Remembering Class of ’52

By Elmer Ordonez

THE UP Alumni Office has announced that Class of ‘52 is holding its Diamond Jubilee (60th year and up) in June this year. The surviving Class ’52 members are well into their 80s, waiting their turn or still making waves.

Take for instance former Justice Serafin Cuevas, defense counsel in the Corona impeachment trial, said to be running circles around the prosecution panel (except for a few like Farinas). Cuevas belongs to Law Class ’52, an outstanding batch of UP Diliman graduates. Consider also two former prime ministers, Salvador Laurel along with Cesar Virata (whose degrees were in engineering and business administration), one SC Chief Justice Marcelo Fernan, four SC associate justices Florentino Feli-ciano, Flerida Ruth Pineda, Serafin Cuevas and Hugo Gutierrez, one Appeals associate justice Ricardo Pronove, three senators Joker Arroyo, Santanina Tillah-Rasul (A.B. history), Salvador Laurel and Mamintal Tamano (arts-law), two Palace executive secretaries Joker Arroyo and Catalino Macaraig, Jr., Bartolome Fer-nandez, Commissoner on Audit, and justice minister Estelito Mendoza whose letter to the Supreme Court caused the tribunal to reverse its decision on the PAL employees union.

Two other Law graduates in public service were Froilan Bacungan (law dean/author of the Labor Code) and Augusto Cesar Espiritu (ambassador).

From Liberal Arts were two summa cum laude graduates, Florentino Feliciano (arts-law) and Shen Lin (B.S. math), and a number of distinguished writers including Virginia Moreno, SV Epistola, Raul R. Ingles, Maro Santaromana, Alejandrino Hu-fana, Amelia Lapena-Bonifacio, Ofelia Limcaoco, and Nimia Arroyo (all majors in English). Serafin Quiason (A.B. history) was the longest serving director of the National Library. Raul de Guzman (B.S. foreign service) became UPLB chancellor, Ale-jandro Fernandez, UP vice-president and president of Tarlac state university while Rufino Hecha-nova was President Macapagal’s finance secretary. Antonio Ari-zabal, Jr. (B.S.chemistry) became DOST secretary.

From Music I remember Ricardo Zamora (musical director of “Sunday, Sweet Sunday”) ; Education, Patria Gregorio (Bicol university president) and Ofelia Angangco (Arts and Sciences dean); Engineering, Ernesto Tabujara (UP Diliman chancellor) and Virata; Business Administration, Cesar Virata, finance minister and prime minister); and Agriculture, Jose Juliano (nuclear scientist) . Other achievers may be named by the Alumni office.

Class ’52 was one of three pioneer classes that joined the 1949 exodus to the barren heaths of sprawling Diliman campus, built before the war with two colonial-style buildings, occupied by the Japanese army and later by the U.S. military which bequathed many fabricated buildings including a gym, a theater, social hall known as Gregory Terrace, swimming pools, long quonset huts for offices and barracks and sawali cottages.. The campus was divided into areas with streets with American names. The cottages were offered at nominal rent to faculty as an inducement for them to stay since the transfer from Padre Faura was not exactly welcome. It was some 14 km from Quiapo where we took the buses to what we thought was the wilderness. The .UP alumni and parents of students were against the transfer. Like many students I was for the transfer. The ruined campus in Manila had makeshift classrooms and laboratories which leaked when it rained. President Bienvenido Gonzalez ultimately prevailed on the constituents that it was for the best.

The UP Newsletter edited by Felixberto Sta. Maria called Diliman “the brave new world.” In two years new buildings began to sprout on campus. Virginia Moreno wrote for ‘52 Philip-pinensian (which I edited):

“Rumour has it that even the raindrops in Diliman come bigger, by the child’s fist-size almost. Here the grass shoots taller, the air is rarer, the other landscape and to the painter’s eye none more color bright except that, let no one dispute this, the mountains whereon the only sun sets and rises makes a skyscape – what else could be more more perfect? So they say. And more: one goes building-hopping here; one reads volumes and not a mere book in a library that is not a room but itself a building; the engineering shop seems a factory, the Philippine Collegian is a metropolitan paper; the girls are Misses Universe, and the campus is a republic!”

Monthly socials were held at the Gregory terrace, with the dorm women residents bused in by Dean Ursula Clemente. The dance ended at eleven with the playing of Glenn Miller’s “At Last.” A few Halili buses on their last trip to Manila waited. Woe to those who missed the buses. No recourse but to beg classmates in dorms to put them up for the night.

