Gifted of grace

 

TODAY, MARCH 9, marks the 86^th birthday of Archbishop Emeritus Paciano B. Aniceto. It has also been nine years since Apu Ceto was succeeded as prelate of the Archdiocese of San Fernando, two years after reaching the mandatory age of retirement at 75.

Retired – we wrote here at that time – only from the administration of the archdiocese but not, never, from being the shepherd to his flock which he shall carry all his life. And, in the divine order of things, up until the life beyond, in the company of the elect basking in the glory of the Lord.

And indeed, he is as active, as involved, as committed as ever in his labors in the Lord’s vineyard everywhere, as though nothing has changed, in his status – for lack of a word – dispensing the gifts of his priestly faculties, sharing the gift of grace with his flock.

Correspondingly the outpouring of gratitude, praise, and reverence that came in the wake of his retirement continues to this day, ever growing that one feels some  beatification process has commenced for the cause of Apu Ceto.   

Apu Ceto will be the first to dismiss even the slightest whiff of saintliness ascribed to him. Just an everyday human being trying to live up to his calling, he would rather be deemed, humbling himself as one “malating talasuyu.”

It is precisely though that “littleness,” that “trying to live up to his calling” that have – in the eyes of his flock – elevated Apu Ceto over and above their everyday pastors, and enshrined him in their hearts. Precisely as the Good Book says of those who humble themselves.

By transcending all socio-economic classes, embraced as much by the perfumed set as by the sweating masses, Apu Ceto is in a class all his own, unwavering though in his steadfastness to the Church’s preferential option for the poor. His mission most focused on “the last, the least, and the lost” in human society. Again, the Good Book on the blessed who shall have the kingdom of heaven, who shall inherit the earth.    

If there is anybody that literally graces any and all occasion s/he comes to, it is Apu Ceto, with his abundance of such sanctifying gift. So much abundance that urban legend has it: Apu Ceto administering the sacrament of extreme unction warrants an instant visa to heaven, that whomever he served the viaticum passes on blissfully through the pearly gates. The peace, serenity and joy as they lay in state – those he anointed proximate to death – a testament to the potency of Apu Ceto’s gift of grace. 

Less human instinct than spiritual rush for the living to reach out to, to touch Apu Ceto, and be imbued with his grace. This I personally witnessed as much in the Pampanga parishes as in the different churches in San Francisco and Los Angeles, in his three pastoral visits from the 2000 to 2004.

And not only Kapampangans and other Filipino regional groups, but even Latinos, African-Americans and whites were wont to circle about him after each Mass seeking his blessing, kissing his hand, embracing him, taking photographs with him, not a few of these framed and found spots in their altars and family shrines at home.

So, I already sound like the postulator for the cause of sainthood of Apu Ceto when he had only retired, and still very much alive. So be it, his most enthusiastic apologist I may serve, but I offer no apologies.

Touched by his grace, the day I entered Mater Boni Consilii Seminary, prayerfully hoping to be a priest.

Unabandoned by him, in the darkest period of my apostasy, when the trinity of Marx-Lenin-Mao obliterated all faith in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.  

Converted by his holiness – he did a Maximilian Kolbe, albeit of less-than-fatal proportion, when he signed my custody papers, offering himself in my stead at the Camp Olivas stockade, if ever I rejoined the movement. This in the earliest – and thus, most terrifying – days of Martial Law.

By his grace, I am alive and have become – for better – what I am now. As with countless others, not only in Pampanga but in the other dioceses he served, aye, every one whose life he has had even the slightest touch.

Apu Ceto is his own message. Messenger and message fused into one. It is from that oneness that emanates Apu Ceto’s charisma – in its true essence of grace endowed upon a person owing to his privileged position with the Divine, to paraphrase the sociologist Max Webber.

Apu Ceto is that good sermon we see, we feel, and – prayerfully – we live.

(Snatches from previous Zona pieces dating from 2014, crafted for our beloved Apu Ceto’s 86^th birthday, 9 March 2023)

 

The Balacat heritage

IN THE Capampangan language, the prefix ma- means “full of” or “teeming with.” Thus, a number of towns were presumably named for what was common to the place: Masantol, for the many "santol" trees; Macabebe, for the "cabibi" or shellfish; Magalang, for its very respectful citizens.

