Manong Johnny

I first saw Juan Ponce Enrile in person when he crossed from Camp Aguinaldo to Camp Crame, escorted by heavily armed soldiers, the day after he withdrew support from the Marcos regime. The contingent from the UP community was positioned at the gate of Camp Crame. We found ourselves awkwardly cheering Enrile and his troops.

I first met Juan Ponce Enrile at St. James Academy in Malabon. He came to receive an outstanding alumnus award shortly after the Edsa Uprising. A contender for the same award, I was asked instead to introduce the guest of honor.

The chore was fairly standard. The awardee did not need much of an intro. I could not resist ribbing the guest of honor, however, and welcomed him onstage “as a fellow Jamer — and my jailor.”

Enrile was ebullient that afternoon and did not show offense, offering a high-five and then a tight handclasp. Reconciliation was the theme of that heady time.

From time to time, I would run into this prominent individual in public gatherings. Each time, I routinely reintroduced myself. Each time, he remembers who I was. This is a man with the memory of an elephant, I always thought.

On December 8, 1997, JPE sent me a copy of the Cambridge International Dictionary of English. I remember the date exactly because he wrote a rather extensive note on the first page in his enviable penmanship. This is the dictionary I keep handy when I write.

Over the weekend, I was more intimately introduced to the person by way of a book, Juan Ponce Enrile: A Memoir. The memoir, a venture of ABS-CBN Publishing will be launched today.

Nelson Navarro, the memoir’s editor, says JPE handed him a 2,000-page manuscript the man somehow managed to write despite the toxic schedules he keeps. Navarro boiled down the manuscript to about 700 pages. That must have been quite a job. The narrative brims with so much interesting detail.

Those details are the stuff of our nation’s political history. JPE, after all, was at the center of the swirl of events, historic and sometimes turbulent. He lived long and remembers well, this man with the memory of an elephant.

An ardent student of Filipino politics, I wanted to read this important memoir ahead of everybody else. I nagged Gigi Reyes for a review copy and was rewarded for the insistence. This is a weighty book, literally and figuratively. From cover to cover, it is hard to put down despite its weight.

Nelson’s editorial intervention notwithstanding, the memoir remains pretty much in Manong Johnny’s voice. Reading it is like listening to the man speak. The prose is diligent and disciplined, pretty much like the man is. The narrative is surprisingly dispassionate even as it delves into many of the most controversial and explosive events of the past several decades.

The events might be familiar to those who closely observed the twists and turns of our politics but the angle is unique. This is history from the privileged view of the insider. This is the ultimate inside story of the interesting times we lived, the quirky politics that consumed us all.

The beauty of a memoir, as distinguished from a biography, is that it is strictly personal. The narrative takes us through the events we observed only as spectators, shares with us the crucial relationships between those events and the people who made them happen. It shares with us the thoughts that ran through this man’s mind during the most vital moments: everything from worrying about his family’s safety to his appraisal of other people’s characters when grave decisions had to be made.

As expected, there are many revelations made in this book that will surely reignite debate and spark controversy. Those revelations are always grounded on the facts and reasoned in the most lawyerly way. Consequently, they come across matter-of-factly.

I will not break the suspense and deal with those revelations today. I will only say that I wish I had this reference on hand in 1997 when I was writing the volume on Filipino politics through the fifties and sixties. That volume is part of the 10-book series Kasaysayan: The Story of the Filipino People released in 1998 to help mark the first century of our nationhood. Some parts of that volume might need recasting in the light of what JPE now makes known.

Because this memoir is written in a most personal away, it avoids the trap of ascending to the pulpit of an ideologue or descending to the soapbox of a partisan. The man lived long and lived well. There is nothing more to prove. There is no inclination to posture.

This book exists solely to serve the ends of remembering. Recollection is a gift. The recollections of a man who was there where it mattered, who saw and heard, who made fateful moves that altered historical outcomes, is a gift to the nation.

Here we have a reliable reference from the proverbial horse’s mouth. It is written with honesty and fairness. When we reach back into history and reassess the turning points, we will know better because Manong Johnny remembered well.

What I found impressive, as I reached the final page, is the sheer absence of any regret or bitterness in this tome. The man took life as it came. He was respectful even of those who were adversaries. Through it all, he maintained an independent mind and looked at the world with a keen and constantly curious eye.

All who wish to understand what happened must read this.