Al Yuchengco’s legacy

When Alfonso T. Yuchengco was building his business and financial empire, he might have been inspired by the claim of the Israeli Chaum Weizmann, to wit: "The impossible we do immediately; miracles take a little longer."

Mr. Yuchengco’s empire, at its present staggering expanse, makes Weizmann’s claim Mr. Yuchengco’s own. However, Mr. Yuchengco insists he owes everything to luck accompanied by a great deal of work. Nevertheless, he will not trade his good name, his solid reputation for honesty and integrity, for any amount of money. He will give up his vast fortune at once if someone succeeds in besmirching his unblemished reputation.

His biography, "To Leave a Good Name", started by the country’s premier writer Nick Joaquin and continued by the brilliant poet-essayist Alfredo (Krip) Yuson, says as much and infinitely more.

Born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth, Alfonso belongs to a wealthy Chinese merchant family which was elevated to the Mandarin class when an ancestor, an appointed officer in the imperial foreign service, had a title bestowed on him by the Emperor.

At De la Salle College, the young Alfonso consorted not with the Chinese but with the Filipinos and mestizos, among them Pinggoy Revilla (screen actor Armando Goyena); the barkada also included Leo Prieto, Richard "Poteng" Tillman, Sammy Sharuf, Eddie Russell, Peter Sy, Cesar Majul, Charles Winternitz.

Alfonso was a regular guy; he and his gang played dice or poker in the washroom until they were caught. The boys would bring ten or twenty centavos for baon but Alfonso always had a 50-peso bill in his pocket. He was conducted to school in the family car. Generously, he would treat his friends to the movies or give them a "blow-out". In any subscription drive, he would buy all the subscriptions, thus saving his classmates a lot of work.

The book traces his ascent to the top of the business world – where, like King Midas, he turned everything he touched to gold – underscoring his consistent hewing to the straight and narrow, without ever taking advantage of his peers.

His career as a diplomat, though brief, was brilliant. As ambassador to Japan, he increased business and trade between Japan and the Philippines to such an extent that the Emperor gave him two decorations. He paved the way for President Cory’s visit with Deng Xiao Ping who promised that China would stop supporting the Communist movement in the Philippines, a promise duly kept. As permanent representative to the UN, with rank of ambassador, Mr. Yuchengco secured a seat for the Philippines in the UN Security Council – a tremendous coup indeed for a Third World country!

In the UN and elsewhere, Mr. Yuchengco hobnobbed with some of the world’s most powerful men: President Clinton, Israeli PM Shimon Peres, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, US Secretary of State Colin Powell, Tibet’s Dalai Lama. His sense of humor surfaced when, after being photographed with screen actor Pierce Brosnan, he suggested the caption: "Agent 006 meets Agent 007". As ambassador, he was given an unprecedented farewell dinner at the Great Wall of China.

Mr. Yuchengco’s charities and community service are legend: The annual Mother Teresa Awards, the yearly scholarship grants to hundreds of student leaders throughout the country, the medical missions that are sent to remote barrios, the clinic he named after his mother; the nine-story building he named after his wife and donated to his alma mater (DLSU) – these are but a few expressions of his civic spirit.

To sum up, Ambassador Yuchengco will leave behind for us to emulate his honesty and integrity, his nationalism – he is more Filipino than most Filipinos – his sense of humanity (his unremitting concern for the dispossessed), his appreciation and patronage of the arts, and his profound humility which calls to mind a line from Rudyard Kipling’s poem "If", here paraphrased: He walks with kings yet keeps the common touch.