While I long assumed that Mexico was named after that other Spanish colony on the other side of the Pacific with which Islas Filipinas had the galleon trade because the timber for those ships came from here, I was told that the name actually evolved from the old Masico. That name conjures two visions though: the town once teemed with chico trees – "sico" to the elderly Capampangans, or the flagrant use of the elbow – "sico" too in the local language – as representative symbol for the way disputes were settled among the "baracos" and "pusacals" in the town.

Then there is Mabalacat. What the heck is "balacat" after which the town was named? With the longevity of the mayor there and the number of his kin in public office, someone who looked like the witty Perry Pangan once said the municipality would have been more appropriately named Mamorales. And he was only half joking.
So "balacat" is a tree. It is to Engineer Rox Pena of Recyclers Foundation Inc. (RFI) and the 2004 Most Outstanding Kapampangan Awardee in the field of environmental protection that we owe our knowledge of this fact. And more.
With the scientific name Zizyphus talanai (Blanco) Merr., the tree that once made a lush forest in the place – thus, Mabalacat – was most valued commercially for its large, long and straight trunk which, Rox said, reached up to a diameter of one meter and a height of 30 meters.
Balacat timber was used for general construction, as in house posts as well as for the masts of ships; furniture and sash, tool handles, turnery, household utensils, baseball bats, among a host of other goods. The branches were also used as sticks in the Filipino martial arts arnis.
With such expansive, and presumably lucrative, commercial use, coupled with the need for land for cultivation and habitation by the early settlers, the depletion of the forest of balacat trees came not long after, said Rox.
Thus it came to pass that succeeding generations of the townspeople forgot all about their heritage tree. Why, even the name they affixed unto themselves – Mabalaqueños – altogether dropped the slightest reference to their town’s origin. The town’s name is not Mabalac, so why must its people be called Mabalaquenos? Should it not be Mabalacateños? Got to consult my seminary brother Robby Tantingco of the Center of Kapampangan Studies on this.
So, where can we find a balacat tree in Mabalacat, I asked Rox.
There is one in front of the Our Lady of Grace Parish Church, he said. But it would not be long before the town will be lush with the balacat trees again, Rox promised.
Already a memorandum of agreement has been signed among the municipality of Mabalacat, the DENR, and RFI to save and propagate the vanishing species through the Balacat Greening Project.
An inventory of the remaining trees has been undertaken along with seed sourcing and propagation. For his part Mayor Boking Morales is set to establish a municipal balacat forest park and will urge the sangguniang bayan to pass a municipal ordinance declaring the balacat as the municipal tree.
Yes, it would not be long for Mabalacat to regain its core essence.

MABALACAT HAS since become a city – after the above piece came out here on Jan. 7, 2008. The forever puede pa Mayor Boking ingloriously unseated in 2017 for overstaying, soundly defeated in his vice mayoralty bid in 2019, and buried in ignominy in his comeback try in 2022.

With Mayor Cris Garbo, reverberated in the city a new mantra – puede pala, as much as for the can-do as for the can-serve kind of local governance he impacted not only upon the city but in other LGUs far and near. More of this in a future feature.

This balacat heritage bit found relevance anew with the announcement this week of an eponymous festival in lieu of the Morales-era Caragan Festival held in the city every February.

Lest it be misconstrued as downgrading if not revising the Aeta part in Mabalacat’s history, or of expunging what still remains of the Boking legacy, the Balacat Festival is – in the words of both purveyors and proponents – a case of righting wrong impression on Mabalacat’s very core essence – the very words with which I closed the short essay above.

The erudite Robby Tantingco – whom I invoked in the story – summed it best: FROM CARAGAN FESTIVAL TO BALACAT FESTIVAL. The change intends to correct the wrong impression created by the previous festival name—that Aetas are the ancestors of the people of Mabalacat.

The change will also bring the focus back to what makes Mabalacat great—the beauty of the land and the strength and resilience of the people, as symbolized by the balacat tree.

