Remembering the Grand Old Man of Cebu!

To all Marian devotees, today we celebrate the birthday of the Blessed Virgin Mary... the mother of our Lord Jesus Christ... "Theotokos!" That other people who claim to be Bible-reading Christians do not even care to honor our Mama Mary because they believe that she was merely a vessel used by God for His divine plans and later to be discarded has caused a great chasm among Christians. Yet in the Scripture you will read the first paragraph of the Canticle of Mama Mary in Luke 1:46-50 which goes:

"My heart praises the Lord; my soul is glad because of God my Savior for He has remembered me, his lowly servant! From now on all people shall call me Blessed because of the great things the Mighty God has done for me and His name is Holy; from one generation to another He shows mercy to those who honor Him." To those who cannot call Mama Mary Blessed, which is scriptural... they should not claim themselves to be Christians!

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Tomorrow, Sept. 9, is a non-working holiday in Cebu to mark the 128th birth anniversary of the second President of the Commonwealth of the Philippines, President Sergio Osmeña Sr., the only Cebuano ever to become President of the country. I know that every year, my good friend, Rep. Raul del Mar of Cebu City’s North District, always delivers a privilege speech extolling the virtues and the examples that Don Sergio gave to all Filipinos.

I only saw Don Sergio twice in my life. The first time was during the first week of May 1959 when he came to our ancestral home (it is now my office) for the vigil of my late grandfather, Don Jose Avila, who was very close to him. My father, Jesus S. Avila, brought me before this old man and introduced me to him, telling me that "Mr. Osmeña was once the President of the Philippines." While I didn’t forget what my father told me, I didn’t really know what a President was in those days; after all, I was only eight years old.

The second time I met Don Sergio Osmeña was when we all trooped to his residence in 1961 because the "American Caesar," Gen. Douglas MacArthur, came to Cebu in what was dubbed a "sentimental journey" to meet Don Sergio in his home. It was to be the last meeting of the two great men and I witnessed this historic occasion because my father brought me along.

When my father died in 1979, then Atty. Marcelo B. Fernan, who later became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and Senate President, asked me to be a member of the Board of the Cebu Newspaper Workers Foundation (CENEWOF) and it was the first time I had a glimpse of the newspaper industry in Cebu. It was also when I got to know more about Don Sergio when CENEWOF hosted the Don Sergio Osmeña Memorial Lecture for 10 years and we were able to learn more about the virtues of Don Sergio.

While Don Sergio is known as the "Grand Old Man of Cebu," we know that his greatness started at a very young age when he became the publisher of a newspaper, El Nuevo Dia, a fiscal, Cebu governor, Speaker of the Assembly (at the age of 29), Vice President, and eventually President.

To give honor to Don Sergio Osmeña on his 128th birthday, allow me to reprint an excerpt from the maiden editorial of El Nuevo Dia, which was reprinted by Don Sergio’s official biographer, Vicente A. Pacis. It’s entitled Nuestros Derroteros (Our Course).

"A new country has arisen from the rubbles of the former sovereignty...," it began. Reciting the history of Spain’s fall and the failure of the Philippines to win independence, the editorial continued: "We Filipinos did not win but Spain defeated itself; ineradicable facts, interposing themselves like an insurmountable barrier, broke the link of three centuries of political association. From then on a new day should shine for the Philippines...

"We shall not stir up hatreds; we shall not plant distrust; seeking the national good, we shall urge harmony upon the two nations that continue to fight in our land, appeasing the fire of war and muffling the roar of artillery with words of peace and phrases of love... so that all wounds may heal and all rancor may disappear. El Nuevo Dia will be a truthful reflection of public opinion, which will lead it to the consecrated realm of truth... We shall seek for our country the greatest measure of social perfectibility according to the sacred aspirations of our people. For its attainment, we shall unite the labors of all sons of the Philippines overcoming the distances that separate Luzon from the Visayas and Mindanao, coalescing all the active elements into one."

It is his passion for Filipino unity that made him great as President; he never used the great powers of this office to campaign for his re-election, that is why he was defeated by President Manuel Roxas. But in doing so, that act made him immortal not only to his fellow Cebuanos but to all Filipinos as well. As the last of the CENEWOF lecturers, our beloved Eminence Ricardo Cardinal Vidal told us that the presidency of Don Sergio was an example of "humility while in power," something unheard of today.

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A lot of us write stories about the plight of our poor teachers, especially those working in public schools, but few people can really do something about their problems. When he was the first district congressman of Cebu province, Sir Jose "Dodong" Gullas, who is now the executive vice president of the University of the Visayas (UV), went out of his way to make things move in the Department of Education (DepEd) and what was better for public school teachers than to have their payroll regionalized under the IBM payroll system of the DepEd. This came from House Bill No. 2542, which has now become the law of the land.

Sir Dodong Gullas, who is also the chairman of The Freeman, did something that no one did for public school teachers. For nearly half-a-century, it has always been public knowledge that their salaries or pay were usually delayed; often they got the wrong end of the erroneous computations or worse, suffer illegal deductions. Because of this bureaucracy, many teachers ended up saddled with debts or loans because their salaries often came months later. With the approval of the Gullas bill, now we can say that this is already part of their history and today, our public school teachers can get their salaries on time, thanks to Sir Dodong Gullas, who not only bewailed this practice, but made sure that it wouldn’t happen again!

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For e-mail responses to this article, write to [email protected]. Bobit Avila’s columns in The Freeman can also be accessed through The Philippine STAR website (www.philstar.com). He also hosts a weekly talkshow, "Straight from the Sky," shown every Monday, 8 p.m., only in Metro Cebu on Channel 15 of SkyCable. Bobit’s columns can also be accessed at www.shootinginsidecebu.blogspot.com.