Roco succumbs to cancer; 63

Raul Roco, a former senator, education secretary and one of the presidential contenders last year, died yesterday after a long bout with cancer. He was 63.

Roco passed away at 9:16 a.m. at St. Luke’s Medical Center in Quezon City, where he had been confined for several weeks, his brother Ding Roco said.

Roco, born Oct. 26, 1941 to a farmer and a public school teacher, is survived by his wife Sonia; mother Rosario; children Robbie Pierre, Raul Jr., Sophia, Sareena, Rex and Synara; and four grandchildren.

His death came as a shock to his friends and family since they had scheduled a thanksgiving and healing Mass at the hospital chapel at 3 p.m. yesterday.

Roco’s remains lie at the Della Strada chapel on Katipunan Road in Quezon City. His family is eyeing their hometown of Naga City in Camarines Sur as his final resting place.

Roco’s health started to deteriorate in April last year when cancer cells were found to have metastasized in the bones of his lower back. The cells originated from his prostate gland, which was removed in an operation in 1996.

He is the second presidential candidate in last year’s poll to die, following movie actor Fernando Poe Jr., who died on Dec. 14 last year.

Dr. Jaime Galvez-Tan, Roco’s campaign manager in the 2004 presidential election, said Roco’s death is a "big loss" not only to the people close to him but to the entire country as well.

"He will be missed. He is one of the greatest leaders that this country ever had," Galvez-Tan told The STAR.

Unlike other candidates in the May 2004 polls who relied heavily on theatrical gimmicks to entice voters, Roco, in his trademark Hawaiian shirts, stuck to low-key appearances to explain his platform. He had included a blind man among his senatorial candidates to champion the cause of the handicapped.

Roco, standard-bearer of the Aksyon Demokratiko party which he founded, dropped out of the campaign after he was diagnosed with cancer and sought treatment in the United States. He finished a distant fourth, conceding defeat to President Arroyo. But only a few weeks ago, he joined opposition groups in appealing to Mrs. Arroyo to call snap elections following allegations she had conspired to rig the ballot.

Equality for all

Roco once told a campaign rally that "equal opportunity should be given to all and special privileges for none."

He was one who believed that the Philippines is not wanting for good, talented and skilled Filipinos, but the government must come up with programs that will enhance the positive aspects of Filipinos.

"A strong republic does not make a strong nation. Strong people make a strong nation. It’s not the strong republic that makes strong people. We must save the Philippines because no one else will save the Philippines for us," he once said.

A top corporate lawyer before he was elected to Congress, Roco had a brilliant academic background. He finished his elementary education at the age of 10 and completed high school at 14 at the Ateneo de Naga. At 18, he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English, magna cum laude, from San Beda College in Manila.

Roco earned a law degree at San Beda and was awarded for overall excellence. He received a master’s degree in comparative law as a university fellow at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was cross-enrolled at the Wharton School for Multinational Studies.

As a legal staff member of the late senator Benigno Aquino, Roco drafted the "Study Now, Pay Later" scheme.

He also produced a movie by the late film director Lino Brocka, "Tinimbang Ka Ngunit Kulang," which won six local film awards, including one for best film, in 1974.

Roco started his political career when he ran and won as congressman representing the second district of Camarines Sur in 1987.

As a senator in 1992-2000, he authored bills that reformed the central banking system, liberalized the local banking industry, strengthened thrift banks, protected intellectual property rights and created the new securities regulation code.

He also authored the Women in Nation Building Law, the Nursing Act, the Anti-Sexual Harassment Law, Anti-Rape Law and the Child and Family Courts Act, prompting various women’s groups to name him an "honorary woman."

As a senator, Roco worked for the abolition of the double taxation of overseas workers.

In 2000, Roco gave an outstanding performance during the aborted impeachment trial of then President Joseph Estrada at the Senate.