Thus, Balacat Festival celebrates the city’s real origin, which is not the Aeta chieftain, but the balacat tree. There is no other place anywhere in the country or the world named after this tree.

Balacat Festival also has a greater name recall, because it comes from the city’s name itself. In addition, Balacat Festival is more inspirational because it resonates more with the people of Mabalacat themselves, not their Aeta brothers and sisters.

Balacat is more than just a tree. Balacat is fortitude, stability and resilience. Balacat is the heart and soul of the city. Balacat is the spirit of its people rising to the sky.

When you say “Mabalacat,” you are not just referring to a place that is full of balacat trees, but to someone who is full of fortitude, stability and resilience. Thus: Capampangan cu. Mabalacat cu. I am a Capampangan. I am a Mabalacat. Masican cu. Matatag cu. Mabalacat cu.

 

      

Past that age

 

GETTING TO 50 was the pits.

The body enters the Age of Pain – the blood pressure shoots up, the head spins, the fingers stiffen, the knee joints creak, the back aches, and it takes longer and harder to get out of bed – irreversibly rushing into an Era of Don’ts, when all the sweetness, the salt, and the spice of life become a forbidden lot.

As though these were not enough a painful infliction, there is yet the most insufferable of all – the quenching of the fire that once ran amuck in one’s loins.

Sans Pfizer’s petrifier, sex at 50 starts becoming mostly a matter of gender, least of lust.

Here though, that biblical passage of the willing spirit, readily giving in to weak flesh assumes a different dimension, if not a higher meaning. Far from, aye, the very opposite of what it has been interpreted to convey – of the frailties of the human body rampaging over any sanctified wish, benevolent intention, noble goal.

Here, it is the grace of spirit that trumps and triumphs over weak, worldly flesh.

Something of an epiphany when I turned 50: with the ebbing of bodily strength, the keenness in matters of the spirit – not necessarily translating to religious revival – suddenly inhered in me.

My daily walk at the village green, transformed from an exhausting physical exercise to an ecstatic spiritual experience, indeed become a joyous occasion for worship.  

The rays of the early morning sun, the canopy of trees, the singing birds perched on their branches, the fluttering butterflies among the wild flowers, all living testaments to the goodness of my God. And for these and all other blessings, I thank you, Lord.     

Songs stir the soul even more – mournful strains as those of Schindler’s List invariably draw – along with a torrent of tears – images of the least of God’s children, in the Sudan, in Somalia, in Syria. Sharing – albeit spiritually – their sufferings, solidarity with them in their sorrows, is an enrichment to the soul.

So, is it not written, “As ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me”?

Weddings become more than mere organized events for fellowship and food but actual partaking, a communion, in the celebration of love. Ah, how they make me cry, even when it’s not my kids, nephews and nieces being wedded. Copious tears of joy, For All We Know and Sunrise, Sunset always bring.

The fullness of love before the altar renews, refreshes all that is reposited in my heart, seeking an expression of its own through sharing, most especially with the unloved.

So, who was it who said: “The love in your heart was not put there to stay. Love isn’t love till you give it away”? As good a thought there on one’s birthday as on Valentine’s Day. 

As in weddings, more so in funerals – tears. A sign of the cross, a tear or two for the loss, a short silent prayer for the repose of his/her soul at each encounter with a funeral procession. That I don’t even know the dead matters not. All that counts is a fellow human being having passed, and the hope that God judged him/her worthy of His kingdom.             

Commencing at 50, the sense of one’s mortality has taken greater intensity and frequency in me as I turned 51, 52, 53…onto this, the last year before my euphemized “dual citizenship.”

More than the legacy I shall leave behind – neither much nor great, in the first place – it is that which I shall take along that concerns me. That which I shall present before the mercy and compassion of my God. For His judgment, I shall most surely fail. So, His forgiveness I most humbly plead.

Getting to 50 is the pits, in ways and means of the world.

On another plane, aptly named is 50 as the Golden Age – in which to pass through the crucible of spirituality to earn a rightful passage to the Diamond Age where celebrated the purity of the soul.

With the grace of God, how I long to come to that dazzling threshold.       

