Maximus Emeritus

IN OVER a year’s time, the Pampanga Press Club will turn 75 – arguably the nation’s oldest province-based media organization, unarguably older than the National Press Club that was founded only in 1952. In assembly, the general membership deemed it time to institute the title “President Emeritus” in the club’s hierarchy.  

Out of sheer merit and wisdom that comes with age – as the honorific shall be bestowed upon the oldest, living, past president of the club still engaged in journalism practice – no one but the erudite Maximo Lumanlan Sangil is most deserving of the title. More aptly, PPC president emeritus is truly deserving of Maximus.

While the PPC was, per oral tradition, founded in 1949, its recorded history as a formal organization commenced only in 1978 when Max – at the time Daily Express correspondent and established broadcast journalist – took over its presidency. And along with it, the constitution and by-laws that also codified the old protocols and ethical standards of journalism practice in Pampanga as elsewhere.

Max, it was too that in 1980 revitalized the Central Luzon Media Association – the first-ever regional aggrupation of working media persons in the whole Philippines – starting off with the framing of its constitution and by-laws, onto the group’s partnership with the then-Department of Public Information in three crusades: the anti-pollution campaign that forced polluting sugar mills, pulp and paper manufacturing factories in Pampanga, Bulacan, and Bataan to put up pollution-abatement facilities; the anti-illegal gambling drive that resulted to the sacking of a regional Philippine Constabulary commander, provincial commanders, and chiefs of police; and the anti-illegal dikes campaign which resulted to the demolition of some 300 dikes encroaching the waterways of Bataan, Bulacan, and Pampanga. 

As CLMA president, Max maintained a weekly column in one local newspaper in every province in the region. It was too during his term that the fortnightly Central Luzon Media Forum at the DPI office levelled up to host primarily Cabinet secretaries, most notably Ka Blas Ople of Labor who took an avuncular fondness for Max.  

Re-elected in 1981, Max holds the distinction of being the only CLMA president who succeeded himself. Successive reelection in the organization has since been prohibited in the organization.

Distinction does, indeed, define Max.

At the time journalism practice was distinguished between print and broadcast – with the twain as far removed as from west to east – Max was already both, and more: national daily correspondent, columnist, editor-publisher (Live News) in print; and commentator, newscaster, even for times station manager, in broadcast.

By all means, among all Pampanga mediapersons present and past, living or dead, nobody beats Max in the number of publications that bore his byline, in the number of radio stations that aired his voice. When cable TV came into the scene, Max went on-screen. In the dot.com age Max has kept with it, going livestream.    

Named most aptly, truly, is Trending Max, ­his program on P.E.P.TV.

Though a journalist true and through, Max has trended as expansively in the fields of electoral politics and corporate governance.

A multi-term councilor of Angeles City, Max – by operation of law – was seated as city mayor in 1998, when the law required of incumbents seeking higher elective positions in the coming elections to relinquish their posts. Max, who was first councilor, assumed the vice mayoralty when incumbent Francis “Blueboy” Nepomuceno resigned, and a day after, the mayorship with Atty. Edgardo Pamintuan resigning too. The two contested the Pampanga 1^st District congressional seat. A feat for Guinness there for Max – vice mayor to mayor in a matter of 24 hours! Not to mention his being the Philippine Centennial mayor of Angeles City! (Alas, Max did not even merit a framed photograph in that hallowed hall of mayors at the Angeles City Hall. Alack, may it not be said of the city government that it has selective memory or is patently discriminatory in its take of the history of the mayoralty. So sad.)

What may be considered a maximum trend in corporate governance Max achieved too. At one time or the other, Max served as member of the board of directors of the Clark Development Corp., the Clark International Airport Corp., and the Bases Conversion and Development Authority and some other subsidiaries. Effectively taking an active role in the transformation of the former bastions of American military might in the Asia-Pacific, into engines of economic growth for the country.

Still, through it all, Max was, is, and by his own account, will always be first and foremost a working journalist.

Trending still with a new distinction on the “retired from” meaning of the title the PPC honored him with – active emeritus. Thus, Maximus.  (Punto, 3 February 2023)