San Antonio de Mimosa

IT COMES with age, advancing age. The current of events flowing to confluence with the ebbing tides of memories. Not exactly that sense of déjà vu but instances where the present finds instant link with the past.

Like last week’s news of “dispossessed” Mimosa golfers taking to task the Filinvest Group which took over Clark’s premium leisure estate. A flash in the diminishing memory bank prompted a quick search through clippings yellowed by time, and voila, this Zona Libre piece in The Voice, Oct. 24-30, 1999. Not so much for context  in the light of what-is, as for a simple what-was story. Any conclusion from there, strictly the reader’s.   

San Antonio de Mimosa

MORE THAN simple awakening, last week’s Focus on Señor Don Jose Antonio Gonzalez sounded a lot like an epiphany, some revelatory manifestation akin to Saul’s at Gate of Damascus. Minus the blinding light and the booming voice though.

“Of what use is earning P100 billion when you die – and all of us are going to die – if you were not able to help people,” the Señor Don was quoted as saying, in paraphrase of the biblical admonition to the rich and powerful: “What does it profit a man if he gained the whole world but loses his soul?”

I wanted to cry as I read the story. Like I do whenever I attend priestly ordinations. Seeing the spiritual transformation, one man’s transcendence from mortal pursuits to divine missions.

But I could not. I could not for the life of me sense, even if only minutely perceive, a San Antonio de Mimosa rising out of the cocoon of Señor Don Jose Antonio Gonzalez. Blame my hardened biases for this. The coño mindset blurs any and all other images of the Señor Don.

Dispensa, Señor Don. But much as I would like to believe the very convincing parable this paper’s editor wrote of you, I just cannot take it as gospel truth. Again, blame my biases.

My ossified intellectual and emotional fixity on Señor Don Jose Antonio Gonzalez is that of the conquistador not altogether dissimilar to Pizarro or Cortez, they who doomed the Incas and the Aztecs to extinction.

Wasn’t the old Mount Pinatubo Golf Club which restored and rebuilt the Clark golf course from tons of volcanic ashes in 1992 doomed by the Señor Don’s takeover of the course?

Not the conscience-driven corporate man but the astute businessman in the mold of Gordon Gecko of the film Wall Street do I see in the Señor Don.

Gecko’s corporate motto “Greed is Good” is all that comes to mind when I read about the Señor Don’s reported run-in with banks to the tune of P4.6 billion, of CDC demands for back rentals amounting to some half billion pesos, of unpaid BIR taxes and Pagcor obligations amounting to way over a hundred million more. Simply mind-boggling.

Dispensa, Señor Don. Yo no comprendo. I do not understand. You had that mighty sum from the banks. Mimosa – the casino and its voluptuous Russian cancan girls, most especially – was one giant money-making venture. You did not pay CDC, BIR and Pagcor. But you’re claiming near bankruptcy.

Donde esta dinero, Señor Don?

En la Palma de Mallorca? Or is it Ibiza? Or in one unobtrusive ciudad de Madre España? As some wags have long been circulating in the Manila coffeeshops.

“I was overwhelmed by the spiritual wakening,” the Señor Don said. That brought to mind one of the Psalms: “If today you hear His voice, harden not your hearts.”

So the Señor Don heard the voice.

Now, will he start fulfilling the obligations stipulated in his agreement with the CDC sometime in June? To pay the CDC P325 million for back rentals; return 22 to 25 hectares of leased property to the government; pay the BIR P22 millionand Pagcor 83 million.

As he appeared to have rendered to God what is God’s, shall he now render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s?

So my editor sees a spiritually transformed Señor Don Jose Antonio Gonzalez. One who is not even a shadow of the long-ago Castilian stonewalling every attempt of the CDC to make him pay back rentals. One who is not remotely connected to the Castila who sneered at the former Indio boss at CDC – the current one is of Parian-Insulare gentry – snootily telling him: “Don’t serve me those demand papers if you don’t want to see them thrown into the garbage can.”

So the Señor Don has been transformed, epiphanized, if we go by our editor’s account.

So should we now also change our perception of the Señor Don? Should we now also hear the voice and soften our hearts?

Epiphany leads to conversion. Thus, Saul becoming Paul. The process though is not instant. It involves remorse, repentance, restitution, recompense, retribution.

Dispensa, Señor Don.

But it is still a long, long way before I can see you under the same lights you are now seen in that well-crafted Focus article last week.

Besides, when it comes to missions of apostleship, I am a little wary with the  Señor Don. Or have you forgotten all about his Malou apostolate?

Maybe, I should undergo an epiphany of my own.

(For the record: It is to the credit of JAG, as the Don is fondly called, that the Mimosa course became one of the most desired golf courses in the country, even hosting then No. 1 Tiger Woods in an exhibition play, and the value of membership shares shot through the roof. Mimosa’s Viva Las Vegas was also, at JAG’s time, the premium entertainment venue north of Metro Manila.       

It was during the CDC presidency of Rufo Colayco, sometime in 1999, that JAG lost control of the Mimosa Leisure Estate, which then came under CDC administration – and its reported dilapidation -- until its award to the Filinvest Group this year.)