WOW, this was published under the title Leaving the golden years on Feb. 11, 2013, my last year as a quinquagenarian. Ten years hence – with me now at the cusp of septuagenaria – it seems that time stood still through my 60s. Only the hair – more salt than pepper now – gives away the ravage of age.  A good life, thank God. And yes, what a way to reflect this Ash Wednesday, Feb. 22, 2023.    

This elderly fights back

AT THE clearly designated priority lane: “For PWD, senior citizens, pregnant women” – as though any other human can get pregnant – at the tellers’ counter of a bank inside a mall I queued.

Being served at the moment was an elderly woman. Next in line were a robust male in his early late 30s or early 40s with a bulging string bag, a lass who could not be more than 30 holding a libreta del banco with a withdrawal slip between its pages, and me. Red flag: So, why were those plainly non-seniors, non-PWDs, and non-preggos on the priority lane?

Still, I kept my cool. It would not take much time with only two to go before my turn, anyways.

Came the turn of the man with the backpack – and eternity set in. Apparently, he was depositing a large amount of cash to multiple accounts. How the money counter buzzed, and buzzed, and buzzed… At the close of that eternity of over 20 minutes, I heaved a sigh of relief as the lady next in line had but that single bank book and a withdrawal slip – so how much could she possibly withdraw?

Lo, and behold, before the lady could even rise from the bench we were seated on, a stocky man in a red hoodie – plainly an errand boy – with a backpack darted straight to the counter and was immediately served by the smiling teller.

There went another eternity in the making, and whatever pretensions to priorities this bank held going straight to the dustbin.

As though on cue, the teller at the regular lane suddenly called out to a biz-looking man at the tail end of the queue there and served him ahead of some others meekly waiting for their turn. A woman, obviously familiar to the man and the teller, thereafter jumped the line too and was served ahead.  

Age, truly, has mellowed me. It took all courage not to create a scene at the bank as I did twice at MacDonalds-Dolores Junction and at another time inside the customer service section of the same mall when I berated their staff for opening their priority lanes to everyone else but those they were created for, slamming the priority lane signage at their counters for effect.  

This time, I simply stood up and left the bank, but not without a “Your service sucks” uttered to the security guard but loud enough for everybody to hear. Outside the bank, I immediately called the mall manager and complained.

“Again, Sir Bong?” He was profuse with his apologies and said he would personally deal with the matter, as he did the first time I had a run-in with the same bank, not so much as a year back.

That time, I was told at the bank entrance that I had to fill in bank forms outside the bank. When I asked where, I was motioned by the security guard to the plastic chairs at the waiting area.

Dutifully, I got a chair and propped it at a security guard’s table by the entrance of the mall and started filling in the withdrawal form. As I was taking a selfie on the situation I was in, the guard told me it was prohibited to take photos there. It was then that I called the mall manager.

And he did come and asked the bank manager to hear me out. I simply told her if the bank wanted customers to accomplish bank forms outside the bank, they could have at the least provided tables or desks for the purpose. Plain common sense.

I immediately cut her down when she offered to fill out my form herself and take it straight to the tellers. I told her I sought neither special treatment nor entitlement. I did it all – inside the bank on a counter – and queued at the priority lane to finish my transaction.

Back to the most recent incident. Even before I left the mall, I posted on FB a photo of the hoodie guy with the backpack doing his business with the teller and captioned it as a violation of the rights of seniors and PWDs as mandated by law – seen by a number of friends, among whom the mall’s top brass who messaged me that they would take action. (Having served its purpose, I have since deleted the post).

It was not even 10 minutes after arriving home that I got a call from an unknown number that turned out to be the bank’s assistant manager. She made the perfunctory sorry for the inconvenience and said the non-seniors-PWD-preggo at the priority lane were “diamond card” holders which I understood as big-time clients.         

Aye, it could only be that mellowing that comes with age that gave me the patience to explain to her: That the diamond cards are a courtesy or privilege given to preferred patrons. That the priority lane is mandated by law exclusive to defined individuals. That the law is supreme over mere privilege.

She promised me that the bank will institute measures to ascertain that the priority lane will serve as the law mandated it to do.

