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Ireceived a gloomy text message on Sunday from my
friend and Manila Times colleague, Lito Malinao, which read:
“Senate PR Director Jose Garcia passed away this morning after
collapsing at a tennis court in Laguna. Pls pray for the eternal
repose of his soul.”
I was in great shock, knowing
that JoeGar, as Garcia was called by his friends, was in good
health. I never heard of him going to a hospital for a checkup or
being taken to one for any serious illness. When I last saw him, he
appeared full of bounce and energy.
I knew him well because I had
worked with him for three or four years in the 1960s at the defunct
Philippines Herald. I was one of the paper’s desk editors at the
time and he was a proofreader.
The editorial staff was then
headed by Mariano Querol (now deceased) as managing editor and Pete
Padre as news editor. It included such excellent deskmen as Gelacio
Tecechian, Olaf Giron and Ernie Rodriguez (also all deceased), Sonny
Valencia and Nemesio Dacanay. It was Pete who recruited me and Oscar
Rojo from the Philippine News Service (forerunner of the Philippine
News Agency today). It was I, in turn, who brought Joe Pavia into
the paper.
Tony Zumel was our special
features editor and at the same time Malacañang reporter. He later
led a strike against the paper. He transferred to The Manila
Bulletin to become its news editor.
We were such a jovial group.
Whenever I was assigned as remat editor, we (the proofreaders and
some boys from the composing department) used to relax at some
watering hole in Baclaran after putting the final edition to bed.
JoeGar was always in our company.
JoeGar was a serious-minded
worker who could spot copy-reading errors—a sign of his good
command of English grammar. I thought to myself that he would one
day rise to the top of his newspaper career. He had shown great
promise and was full of ambition.
Giron and Zumel were proofreaders
themselves, like Joe Gar. But they became good editors,
demonstrating that there was no limit to the potential of the human
spirit. Their example had served to inspire JoeGar in working his
way up.
True, indeed, JoeGar became an
editor himself, not of the Herald but of the Manila Chronicle, in
charge of the front page. He found himself in good company with such
fine deskmen as Fort Yerro and Julius Fortuna, among others, under
the overall watch of editor-in-chief (now ambassador) Noel Cabrera,
We found ourselves in different
roles—JoeGar as an editor and I, as a public relations man on the
staff of then Labor Secretary and later Senator Blas Ople. I used to
seek JoeGar’s favor to run my press releases and he never
disappointed me.
When the Chronicle closed down
due to labor trouble, JoeGar went jobless for a while but not for
long. (If one has talent, he does not look for a job. It is the job
that seeks him out.) In JoeGar’s case, the prize for his talent
was the public relations directorship of the Senate—a post he held
until his untimely death.
JoeGar ran the Senate’s PR
office well, making sure that Senate reporters had the facilities
needed in gathering and writing their stories. I often saw him in
the company of then Senate President Franklin Drilon in press
conferences and other public functions.
He was always humble and exuded
warmth as a friend. His untimely death has made journalism (he was
first and foremost a newspaperman) poorer. His passing will be
mourned by many of his friends and admirers in the newspaper
profession.
Peace can only be achieved in
war
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo
has vowed to pursue peace with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front,
saying there is no alternative to peace in strife-torn Mindanao. But
it must be peace that is to be won in war.
The MILF is obsessed with
secession and establishing an independent Muslim state. It has
refused to talk peace with the government unless it gets what it
wants, which is a government and a territory as defined in the
Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain, which was junked by the
Supreme Court as unconstitutional.
The government must act
decisively in solving the long festering Mindanao problem that has
caused some 120,000 deaths in the past two or three decades. It
should not make distinction between the so-called “rouge forces”
of Ameril Ombra Kato and Commander Bravo, on one hand, and the MILF,
on the other. Bravo and Kato have been operating ostensibly with the
approval of the MILF leadership.
We don’t see peace in Mindanao
arising from dialogue. The MILF will always insist on secession. The
Confederacy in the United States, like the MILF, also wanted to
secede from the Union and had to wage a war to achieve it. It was a
total war launched by President Abraham Lincoln against the
secessionists that finally restored peace in the southern states.
agr0324@yahoo.com
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