IT has been my dream to write a column in the tradition of the late Joe Guevarra, whose writings had graced the editorial pages of Manila Times together with the other columnists of the bygone era such as Teodoro Valencia, Max Soliven and J.V. Cruz. No other paper has assembled such great opinion writers on the same page before or since. While the last three had seriously treated their subjects and awed their readers with their depth and substance, Joe also charmed his followers with his wit and humor.
I wish somebody had collected Joe’s daily compositions. I’m sure we’ll find his biting commentaries on the political scene still relevant today.
It’s notable that despite the heat and frenzy of the current political campaign, no one has captured the imagination of the Filipino voters in the manner that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez of the 15th Congressional District of New York City had done. She is the youngest American woman ever elected to the US Congress. She defeated the powerful 10-termer incumbent Joe Crowley with a 15-percent margin in the most watched Democratic Party primary contest. She then proceeded to defeat the Republican Party candidate, Anthony Pappas, by garnering 78 percent of the votes. Instead of congratulating her, Crowley sang in a radio show a popular ditty, “Born to Run,” which he dedicated to Ocasio-Cortez.
Maybe our local candidates can learn a thing or two from Ocasio-Cortez’s monumental victory. Consider the causes and issues she embraced and identified herself with. She is a progressive politician who champions universal health care, free tuition fee in public colleges and technical schools, climate change and environment. She was quoted as saying that “climactic change is the single biggest national security threat for the US…and the worldwide industrialized civilization.”
Surprisingly, it seems no one among our candidates has so far made climate change as a major national issue in the coming elections despite our country’s vulnerability to natural calamities. In the past, we had heard the lonely voice of Sen. Loren Legarda espouse this cause, but she is now removed from the national scene by seeking a local office in her native province of Antique.
If voting were held today, the top 5 slots in the Senate would be crowded by women—Poe, Villar, Cayetano, Binay and Marcos. In the previous Senate, it was a rarity to find a lady senator in the cast: Geronima Pecsom, Pacita Madrigal, Tecla San Andres-Ziga, Loi Estrada, Maria Kalaw Katigbak, Tessie Aquino-Oreta, Jamby Madrigal, to name some, but they were all one termers. Few exceptions like Eva Estrada-Kalaw, Loren Legarda, Miriam Defensor-Santiago, Leticia Ramos-Shahani and Pia Cayetano won their reelection bids. So far, only one woman, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, was elected president after her Senate stint, a feat that Senators Grace Poe and Miriam Defensor-Santiago failed to duplicate.
This is the first election where we have three female reelectionists in the Senate and joined by several female candidates coming from various political spectrums. This is a magnificent display of women power similar to the phenomenon in the last US elections when a record number of female legislators got elected, including a descendant from the clan of the politically powerful Osmeñas of Cebu.
In my own household, fortunately or unfortunately, I have four daughters and I am always outvoted when the Speaker of the House, my wife, calls a question to a vote. In Union Bank where I previously sat as a director, we only have one woman director, Nina Aguas of Insular Life, in a 15-person Board, but she is indisputably a majority of one.
But I guess I’m not alone in my predicament. A headline reads: “I’m no longer in control. Sara makes the call.” Now I’m proud to belong to the league.
****
WE lost a good man and ideal public servant with the death of BSP Governor Nesting Espenilla. After the successful launch of microfinance, which he spearheaded while he was still the Deputy Governor, the Insurance Commission complemented it with our own version of microinsurance resulting to an unprecedented growth in financial inclusion in our country. Now we have expanded financial coverage to the unbanked and uninsured segments of our population. Whenever I hear the mantra, “No one left behind,” Nesting always comes to mind.
I can say that I’ve known Nesting before he knew me. In the early 1980s, I was a young SGV tax lawyer when I regularly visited his late father and namesake, Atty. Nestor Espenilla Sr., who headed the Financial and Real Estate Tax Division. He was a fellow Bicolano who welcome me in his office with a cup of hot coffee whenever I had a business at the BIR Head Office. Treating me as a young kindred who speaks his dialect, he would fondly and proudly talk of his young son Nesting who had just then graduated Magna Cum Laude from his Business Economics class in UP. Shortly after Ninoy’s assassination, I would see him joining the protest rallies and marches in Makati, Edsa and Roxas Boulevard. I was not surprised that shortly after the Edsa revolution, he resigned from the BIR and ran for Congress in Masbate. He risked his bright career to serve his own people. When I narrated this to Nesting and his wife, Tess, some years back, I thought I saw Nesting’s eyes redden. I knew then where he got his idealism and fervor for public service.
President P-Noy and Nesting were classmates in Ateneo High School but the president did not appoint Nesting as BSP Governor when Governor Say Tetangco completed his first term in office. Instead, Governor Tetangco was reappointed to a second term. The added years of preparation further honed Nesting’s skills, which would have made him one of the best regulators of our banking system.
President P-Noy restarted my career in public service when he appointed me as the Insurance Commissioner during his term. I continued my work in the government when President Duterte appointed me as the SSS president and CEO. I am grateful to both of them for their trust and I hope that I proved myself equal to it. It is said that it is difficult to find an honest man with solid integrity to join the government, but it is more difficult to find a public servant leaving the government with his integrity still intact and his honor unsullied. I hope I passed that acid test.