That I will have to see. Meantime, may this serve as a warning to establishments that disrespect priority lanes. This curmudgeon will be out there to take the fight.    

    

The sermon of the sea

 A flock of seagulls flies in the blue cloudy sky over the sea and burrows into the waves/Freepik

TO BREAK out of the hustle and bustle of human toil.

To escape from the rut of encultured habit.
To flee from the jealous, constricting embrace of vainglory.
On New Year’s Eve, hastened I to the eternal sea.
And in my solitude, a soliloquy.

Cast off the old. Ring in the new. The incessant monotone of the year-end… after year-end, after year-end…So, we bid 2022 good riddance, and joyously welcome 2023 with much louder boom than the proverbial bang.

Fleeting as the wind, footprints in the sand are.
Swept to nothingness by the onrushing waves.
As fleeting are the days, flushed by the tides of time.
So waste not repentant tears over the demised year.
Refresh, renew. The new one promises something truly dear.
The year just past is better forgotten. With some spirit of thanksgiving and forgiveness.

The incoming one best taken. With open arms, with hope and prayer.
Less thanksgiving and lesser forgiveness, guarded hope and incessant prayer there, if I may. But not ever to be simply cast away.
To simply consign to the deepest recesses of memory injustices and atrocities, is in itself a worse injustice and the worst atrocity. An invitation to the revision, nay, the perversion of history. Of the past –

We may end the wailing but not the mourning,
We can stop the weeping but not the grieving.
This our sworn duty – as human beings –
As much to the dead, as to the living.
And as much as justice, to wish the cruelest death and damnation upon the perpetrator. That it may not ever happen again.
The waves rise, crest, fall – surging to ritual death upon the shore.
The sea murmurs, nay, roars:
”Leave the forgetting to the gull, 

its fish for the day its only care.

Leave the forgetting to the fish, 

escape from the gull’s hungry beak its very cause to exist.”

I am no gull. I am no fish.
The sermon of the sea I hear, and shall heed.

“…Death-dealing waves sing meaningless ballads to the children…ships get wrecked in the trackless water, death is abroad and the children play…” The Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore in Gitanjali, I suddenly well remember.

Over. Done with. 2022 was.
Dwell in the past, no matter how dead. Why must I?
In. Going. Doing. 2023 is.
Live in hope only of a future best. Why can’t I?
For like the sea – rising and falling,
In its very waters the old in the new abiding. I am.

(Updated from a piece published here January 2010)

 

 

 

SunStar-Pampanga: The origin

AN IMPOSSIBLE dream. For the longest time, just about every newspaper in Pampanga had its thoughts fixed on a daily frequency as soon as it got birthed.  Only, to grow and live a weekly existence – many even dying before getting to their volume 2.

Even in these dot.com times, still impacted in the very core of Central Luzon’s oldest newspaper – founded in 1954 – is that dreamed-of masthead, The Daily Voice. Notwithstanding the nearing extinction of the print media. There’s just no substitute to the smell of pulp, especially on a daily whiff.  

But dreams come true. Not, unfortunately, for Pampanga’s “best in reading, no kidding” “most cherished newsweekly.”

Sometime in mid-1995, media maven Jose “Joe” Pavia called his PNA (Philippine News Agency) bright boys to a meeting at the Shanghai Restaurant in Angeles City. Over a sumptuous lunch, Joe adumbrated the plan for a daily newspaper that will serve, primarily, as a platform for the Clark Special Economic Zone as well as the recovery of Pampanga from the then-still extant Mount Pinatubo devastations. SunStar-Clark, it will be called.    

While owned by the Sun-Star Cebu of the Garcias, SunStar Clark will be independent of it with Joe himself as publisher-executive editor, thereafter promptly assigning Bong Lacson as editor-in-chief, Fred Roxas as news editor, and Peping Raymundo as managing editor, giving us the freehand to recruit the editorial staff – from section editors, to reporters, correspondents, and photographers.

Fred cited possible conflict with his position as PNA-Pampanga bureau manager but could help from the sidelines. Lacson begged off being the senior consultant to Gov. Lito Lapid, unwilling to risk the paper being identified with the then new governor.

