Tributes

The passing away of Haydee Yorac is like the dimming of a light that once burned so fiercely. Many journalists looked up to the lawyer as a beacon of hope, of inspiration, of delight, because she stood for so many good things that are rarely to be found: honesty, integrity, justice and fairness, truth.

The other evening, a necrological service held at the Santuario de San Antonio in Makati was a manifestation of the esteem and affection which journalists and artists had for her. Each bearer of message solemnly paid their tribute to the woman who feared nothing or no one – rich men, politicians, government officials – who trampled on the rights of the less privileged.

Senator Joker Arroyo had good things to say of his colleague. So had Nelson Navarro, who had known Haydee when he was still a student at the University of the Philippines and who, because he had written or caused to be written, incendiary articles against the loss of freedom in the country when he was Philippine Collegian editor, fled to New York as he was being hunted by the Marcos pawns.

Ellen Tordesillas of Malaya was such a big fan of Haydee that, she said, she even got Haydee’s cancer. The day before Ellen went under the knife, Haydee had told her, "Kaya mo yan."

Behn Cervantes recalled how the feisty lawyer defended him and his colleagues when they were in hot water. Vyva Aguirre had much to say of her law professor and later, boss, when she became a commissioner in the Presidential Commission for Good Government where Haydee had spent the last few years of her life looking for the truth about the Marcoses’ hidden wealth.

Norma Crisologo Liongoren, a big, big fan and friend of Haydee, did not speak, but she told this columnist that Haydee was a great lover of paintings. She frequented the Liongoren Gallery and looked at paintings for a long time, and, with her limited budget, bought a few over the years.

At the service, Sheila Coronel, executive director of the award-winning Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism, read from a script that she had painstakingly, and lovingly, worked on. The message expresses the kind of person, mentor, and idol that Haydee was to many people. I asked Sheila for permission to reprint her tribute, for others to read.

"Haydee Yorac told it like it is. This is about as rare in public life as a polar bear in Boracay. If it were more common, our country wouldn’t be in the fix it is in today. There would be no need for apologies, no crises triggered by ‘lapses in judgment.’

"Haydee dazzled because she told the unvarnished truth.

"If there is anything that Haydee’s life has shown us, it is this: You can tell the truth and get away with it. You can tell the truth and still be so loved, so respected and so feared. Haydee knew, much more than anyone in public life today, the awesome power of truth, of honesty and of personal integrity.

"Unfortunately, truth-telling is uncommon these days, not just in politics but also in the profession to which I belong. I have been in journalism for over 20 years and I can tell you that the media often give more space to the ‘beautiful twilight’ of falsehood, flattery and prevarication than to the glaring light of truth.

"That is why we needed Haydee. She showed us glimpses of that light. She had a bullshit detector better than anyone of us had. I know this from personal experience because some years ago, I was asked to introduce her as the keynote speaker at a media conference. I, of course, went overboard. It is not difficult to be hyperbolic about Haydee.

"She wasn’t pleased. She told me half-jokingly that she thought I was beyond sycophancy. Ok, maybe I was sucking up to her. After all, I am a big Haydee fan. Her law firm was also giving us free legal advice. And let’s admit it, we all have an inner Joe de Venecia in all of us. I thought I had restrained mine better than most. But Haydee was too sharp to let it pass. She knew that words come easily to us, smooth talk even easier.

"The moral of the story is: You can’t get one over Haydee. You don’t even try. Ask her former law students. Ask Danding Cojuangco. Ask Imee Marcos and Ali Dimapuro. Ask RAM and the MNLF and the NDF. They will tell you that Haydee had uncommon wisdom and uncommon sense. She had a razor-sharp intellect. She had a mind that was so clear because it was uncluttered by ambition or by lust for wealth or power. It was a mind that was free because it was not shackled to a personal, political or ideological agenda.

"Journalists don’t see such clarity very often. She told EVEN US the painful truth. At that media conference, she quoted Camus, who was both a novelist and a journalist. The French writer famously said: ‘A free press can be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press can never be anything but bad.’

"Without missing a beat and flashing that famous glare, Haydee then proceeded to tell the journalists present there that thus far, in the Philippines, Camus’ promise, that a free press can be good remained largely in the realm of existential possibility rather than reality.

"This is why Haydee will be so sorely missed. Everyone sucks up to the media in this country, but not her. And yet, even if she didn’t wine or dine journalists or schmooze with editors or columnists, she had an enviably good press. Every journalist I know had real, not just grudging, respect for her. We were all in awe of her. It makes me wonder: if we had more public officials like Haydee Yorac, men and women who appeal to our nobler, rather than baser, instincts, would we also not have a better press? Or for that matter, a better society?

"As head of the National Unification Commission, she went around the country to probe the roots of conflict. She saw that it was not ideology, but the hunger and thirst for justice that drove rebellion. As a human rights lawyer during the Marcos era, Haydee had already realized that people did not need the law, they needed justice. Peace, she said, could be obtained only through a social contract for a just, humane, and equitable society. ‘The peaceful resolutions of armed conflict,’ she said then, meant ‘neither blame nor surrender, but dignity for all.’

Haydee had that kind of greatness that stood out in times of despair. We sorely need it now. But now that she is gone, we have to find that greatness in our own selves. ‘In the depth of winter,’ Camus wrote, ‘I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.’

"This is a winter as deep, as harsh as any. The greatest tribute we can pay to the great Filipina we are honoring tonight is to find the invincible Haydee within all of us."

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My e-mail: [email protected]