At midnight the campus was deathly quiet. Not even the UP security police ventured out for HMB patrols roamed the campus. Former dean Francisco Nemenzo Jr. whose family lived on campus confirmed this at the launching of my book Diliman: Homage to the Fifties early last decade. My wife, then a resident of south dorm for women, remembered that they were herded to the basement when HMBs raided the PC detachment in nearby Balara. The other residents in sawali-built dorms fled to the Law building. Actually we lived in a time of checkpoints and writ suspension because of the Huk rebellion. Classmate William Pome-roy left for the hills just before the capture of the politburo including former Collegian editor Angel Baking. This is part of the context of the late 40s and early 50s when UP Diliman might have been portrayed in the Philippinensian as an idyllic grove of academe in the midst of social unrest.

(To be continued)

senators betraying public trust #cj trial

day 15, what a disaster.  i had hoped that if corona were to be impeached, it would happen fairly and squarely, and for a while there i thought the senate was doing a great job, even if it was rather lenient with the bumbling prosecution, even allowing themselves to directly question the witnesses and help make the case.  public’s right to know and all that, up to a point.  but today it was too much.

it’s as though the release of some bank records, illegally obtained at that, have brought out the predator in certain senator-jurors who must be smelling blood and are salivating for more — the dollar accounts, in particular, kasi daw, it would set a bad example for crooks in government who might put their unexplained wealth in dollar accounts, too, now that they know that dollar accounts are sacrosanct.  oh please.  as if naman people who have surplus funds don’t know that already.  and cayetano himself says, it’s a law that can be amended.  then amend it later, i say, than break the law now — enough rules and laws of court are being broken — just to satisfy their bloodlust.

it’s offensive the way these senator-jurors are suddenly behaving as though they were lily white when it comes to undeclared/doctored incomes and real estate property valuations in their SALNs and ITRs, and as if they had no dollar accounts themselves.  come on, sirs, don’t take us all for dolts naman.  and stop using “the people” as an excuse.  i daresay that the way things are going, the people would accept a decision along the lines of: okay, noted, enough-is-enough, move on.  after all there are 7 more articles to go.  or can it be that the 7 other articles are duds?  it’s the bank records or nothing?  bank records that the 188 reps + farinas didn’t even know about when they impeached the chief justice?  wow.  farinas could be right, they’re all in this together.  what a betrayal of public trust.

 

Burning and boredom #cj trial

By Rene Azurin

When the senator-judges at the Corona impeachment trial chose to wear blood red robes, I thought that it was because they imagined themselves to be Grand Inquisitor Tomas de Torquemada since he, legend has it, wore red robes when trying accused heretics, blasphemers, witches, and homosexuals. That fanatical temon of the dreaded Spanish Inquisition sentenced over 2,000 such unfortunates to burn at the stake, so one can guess that his trials were not ho-hum affairs. Not like the boring one now unfolding on afternoon TV.

The problem must be that our senator-judges choose not to match their demeanor to their fearsome red robes. With one notable exception, they take pains to speak quietly and respectfully, almost as if trying to assure the viewing public that they are not in fact fanatical friars in blood red robes. Other than that one notable exception, no one in the cast of red-robed characters evokes the appropriate image of the truly mad, wild-eyed bigot spewing fire from tremulous lips. There is also the added fact that no accused is present in the tableau, no bloody broken product of the torturer’s rack, no helpless heap of bones to be pelted with screaming rants that it is surely the devil’s spawn. Oh well, I am probably dredging up images from an old movie. But, truth to tell, I find this particular version of the daytime reality show sleep-inducing even if it is ending in the figurative equivalent of a burning at the stake.

That ending is obvious. Just noting the statements that have already issued from the President (and his minions) and the unrestrainable efforts of congressman-prosecutors to make their case in the media rather than in the courtroom makes it clear that the non-negotiable goal is nothing less than a public burning at the stake. Especially disturbing to those searching for any indicators of fair play is the continuing penchant of congressman-prosecutors for releasing willy-nilly to the press so-called evidence considered inadmissible in court. The obvious strategy is, if we can’t burn him in the courtroom, let’s burn him in the streets and coffee shops.

