Relatives, friends await Kokoy's Leyte return

TACLOBAN CITY -- Fourteen years after fleeing the country with the ouster of a dictatorship, former Ambassador to the United States and Leyte Gov. Benjamin "Kokoy" Romualdez is set to pick up the political pieces in his hometown where faithful friends await him.

One of them is Mana "Nasing" Tingzon, caretaker of a Balinese-style house here for the past eight and a half years, which once served as a temporary shelter of Kokoy's family when the 1986 EDSA people power revolt broke out.

Located in Barangay Marasbaras on the southern outskirts of this city, the four-room structure -- made of a combination of red bricks and old wood with capiz shells windows -- is actually owned by the prominent Redoña family of Leyte, who rented it out to the Romualdezes during the difficult years.

And though Mana Nasing has not met the controversial younger brother of former First Lady Imelda Marcos, she has so taken care of the place that it has lost none of its old charm, hoping that the former residents would feel as if time had stopped for them when they revisit the place again.

When Kokoy was first elected in 1967, the first in the Romualdez brood to win public office, the family was staying at the ancestral residence on Real Street here. They later moved to the so-called Nipa Hut on Senator Enage Street in the early '80s, when Imelda had built the Sto. Niño Shrine, Heritage Museum and People's Center and Library.

But Kokoy had to rent the Balinese House, a.k.a. as the Redoña House, as a "temporary resting place" for his children during the charged political atmosphere of the '80s before and after the People Power Revolt that forced him and his siblings to flee the country.

Kokoy's wife Juliet, and children Martin, Philip and Marian reportedly stayed in this house until the anti-Marcos mania subsided in Manila in the early '90s. Today, peace still abounds in the place planted with red palms, anthuriums, white lilies and the rare plant specie "malimbre."

Unlike Mana Nasing, Aida Capucion and Cesar Ecarma are among several friends and co-workers who share good memories of the old man, whom they worked with for nearly two decades, from his Leyte governorship in 1967 to the Washington, DC post in 1980.

"When you are his friend, he will treat you as a friend forever. Even if you are his kabulig (worker)," says Capucion.

Now 70, Capucion was Romualdez's provincial administrative officer. She said that the former governor can take the time to sit with anybody during coffee breaks even if he was an "output-oriented man."

"He always wanted to talk about the past. He talks to you like a long-lost friend," she told The STAR.

Ecarma, one of Romualdez's four senior aides, said that he owed his boss a debt of gratitude.

"I really miss the governor. We have been working with him for quite a long time," says Ecarma, who was the provincial board secretary in the '60s.

In a separate interview, Ecarma, 60, said he believes that if Romualdez runs for public office, "he has no other intention but to serve the public."

"At his age, he wants to settle here. It is the time for him to clear his name," he added.

Capucion observed: "I think he wants to pick up the good old pieces of his leadership."

According to Ecarma, Kokoy Romualdez is a "good leader" and a "shining example" to everybody.

He said that when Romualdez assumed the governorship, the province "inherited" terrible financial problems from the previous administration of Vicente Romualdez Sr., a cousin who was the son of former Chief Justice Norberto Romualdez.

"The financial condition of the province was worst by that time. Dire nga hadto nakakasueldo han tawo (We couldn't even pay salaries to our personnel)," he said.

And when EDSA came about, he said the Leyte government already had a financial surplus of nearly P100 million which was deposited in the PNB branch in this city as a time deposit.

"He wanted everything in place before he left the country," Ecarma said.

Romualdez is credited for being instrumental in the construction of various government infrastructure in Leyte and Samar provinces.

These include several road networks, like the 100-kilometer Tacloban-Ormoc City road, several kilometers of irrigation projects, school buildings, wharfs and airports.

It was during his tenure that Eastern Visayas, in particular Leyte, became the country's number one exporter of rice, corn and coconut -- the premier dollar-earning export products today.

Today, Romualdez has vowed to face 27 graft and criminal cases pending before the Sandiganbayan.

But Capucion and Ecarma believe that their former "employer and friend" can hurdle all these legal battles, just as he has done in the past 20 years.