The one and only time I met John Gokongwei was way back, at a dinner in the house of Washington SyCip. He still owned the Manila Times. I had worked at the old Manila Times (1949 to 1960) when it was owned by the Roceses, and retain fond memories of those years when the paper was the country’s biggest and most influential. That decade enabled me to see our beautiful country all the way from Sabtang in the Batanes to Sitangkai and the Turtle Islands in the south. Naturally I wanted to find out how the paper was doing and I asked John Gokongwei, voiced the hope that the new Times become like the venerable New York Times, open with its political choice, but still credible and influential, with booming advertising and an enterprising staff. He said he would wait for one of his children, who was then studying journalism in America, to run the paper. He also told my wife, who manages our little bookshop, of his interest in Philippine books, old and new. In that conversation, he surprised me with his Tagalog fluency. I suspected his Cebuano was perfect for he grew up in Cebu. In that brief encounter, he also impressed me with how he understood that Makati buzzword today, CSR (corporate social responsibility).
In February 1999, I questioned in this paper the loyalty of those Chinese Filipinos who send billions to Hong Kong, Taiwan, and China, money that should remain here so that we would have new industries that would give employment to Filipinos, and thereby prevent our women from going abroad to work as housemaids and as prostitutes.
In that article, I proposed that the Chinese schools be closed, that if the Chinese Filipinos are to learn Chinese, they should do so in special language schools. I suggested that the Chinese social and business associations be disbanded, that they should join Filipino business and social organizations – all this would hasten their integration in the society and, hopefully, inculcate in them loyalty to this country. I asked that they should maintain their loyalty to Chinese culture, but not to the Chinese state. And finally I asked: in the event of a war with China, on which side would they be?
To this day, I haven’t changed these opinions for which I got a lot of flak. One came from Robina, Gokongwei’s daughter.
In my reply to her, I wished her her father’s wisdom and never to forget that wealth carries with it a heavy responsibility to this nation.
John Gokongwei acquired his wisdom through years of trial and travail in his boyhood when, at the age of 13, his father died and he was left to support his siblings.
John Gokongwei did this diligently; with a bicycle, he brought his marketable goods wherever he could display them.
Then, World War II, a watershed in our history, which added to that wisdom and enterprise. And finally, after the war, through the help of the banker Albino SyCip, he obtained capital to establish his businesses in corn milling, then food processing, pharmaceuticals, textiles, and on to real estate, banking and Cebu Pacific, which is the only Philippine airline with completely new jets. JG Holdings, which he heads, is supposed to have more than a billion dollars – half of which he is now donating to charity through the foundation that bears his own name.
Like all of us octogenarians, John Gokongwei saw this country ravaged and savaged by its political scum, and its rapacious oligarchs. He knows full well the reasons why this country – once Southeast Asia’s most progressive – has become the sick man of the region.
He has already identified education as a priority with his donation of an engineering school to his alma mater, San Carlos University in Cebu.
May I suggest that he look carefully all over the country, at the most depressed areas, and help similar schools in Mindanao, in the Cagayan Valley, in Samar – concentrate on government schools, including vocational high schools run by religious organizations, because these schools have fairly good chances of longevity.
The next priority is food production, so that no Filipino will ever starve or go hungry: preservation of food, support for agricultural schools.
The third is health, which is also Bill Gates’ global target: medical facilities for the very poor who die when they get sick because hospitals and medicines are beyond their reach.
Entrepreneurship and venture capital are also priority areas. As the economist Bernie Villegas has often expounded, we have a mass market – 85 million customers. Why do we have to import all those motorcycles from China? They are not complicated machines – we can manufacture them here. Build factories instead of shopping malls and fancy condominiums!
When Alexander the Great died – this man whose dominion included half of the world – his hands were exposed, open, to show that he was not bringing anything with him. For that is the absolute truth – when we die, we bring nothing to the grave but our name.
What John Gokongwei has demonstrated in this noblest of gestures is his faith in the Filipino people – unblemished faith not shared by those wealthy Spanish mestizos, those brazen Indios and those wealthy Chinese Filipinos who salted their money abroad to keep us poor.
What John Gokongwei has also done is dignify the fruits of capitalism, by giving much of it back to the people who helped him make it.
From the bottom of my heart, thank you, John Gokongwei.