The tale of two magazine covers

We had a dilemma in People Asia Magazine, a publication of Stargate Corporation which is a sister company, in real terms a subsidiary firm of The Philippine STAR. Since the election canvassing is still ongoing, as Publisher and Chairman of Stargate, I had the problem dumped in my lap – to make the decision.

Since our partner, Stargate President and CEO Babe Romualdez is currently in Puerto Rico (ostensibly on business, but probably doing the Mambo, or whatever), I didn’t bother to consult him. I instructed Editor-in-Chief Joanne Rae Ramirez to produce two covers. One had a regal GMA over the headline, Gloria in Excelsis at Last. The other had FPJ, labelled Da King.

I’m confessing this right now because you know this town. Full of spite and rumor-mongering. It’s a very kissy-kissy society we have, but often enough it’s the Kiss of Judas, or Kulasa.

I apologize to the other "Presidentiables", but, shucks, they already know their making it is a 1,000-to-one shot. Brother Eddie Villanueva, of course, is still waiting for God to step in (he hasn’t got the chance of a snowflake in hell of getting the nod from the Comelec). Even the International Herald Tribune yesterday published his evangelical quote: "We cannot accept a bogus president!" That was pithy and well-put, but it’s like spitting in the wind. Who knows, Bangon’s bet may yet edge out gallant Raul Roco as the campaign’s valiant tail-ender?

As for Raul, he has just courteously conceded the election. His statement as Aksyon Demokratiko president stated: "At 3:52 this afternoon I congratulated President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for the mandate she has received from the people as indicated by published results." Roco pledged to continue working "for a new moral regime in our country".

Raul fought a Good Fight. Leading all the way in the early, pre-December poll surveys, he painfully saw his lead narrow, then vanish entirely. He was felled by illness, then returned to finish his campaign – honorably, despite his pain. Mabuhay, Raul! Our country, I know, will continue to depend on you.

Senator Kamay na Bakal Panfilo Lacson, too, fought hard and true. He continues to monitor the ballots, keeping up the fight. However, he is realistic. He also pledges to battle on for what’s right, and for the nation’s good. If you ask me, he’s in search of a political party (having left the LDP – or been expelled). The NP or LP?

This has been a very bad election, whatever the Commission on Elections may resentfully claim. It’s not a joke that 800,000 to one million voters may have been disenfranchised by their names disappearing from the voters’ lists, or from their accustomed precincts. Bungling, incompetence – or malicious mischief? Those remain to be established.

As for the Koalisyon ng Nagkakaisang Pilipino, of course they must go on monitoring the canvassing, and protesting all irregularities that may surface. Who knows FPJ might "really" be winning? The canvassing is still on.

But there’s a sense of ennui among our population. Trouble ahead? One cannot live on predictions of gloom, or revolution, or civil strife. An EDSA Cuatro? The intrusion of Communist meddlers is strong evidence especially Ka Roger Rosal’s latest brag that the rebel movement expects the discontent and fury of the KNP to trigger mass actions and street protests in the weeks to come.

Yeah, and Roger-Baby’s boys and girls will be in the forefront of them? Sus, Ka Roger always gets better radio and TV coverage than our friend, Fernando Poe Jr. In short, FPJ may be Da King, but Ka Roger is the Chief Commissar of radio-TV Entertainment.

* * *

Yesterday, Enrique Zobel died, at the age of 77, in The Asian Hospital in Alabang.

Ironically, he expired on "Makati Day", a celebration of Mayor Jojo Binay which had largely forgotten "Enzo" and the fact that he and "Uncle Joe" McMicking had envisioned and built out of cogon grass and carabao-wallow wilderness the metropolis of concrete, chrome, glass skyscrapers which is the Makati City we know today.

It’s a tragedy that this dynamic, outspoken, athletic polo-playing tycoon had to live the last 13 years of his life in a wheel-chair. He had fallen from his pony – dragged down by his polo stick which got entangled in his horse’s legs – after a chucker in Marbella, Spain. Enzo never recovered the use of his limbs – and had been paralyzed from the neck down, like the former "Superman" (Christopher Reeve) – his mind as sharp and alert as ever, until the end.

Enzo, the eldest of the seventh generation of the Zobel de Ayala family – originally from the Basque region of Spain – had joined his uncle-in-law, Joseph McMicking, in 1948, first pioneering in building the Makati financial district, then assuming the presidency of the Ayala Corp. until his aunt, Uncle Joe’s wife Mercedes (who owned almost everything), removed him, irritated with Enzo’s having sold the Ayala Corp.’s 25 percent interest in San Miguel Corp. during an ownership dispute in that premier brewing corporation. That’s when control over the Ayala conglomerate fell to Zobel’s first cousin, Jaime Zobel de Ayala, and now Don Jaime’s son, Jaime Augusto Zobel.

Enrique, whose late father we also knew very well in our family, was always a maverick. His father, Don Jacobo Zobel (the late Colonel liked to be called "Jake"), had been an intimate of the late President Manuel L. Quezon, and had, at MLQ’s instance, organized the Commonwealth government’s first Cavalry Unit. You bet. This was a family which loved horses and almost "lived" on horseback. In the end, this was what did Enzo – in.

However, what happened to him was typically Enrique. He was an action man, and his unbridled tongue sometimes got him into trouble. Indeed, he loved trouble. He once declared that you have to be able to tell the difference between "the idle rich" and "the working rich". Enzo boomed, without apologizing for his wealth, that he was helping build our nation as one of "the working rich".

And this was true.

All I had to do to refresh my mind on this was go back to the December 1981 issue of Manila Magazine which I ran (when martial law eased up the "prohibition" on me) together with my former partner, Dr. Ricky Soler.

In that issue, we had featured Makati, including our friend, the late Tough Guy Mayor (and former pier "hoodlum" by his own boast) Nemesio Yabut. I had assigned one of our editors, Tetch B. Canon to do the section on Quo Vadis Ayala? The article reminds us that not only did Enzo erect Makati, but he re-invented the old Quezonian injunction, "Go South, Young Man" – meaning not to settle in Mindanao but in Ayala’s "New Alabang Village" some 18 kilometers away. Traffic still "hurts" Ayala Alabang somewhat, but that, too, was part of Enrique’s vision of tomorrow – and during less-than-peak hours, it is – true to his promise – 20 minutes away from Makati.

* * *

When Uncle Joe and "Eezee" (as he was then called) launched what they dubbed a 25-year "Makati master plan" in 1949, many people laughed at the idea. They chortled: Who could move out to that no-man’s-land of talahib and rock? It was the topic of amusement and disbelief at cocktail parties. The ones who laughed last – and their progeny today still do – are the "lunatic" few who bought lots in Forbes Park at the ridiculously low price of four pesos per square meter.

In her article, Tetch wrote what was to become an eerie prediction. Speaking about the style of "brash, breezy Enrique Zobel," she pointed out, "If Enriquito, or Eezee (as only his chums dare call him) envisions any fall at all, it will only be from a polo pony – in that fast-riding game which he plays with as much aggression as he conducts business or throws off pugnacious bon mots in the five or six speeches he delivers each year – speeches consisting mainly of broadsides against red tape, bureaucracy, and anything that appears to hamper progress and efficient management, or whatever annoys him in general or in particular."

Enrique did fall off a polo pony. But he went on delivering broadsides for years after his "paralysis". Nothing could paralyze that brain – and "uncensored" tongue!

Farewell, Eezee! Off into the sky on the wings of Pegasus! Free at last to gallop again to your rightful reward.