My Lenten reflection

Yesterday was Ash Wednesday and suddenly the Lenten season is now upon us. For us Catholics, it is a time to slow down and put the brakes on our daily hectic schedules, and move away from the fast lane to ponder and reflect on whether or not we’ve stepped on the toes of people or our friends or relatives. Call it a coincidence that the column we wrote exactly a week ago last Thursday entitled “That EDSA extravaganza in Cebu” seems to have gotten the ire of President Benigno “P-Noy” Aquino III while in Malaysia, this columnist felt alluded to even though he did not mention my name.

I first learned about it when my good friend, Rick Ramos emailed me the link from GMA News on the same day written by Kimberly Jane Tan entitled “EDSA Celebration.” Naturally, I got a lot of text and email messages congratulating me for becoming a fly in the President’s lamp, mostly coming from the multitude of Aquino bashers. But if you think that I was thrilled that finally the President hit back at me, I wasn’t. In fact my wife got scared and told me that I should watch out.

I’ve always been alert for any telltale signs that some government agency might just pounce on me with orders from the top.  But I have nothing to hide. This is why in the past week I spent a lot of time reflecting before the Blessed Sacrament asking the Lord for forgiveness if we have done anyone wrong.

I even called my dear friend and fellow STAR columnist Mrs. Carmen “Chit” Pedrosa for her motherly advice, after all, she too got the ire of the conjugal Marcos Dictatorship when she wrote the book “The Untold Story of Imelda Marcos” that caused her family to go on exile to London. That book sold more than 300,000 copies and was re-launched last July 2013.

My reflection brought me back to the first time I was in New York City to visit my brother Rene in September 1972 just two weeks before Martial Law was declared. With the Philippines under Martial Law, my father decided that we could stay in the US. So I got myself a job in a gas station for a dollar an hour. I quit after a day’s work because I felt this is not the kind of work that I studied in college for. I took up and finished Business Administration at the University of San Jose-Recoletos back in 1972.

New York in those days would have been the perfect place if one wanted to go on TNT. If I did that, I’d probably be legit by now and living like many Filipinos in the Big Apple. But I said to myself this is not the life I wanted, as we’d just be one of the ants in that big anthill called America. So I returned home because we had a better chance to help our country, even if the Marcoses were helping themselves to the nation’s coffers.

So when the early ’80s came, Atty. Raul Gonzales who later would become DOJ Secretary under Pres. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, recruited me to the United Nationalist Democratic Organization (UNIDO). Since our family was banking with Philbanking, which the Laurel family owned, I became close to then Sen. Salvador “Doy” Laurel, as it was natural for a Cebuano like me to be anti-Marcos. When the late Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. was assassinated in Aug. 1983, all the more we wanted Marcos out.

Sometime in June 1986, I was vice-president of the Cebu Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Inc. (CCCI) and we had Sir Max Soliven as our guest speaker. I was tasked to fetch him in the airport because I already knew him a couple of years back when he was the guest speaker of our Rotary Club. When I met him in the tarmac, he was holding a bunch of newspapers on his arm and I took it away from him and was surprised to see that it was a new newspaper called The Philippine STAR. Yes the Chamber invited Sir Max as an Inquirer columnist and he arrived in Cebu as publisher of the STAR.

It was to be the beginning of a great relationship with Sir Max Soliven who immediately recruited me to be the STAR’s Cebu bureau chief. After a year of training under Sir Max, he asked me to write for the STAR… but before I could proceed, I must go to the STAR office and be interviewed by Ma’am Betty Go-Belmonte.

I was in Ma’am Betty’s office for 40-minutes but I will never forget her advice to me, when she got hold of the Star that day and showed me what was written in our masthead, “Truth Shall Prevail.” Ma’am Betty said to me, “Bobit, when you write make sure you do not embarrass the newspaper and the only way to do that is to write only the truth as the truth shall set you free. The truth will also keep you away from libel suits.” 

Going back to the article we wrote about the EDSA Celebration, we only told the truth and nothing but the truth. Yet it irked the President, perhaps because the truth really hurts. So here it goes, Mr. President I’m sorry if that article offended you. But I had to write the truth about Cebu’s role prior to the EDSA Revolt and yes, for the sake of transparency, there is nothing wrong if we asked you how much did the EDSA event cost.

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