One can speculate that the red-robed senator-judges’ often labored attempts at essaying postures of reasonableness and impartiality are simply intended to obscure the fact that there is already an execution by fire actually in progress. But, it is useless trying to persuade the public that objectivity and fairness will characterize this purported trial. No one I have talked to really believes that political considerations and pecuniary incentives have not already determined how this “trial” will end. Like Torquemada’s mock trials, that is a foregone conclusion. By the way, this is not to say that people do not think that Chief Justice Corona is guilty of at least some of the impeachment charges (they do), only that people do not think that pork-salivating politicos — whether senator-judges or congressman-prosecutors — are realistic models of impartiality and objectivity.

So end it already. As quickly as possible, since everybody already knows what its final outcome will be. Unless it is to provide aging viewers a helpful soporific to make them slip fitfully into their afternoon siestas, there is no longer any point for daytime TV to continue inflicting a boring reality show on an exasperated public. Me, I have already tuned out.

For future impeachment trials — since another one is forthcoming soon, that of Supreme Court Associate Justice Mariano del Castillo — let me suggest that the Senate adopt a simpler, more straightforward, and shorter procedure. The procedure I propose is to just allow prosecutors to present and argue their case in full (with audio-visual presentations if they like) before senator-judges, then letting defense counsels similarly answer and argue their case in full. Of course, hard copies of all the arguments and documentary evidence offered by each side will be collated in binders filed with the impeachment court. Each side’s complete case will thus be in a bound book that will also be made available to the public (via Web).

After hearing the oral presentations and studying the filed binders, it will then be up to the senator-judges — presumably still in blood red robes — to call any witness they might want to ask questions of in order to clarify certain issues or validate certain alleged facts. (Unlike Torquemada, though, they will not be allowed to subject witnesses to the rack.) In this proposed procedure, it will be the senator-judges asking questions of witnesses, not the counsels for the prosecution or defense. In this way, questions will be limited and basically clarificatory in nature, and time-consuming objections can be avoided. After the senator-judges have satisfied themselves with respect to particular concerns, they can immediately vote to settle the guilt or innocence of the accused. With this procedure, senator-judges can run through impeachment cases like a production line, a convenient thing since at least seven more allegedly pro-Arroyo justices have yet to be impeached.

For us, the Filipino public, we ought to be thoroughly aware that, in the end, the result of the impeachments of Supreme Court justices is the burning at the stake of the institution of the Judiciary. Even if the justices subject of the current impeachment proceedings might truly deserve to be impeached, the practical effect will be that no justice henceforth will dare rule against or offend a sitting president who, because of the largesse a president can offer, can readily get 80-odd congressmen to impeach a justice for “high crimes” and 16 senators to find him guilty. The so-called independence of the Judiciary will be effectively over. No more checks for the power of the Chief Executive. He will be able to do what he wants and get all the judicial rulings he needs, including those benefiting him personally, whether these concern executive privilege, election sabotage, sweetheart deals, or even haciendas.

The critical issue then is, since the building up of institutions is a sine qua non for the maturing of a democratic society, if the burning down of a concededly ineffectual and possibly rotting Judiciary will ultimately result in the bettering of the lot of the long suffering Filipino people. Clearly, that will depend on what is put in the burned structure’s place. No one (I think) wants a return to Torquemada’s 15th century and an era when the perceived lack of faith in a prevailing doctrine or reigning king is punishable by burning.

“anonymous source” #cj trial

what goes on kaya behind the closed doors of a senate caucus, especially the one today yesterday where they “refined” the decision to compel bank officials to bring and testify on corona’s bank accounts, with the caveat of course that this is an exception, bank secrecy laws hold.  of course. they also have to be protecting their own interests — they have SALNs and BIR records, plenty properties and huge bank accounts too — but with the second-envelop fiasco on everybody’s mind, they are bending over backward and allowing the prosecution to subpoena practically any and all documents desired, never mind defense objections, para hindi sabihin ng taongbayan na kumakampi sila kay corona at meron silang itinatago o ipinapatago.  a boon to the prosecution.

it’s a highwire act for the senators, keeping a balance, keeping the people out of the streets.  yesterday was tense.  would the senate order that corona’s bank records be subpoenaed or not.  but it was like the decision had been taken out of their hands.  media was already feasting on the juicy details of alleged dollar accounts based on documents provided  the prosecution by an  “anonymous source”.  the senate could not have said no, never mind that that anonymous source is an illegal source.  probably a concerned citizen, said the prosecution lawyer who received the documents.

i wonder about this concerned citizen.  did she act independently?  motivated only by personal anti-corona sentiments?  or did she act upon instructions from someone powerful who’s pulling strings behind-the-scenes?  sana she acted independently.  because if she didn’t, then that’s bad news.  worse even, we’ll probably never know.