These days, the measure of that collective soul quivering would be the volume of text messages that goes around in the moments and hours after an event of great sadness. There was that volume of messaging last Sunday, a steady stream of terse notices as the nation informed itself of a death to be mourned.
Ka Blas, as he always preferred to be addressed, died in the manner, I suspect, he preferred: with his boots on, at the service of his nation, on the move and on the job.
Foreign Secretary Blas Ople impressed everybody by the energy he has put into his work the last few months. His advanced age and frail health were never hindrances to accomplishing his mission. He was always somewhere else, traveling with the enthusiasm of a much younger man. He pushed the national agenda in foreign shores with a sharp mind, a learned view and a polished style.
A friend I was with last Sunday, when news of Ople being brought to an intensive care unit in Taipei broke, said he had warned the Foreign Secretary about his hectic diplomatic schedule. He encouraged Ople to pass on to his deputies those meetings that did not need his high-level presence.
And so it was that the end found Ople on a plane from Tokyo, where he assisted President Gloria in her working visit, en route to the Middle East. He was, as his job required, rushing from one engagement in one point of the globe to another engagement in another part of the planet.
The man was working like a horse when most of his contemporaries were enjoying their retirement. That was not unusual for Ople. He worked like a horse his whole life.
Ka Blas passed away during a season starved for statesmanship. In an age when our politics has been overrun by smaller minds and overcome by petty ambitions, in a season where the senate is largely populated by comedians and mere brokers of corporate interests, where most politicians are pawns of profitable lobbies, the loss of a statesman in magnified.
Ka Blas is among the last of his incredible generation of great statesmen produced during a time when our politics was nobler and our people chose leaders on the basis of excellence. He served highest levels of the legislative and executive branches of government alongside a crop of visionary statesmen such as Lorenzo Tañada, Jovito Salonga and Jose W. Diokno.
A self-made man, Ople literally walked barefooted from Bulacan to Manila, worked as a laborer to get himself educated and then worked as a journalist when that was the profession of intellectuals. Unceasingly educating himself by reading across a wide range of topics, Ople journeyed from the political Left, riding the currents of new ideas and seeking to understand the world as it transformed.
For the longest time, Ka Blas served as Ferdinand Marcos’ labor minister. In that capacity, he ably represented the country in the international arena. When the Marcos dictatorship neared its terminal point, the dictator could not find anyone among his innermost circle commanding enough international respect to represent his case abroad.
A few days before Marcos was finally deposed by a popular uprising, the beleaguered tyrant dispatched Ople to Washington to plead for support. When the end finally came, Ople, from abroad, conceded its inevitability with the best chosen words imaginable.
When a new government was installed, Blas Ople was invited to help write a new democratic constitution.
When a new democratic arrangement was in place, Ople ran with the opposition and survived the anti-Marcos juggernaut to win a seat in the Senate.
He was with the opposition when President Gloria, in recognition of Ople’s incomparable stature and grasp of the complex issues of our foreign affairs, invited him to be Foreign Secretary. It was an invitation Ka Blas could not resist, even if it meant giving up his seat in the Senate.
In the autumn of his life, the offer was a challenge: to represent the nation at a crucial time, when the world was quickly changing and the Republic needed to be represented by a learned and sober voice.
This was the last job Ka Blas expected to hold. He wanted to accomplish that job creditably. And he did.
I have always, from a distance, deeply admired Ka Blas’ command of the issues. That command of the issues he articulated with great sophistication. No one else had such fine command of both Tagalog and English as Blas Ople. Everything he said seemed quotable. On the most delicate issue, he managed to convey his position in the finest manner conceivable.
Ka Blas was an acquaintance. I did not see enough of him as I might have wanted. Every encounter was hurried but rewarding.
Although he was very much my senior and I was very much his junior, Ka Blas always treated me collegially. He passed on to me some of the books he read. I think he saw in me a fellow traveler from socialist utopianism to visionary pragmatism.
Over the years, he said things and took political positions I strongly disagreed with. On several instances, I took a whack at him – editorially. But brusque as my writing might have been, we never lost our respect for each other.
At least a dozen times the past few years, Ka Blas invited me for breakfast. A dozen times, too, I told him I don’t wake up early enough to have breakfast.
In our busy lives, there are many conversations we miss enjoying because no common occasion could be found. An early morning conversation with Ka Blas is one of those I have now missed permanently. I regret that.
But I will always be grateful for having made the acquaintance with Blas Ople. Once he commanded me never to cease writing and speaking my mind. I have obeyed.
He gave me advice from time to time. And the wisdom he shared I value greatly.
But more than anything else, I appreciated Blas Ople because he was a patriot. He loved this nation and saw himself as the Republic’s servant. That is why the offer to be our foreign secretary was so irresistible for him.
Many eulogies will be read about Blas Ople – some of which might make him uncomfortable if he were alive. It is enough that it be said that here is a man who loved his country intensely, a brilliant and unremitting mind whose bare feet were always in touch with the warm earth.