you!!

(The kuyas charge at the table and each grabs a gift for their own. Sunshine and her parents exchange meaningful looks and exchange hearty laughter.)

Years ago, I laughed at the seeming idiocy of this scene. Yet upon mature retrospect, the genius of the visionary overwhelms. One would expect the brothers to be repulsed by the thought of appropriating the presents gifted to their sister on their eighteenth birthday. A hack director would have played the scene that way. What the auteur Caparas does is to confound our gender-driven expectations, compelling us to question our tacit acceptance of the male-female role vis-a-vis birthday gifts which conservative society had imposed on us. And there is no more vital role for an artist than to challenge our own values system.

There is another way to analyze the scene, one which even more profoundly impresses. It is possible that the brothers themselves knew that the gift boxes actually contained gender-neutral presents. After all, Caparas cannily conceals from the audience what's inside the box. How do the brothers know this? Perhaps their parents had raised the brood under the tenets of progressive liberalism, instructing their kids on the ultimate futility of gender differentiation. The friends and the family would have known this, and accordingly selected only those gifts of democratic utility regardless of gender. That is why the brothers expressed no inhibition at claiming the gifts of their sister. By this episode, Caparas venerates the democratic utopia, thereby setting up the subsequent greater tragedy that a progressive and tolerant milieu will not shelter us from the random evil inflicted by the rugby-addicted killer-rapist. It is a cautionary tale not even Hitchcock ventured to tell.

One might retort that no, the scene was just really really stupid. Then again, someone centuries ago probably also said that of Shakespeare.

For Those Calling for the Canonization into Sainthood of Corazon Aquino

You might want to take a look at this account from former Vatican Ambassador (and Cory Aquino in-law) Howard Dee, as published in Cory: An Intimate Portrait (2009, ed. by Margie Penson-Juico):

With the special permission given by the Vatican, President Cory was finally face-to-face with Sister Lucia [of Fatima renown], who told her: "I have been praying for you all this time! Do you still have the rosary I sent you?"

It was the rosary Sister Lucia herself had made for her and given through Cardinal [Jaime] Sin, who had asked how she came to know about Cory, without radio or television or nespapers in the convent: Was it through the Blessed Mother? Lucia just smiled. (p. 179-180)

I myself am neutral on the matter, though many (around 3,000 so far) are not. If anything, the angle that interests me is that the active pursuit by the Vatican of sainthood for Cory may, in the next few years at least, bear extraordinary pressure on the governing establishment in the Philippines to behave, not to degrade the democratic legacy left by the former President.

The Game-Changer

I've always wondered what path Ninoy Aquino would have chosen had he been the one who succeeded Ferdinand Marcos and his authoritarian regime. He spoke admiringly of autocrats such as Kemal Ataturk, Lee Kuan Yew and Park Chung Hee. He famously pitied whoever would have to succeed Marcos. Steeped as he had been in the hard-nosed game of politics, he probably would have concluded that it would take a Marcos to clean up after Marcos. A strong president unencumbered in having to do the dirty deeds by the restraints of law or the dissents of others.

In that context, the 1986 Freedom Constitution is worth a second look. This provisional charter, intended to legitimize Corazon Aquino's assumption into power, emanated from a mandate of arms and was ratified with the consent of only one person -- Cory Aquino. It did retain many of the features of Marcos's authoritarian regime -- legislation by decree most prominently, and its pre-determined lifespan (until the ratification of the new Constitution) was dangerously indeterminate. Again, these undemocratic features arguably necessary to clean up after Marcos. Yet what is also striking is the abject commitment of Mrs. Aquino through the Freedom Constitution to adhere to the Bill of Rights -- the core of a free and democratic lifestyle -- which the charter decreed as remaining in effect. The Bill of Rights are notoriously inconvenient for strong presidencies, even those which are strong only out of necessity. The post-EDSA milieu could have easily tempted Aquino to do unto others what had been done unto her. Jailing recalcitrant opponents and rebels upon presidential command, silencing the remnants who spoke against the restoration of freedom -- these were easy temptations that could have been justified in the name of democratic rule and good government. Mrs. Aquino desisted.

What may ultimately endure as the more satisfying legacy is not Mrs. Aquino's pro-activity in assuming leadership in the anti-Marcos fight, but her acts of desistance. Having restored the basic democratic institutions, she desisted from reverting, from changing this equitable paradigm of governance even in the face of dire emergencies -- seven coup attempts, massive natural disasters, a failing economy and a crippling power crisis. She had insistent faith in the solvency of the democratic institutions embedded in the 1987 Constitution in fighting adversities that threatened the survival of the State. Mrs. Aquino likewise deserves credit for desisting from running again or even engaging in striptease hints that maybe she would if she could. In the end, the peaceful and democratic transition in 1992 remains an all-too unheralded achievement.

Mrs. Aquino deserves her share of the blame in the failed promise of her Presidency, most achingly the failure to deliver justice for the past as a component of the return of democratic rule. By 1992, it was socially unacceptable to be anything less than faintly derisive about the Aquino presidency and its failure to deliver a higher quality of life to the people. Yet in many respects, Mrs. Aquino sacrificed the short-term success of her administration to accommodate the birthing pains of our renewed democratic institutions -- a restrained presidency, a representative Congress, an independent judiciary, and a people who inalienable rights were guaranteed by the rule of law. We may still be quibbling about the same socio-economic problems that persisted under Mrs. Aquino's rule, but we do so still in an environment able to sustain active deliberation and dissent as the means of building consensus for moving forward, where the terms are not suppressed by dictation from self-regarding geniuses.

Mrs. Aquino's democratic vision was rooted in her respect for the consent of the governed over the presumed wisdom of the governing. We may remain impatient at the intricacies of building a grassroots democracy for some generations to come, but should it survive, her failures which we find all too easy to point out will ultimately be trivial.