Asked who could be EIC, Lacson recommended Ody Fabian, then acting publisher of The Voice. Roused from his siesta, Ody managed to join the group for coffee.

Joe asked if Lacson could be at least named associate editor and serve as opinion editor, to which the latter acceded.

Among the first to go onboard SunStar-Clark were news reporters Joey Pavia, IC Calaguas, and Ashley Manabat; photographer Ricarte “Boy” Sagad; columnists Sonny Lopez and Cora Taus. Lacson’s column Golpe de Sulat in Mabuhay, Joe’s Bulacan-based weekly, was also moved to SS-C.   

Dry-runs thereafter ensued – first weekly, then three times weekly, until all weekdays. The editorial offices moving from the office of Sonny’s Sunny Vision company at the Marlim Mansion to Ody’s rented house at Sta. Maria Subd., both in Barangay Balibago, until settling at Plaza Romana in Dau, Mabalacat.

The maiden issue was officially launched with former DOTC Secretary Jesus Garcia Jr. and Gov. Lapid as guests of honor in November 1995.

Joe Pavia has left a lasting impression not only on the staff that worked under him at SS-C, but on every journalist that came under his tutelage. No anniversary of the papers he founded or served would be complete without some memorials for him.

Joe was the most respected long-time general manager of the PNA and no-nonsense editor of a number of publications from the pre- to the post-martial law eras, as well as chair of the Philippines Press Institute.

To say that Joe Pavia was a pillar of Philippine journalism is an understatement.

The mantra every journalist fortunate enough to have been mentored by Joe is “Accuracy. Accuracy. Accuracy.” Be it in a news story or in a headline.

No, he would never settle for simple fact-checking. It had to be checked, rechecked, cross-referenced with all possible sources for a final check. And then, after each news story: “Ang follow-up?”

Still, to Joe: No story is worth dying for. The well-being of the journalist of utmost precedence.

And then, Joe had this never-the-twain-shall-meet rule with news vis-à-vis opinion writing. At SS-C, he expressly enjoined me to lay off news stories as I was already writing a column and the editorials. Precisely, as news is bound by facts, and columns/editorials stand on opinions.

Food for thought: What would Joe say about SunStar-Pampanga today?

(P.S. Reconstructed from ageing memory, the writer apologizes for whatever lapses in this story solicited for the paper’s 27^th anniversary.)

 

Once upon the CL press

1978. It was July, most probably. Department of Public Information-Region 3 director Ricardo Velasquez Serrano – Kapitan Gigil, fondly – newly assigned to Central Luzon, though a Kapampangan by parentage, asked his senior staff how the office can engage the provincial press in development communications to support the socio-economic and infrastructure initiatives of government.  

Freshly schooled in OD (organization development) at the Development Academy of the Philippines, his chief of research, training, and development division suggested the formation of an association of “all working journalists” in Central Luzon, which Serrano readily approved, and tasked the proponent to do the working paper for such association.

The primary consideration laid out in the working paper was membership. Aware of the intramurals between provincial press clubs of the time, acceptance into the proposed regional press organization would be by individual membership with representation not of the press club but of the publication or radio station of the member. Thereby, an inclusive umbrella organization that will not be in conflict with the press clubs in terms of membership.

In a week’s time, backstopped by Fred Roxas, bureau manager of the Philippines News Agency in CL, and Ben Gamos of the Times Journal, the proponent traveled around Central Luzon in a campaign for membership to the new organization.

At the time, there were two press organizations that, unfortunately, were regional only in their nomenclature but not in scope of membership: the Tarlac-based Central Luzon Association of Journalists headed by Carlos Gatdula of Bulletin Today, and the Central Luzon Press Club of Romy Medina of Times Journal domiciled in Olongapo City.

It was naturally to these gentlemen that the trio from DPI deferred – they responded positively to the new organization, but with Medina asking for first right to the presidency. In character, the self-effacing and gracious Gatdula readily conceded, merely requesting that something of his club should be in the name of the new organization, hence: Central Luzon Media Association. 

