MY father, a lawyer by profession, worked in a government-owned corporation for the longest time. He was not corrupt; he didn’t take anything that wasn’t his, and he didn’t approve any illicit projects.
He worked at his best to put food on the table for us, his growing family, which included my three other siblings, my mother and my grandmother. Occasionally, my father would take in a relative or two, who came over from the province to study in Manila.
We were part of the expanding middle class of the 1970s, with parents who were able to send us kids to reputable schools, afford househelp, go to nearby Batangas or Cavite for vacations once a year and dine out at a low-key panciteria or restaurant to modestly celebrate any of our birthdays.
Over 30-plus years, we lived in the same house in a quiet neighborhood in Quezon City, even as our neighbors around us kept changing, moving out or going abroad. And my Papa spent every centavo he earned wisely; we had one family TV in the living room, one stereo set where he played his Jack Jones records on the turntable, while we studied and researched through the rows of encyclopedias he had bought for us.
Then one afternoon, my Papa comes home and I find out that he had been slapped a case at the Sandiganbayan. He was talking to his cousin, a corporate lawyer, on the phone on how to best defend himself. There was no question he was innocent.
He had signed the project, because the actual general manager of the office was on leave, and he was second in command. The board of directors of the agency had already approved the project. So it was purely a ministerial function on his end to sign the project’s contract.
If there was anyone who should’ve been slapped a case, it should have been the board chairman, who was pretty close to the President of the Philippines then, and the rest of the board. I heard no hardships on their end about that case.
But my Papa was left to his own defenses. He worked tirelessly writing down the facts of the case, regularly consulting with his cousin and answering the charges in court. I know he tried to isolate us from what was happening, but I was fully aware of what was going on. Eventually, after a year or so, the case against him was dismissed.
But I know how he suffered, even if he tried to bottle up all his feelings in. That was my Papa—always quiet about the things that bothered him.
He was the type who’d just pray the rosary every night, and go to Mass regularly, as a means to cope with his problems.
The court issued a news release about the case’s dismissal, but the damage had already been done. It was a frivolous case against him, and yet his reputation as an honest public servant, who had a long family history of service to the country, was dragged through the mud. Only one newspaper carried the story of the case’s dismissal.
I cannot help but feel so strongly for government officials who are attacked in this manner. We have had a few over the years who have been kind, honest and upright, yet people with questionable interests find a way to pull them down and discredit them. And with social media now in play, the fake stories and unjust allegations leveled against these officials take even more humongous proportions. It becomes a tidal wave of scorn, doubt and disdain from detractors and the unwitting public.
It’ easy to forget that there are two sides to every story, and that there are others—like children, parents or siblings—whose lives are interrupted when these attacks are publicly carried out. Reputations can be easily torn down, and can be most difficult to rebuild.
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WHEN last weekend began, our profession was touched by two deaths.
We lost Mike Marasigan, former BusinessWorld chief of reporters, who had been a public-relations (PR) practitioner since he left journalism some 10 years ago; and Roy Acosta, who for a short time, was this paper’s editor in chief.
I knew Mike the most because he was, technically, my first boss in the newspaper world, BusinessWorld being my first professional stab at journalism. For some strange reason, he had assigned me to the banking beat, which was alien to me, as I barely even passed my economics classes. I guess he knew I could handle the job (despite my protestations and eventual transfer to an easier beat, agriculture), because a decade after, in another paper, I was again in that beat, covering even a larger slice of the business pie that included economics and finance.
When Mike left the journalism profession to go into PR, I sometimes referred clients to him and introduced him to some media friends. But we lost touch after some disagreement, until we met up again at an event this year.
Never in my life would I imagine anyone like him dying such a horrible death. Who would want him so dead that they would shoot 34 bullets into his car, to make sure that he and his brother would never come out of the incident alive? I can only hope that their killers would be brought to justice quickly, and help their respective families rest easy.
Meanwhile, in the short time that Sir Roy was with our paper, I had never known a nicer, kinder editor; a real gentleman who had utmost respect for a reporter’s copy. One time he called me just to ask if he could tweak my story’s lede a bit. I was shocked that he even had to ask.
“But of course!” I said. He was a well-respected journalist and editor for so many years, it was inconceivable for me that he would do anything wrong with my copy; if he edited it, I knew it would only be better written and understood by readers. And he certainly didn’t need my permission to do so.
Losing two former bosses in a span of just two days has been extremely heartbreaking and upsetting. Like many of the people whose lives they’ve touched, I can only whisper a silent prayer for the repose of their souls. My deepest condolences to the families left behind by their passing.