When Mrs. Arroyo was catapulted to power in January 2001, she appointed Roco as secretary of the Department of Education (DepEd).

Under Roco’s leadership, DepEd implemented for the first time the Ganzon Law which mandates "zero tuition" in all public elementary and high schools in the country.

He also stopped the DepEd’s payroll group from deducting a 10-percent service fee from the salaries of teachers, insisting that while the deduction was legal under the General Appropriation Act, it was "immoral" because payroll personnel were already being paid to process the teachers’ salaries.

While this gesture endeared Roco to teachers, he earned the ire of the DepEd Employees Union, which filed graft charges against him before the Presidential Anti-Graft Commission (PAGC).

On Aug. 13, 2002, Roco resigned from the Cabinet, saying that Mrs. Arroyo had not complied with the basic "courtesy" of informing him that she had ordered the PAGC to investigate the complaint.

Political observers, however, suspected that Mrs. Arroyo’s move was only meant to eliminate potential rivals in the presidential election.

Last year, Roco made his second attempt for the presidency under the Alyansa ng Pagasa coalition. But while he enjoyed the widespread support of the youth and women, his group did not have the election machinery that Mrs. Arroyo and his other rivals had.

Roco’s bid was also derailed when the rigors of the campaign took a toll on his health.

A month before the May 10 poll, Roco surprised the country when he announced he was leaving the campaign trail to seek treatment for cancer at a hospital in the United States.

Last words

On his deathbed, Roco prepared a letter dated Aug. 18, which was supposed to be sent to the media two weeks after his death.

The letter, which he posted on his website, raulroco.com, was entitled "Ongpin, Borlongan and Jose Rizal," referring to the late former finance secretary Jaime Ongpin and banker Teodoro Borlongan.

Roco, in the letter, said he has "been suppressing a compulsion to write on the parallelism" in the lives of the three men, who were all shunted aside "before the harvest."

"Jimmy Ongpin was a rare light in the Philippine corporate world. Bright, brilliant, competent and courageous. During the dark days, Jimmy and his Manindigan fought not in the boardrooms but in the streets, their boardroom personalities powdered by dust," he wrote.

"Yet at the height of his success when freedom was again upon the land called Philippines, when the fullness of his professionalism and search for excellence could now be unleashed, Jimmy Ongpin was set aside."

Just after she rose to power, then President Corazon Aquino had asked Ongpin to be her finance secretary but had to let him go during a Cabinet revamp prompted by several coup attempts.

Shortly thereafter, Ongpin was found dead. The coroner’s verdict was suicide, although he was left-handed and the gun was found in his right hand.

Roco said Borlongan "had a similar career pattern." Borlongan, a former bank president, committed suicide last April after losing a lonely legal battle to clear his name of charges against him, including one for estafa in connection with the closure of Urban Bank.

"I don’t know enough of his business affairs but what I saw was a man who sought to excel for his country, his family and his people. I did not keep up with the legal or the corporate issues but from where I sat, Ted was a man who did his best and was compelled to retire also before the harvest," Roco said.

"How searing to the soul must have been the common feeling of Jimmy Ongpin and Ted Borlongan. We often forget that it is people who are important. Political pragmatism cannot replace the caring for and nurturing of people. Money and influence cannot replace truth or principle."

Roco said Rizal "must have felt the same way."

"Excelling in many fields, besting his compatriots and European classmates, capturing the flowers of Heidelberg, Rizal came home, lingered in Hong Kong to enjoy his profession and came home after distilling his understanding of the Philippines in ‘Noli Me Tangere’ and ‘El Filibusterismo.’ Banished in Dapitan, he could have chosen exile. But Rizal stayed," Roco said.

Roco quoted a translation by the late National Artist for Literature Nick Joaquin of Rizal’s final prayer: "For your dear sake seems it divine to die,/And were life fresher, brighter still would I/Walk on onward to the sacrifice." — With Perseus Echeminada, Christina Mendez, AP