From there, it was a breeze tapping the services of the “old guards” in  organizing: Rod Reyes of the Journal Group, along with brothers Jess and Bert Matic of The Reflector (CL’s first and only broadsheet) in Bulacan; Efren Molina of Bulletin Today in Bataan; Pacifico de Guzman of The Monday Post, Pete Salazar of Dahongpalay, and Anselmo Roque of Daily Express along with Isagani Valmonte of Times Journal in Nueva Ecija; Ben and Rose Razon of the Tarlac Star and radioman Ben Gonzales, Feliciano Pasion of Manila Times, and DPI coordinator Luz Ducusin in Tarlac; spouses Elpidio and Susana Curiano of Olongapo News in Zambales.

In Pampanga, members of the Pampanga Press Club enlisted en masse to the CLMA.

Aurora – at that time still part of Region IV-A – nevertheless joined in the person of Rodante Rubio of Malaya.   

That the greater mass of members came from the print – both provincial and national newspapers, reflected the state of media obtaining in the region at that time: only Olongapo, Tarlac, Angeles, and Cabanatuan had operating radio stations.

September 24, 1978. At the DPI-3 office in San Fernando, Pampanga, the first set of officers of the CLMA with Romy Medina as president was inducted into office by Public Information Secretary Francisco S. Tatad. 

Director Ricardo V. Serrano is the First, while the rest of those mentioned here are the rest of the Founding Fathers of the CLMA. Suffice for this writer to hold on, with honor and privilege, to the title Serrano himself bestowed upon him – “founding proponent.”

CLMA presidents: The first decade

1978. Romualdo Medina (Times Journal). Loosely organized, absent any constitution and by-laws, CLMA adapted to the standards of media practice – objectivity, fairness, and accuracy – and adopted these as protocols. 

1980. Maximo L. Sangil (Daily Express). The framing of the CLMA constitution and by-laws, engagement of the association in crusades in partnership with the Ministry of Public Information notably: 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.     

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

1982. Alfredo M. Roxas (Philippines News Agency). All the shibboleths of political campaign – T-shirts, streamers, balloons, food and drinks, leaflets – obtained in the election that saw Fred triumph over Amante Reyes (The Voice). The heavy turnout of voters indicated the rise in membership resulting from the increase in the number of provincial newspapers and radio stations in the region. 

1983. Jesus Matic (Reflector) and Hector P. Soto (Times Journal). With equal number of votes, a coin toss decided not who should be president but who would sit first in the shared presidency. Jess’ half of the term was cut short by his death leaving Toy more than his half-share.   

1984. Jeremias J. Lacuarta (Bulletin Today). A court injunction filed by a disgruntled CLMA director came too late to stop Jerry’s election. Lawyer-friends later questioned the injunction over the CLMA, it being a “social organization” unregistered with the SEC. The CLMA was officially affiliated with the National Press Club. CLMA meetings started to be moved from province to province instead of being centered at the MPI regional office. 

1985. Carlos P. Gatdula (Bulletin Today). His sacrifice of the presidency upon the organization of the CLMA bore fruit six years hence, being the only candidate for president in what turned out to be an acclamation rather than an election. Serious threats to his life constrained Gat to seek temporary sanctuary in the USA ceding the presidency to his executive vice president Bert Padilla (Bulletin Today).

1986. Benny Rillo (Balita). Along with acting president Bert, Feliciano Pasion (Manila Times) and Rizal Policarpio (Balita) were handily beaten by Benny in the election held in Cabanatuan City.

1987. Feliciano Pasion (Manila Times). Exchange of gunfire between NPA rebels and the military in an armed encounter in nearby Samal, provided the horrifying accompaniment to Ising’s election to the presidency held in Balanga, Bataan. A revised CLMA Constitution and By-Laws was drafted during his term.

1988. Jeremias J. Lacuarta (Manila Bulletin). The Constitution and By-Laws was approved overwhelmingly in the general assembly preceding the election. Jerry renewed his call to cleanse the CLMA of media scalawags and extortionists.  

(P.S. Reminiscing over events more than four decades back has taken its toll on ageing memory. This is the best reconstruction I can do for a piece celebrating the 44^th anniversary of the CLMA held last Dec. 2 at the Hiyas Convention Center, Malolos City. My apologies for lapses.)