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By Ric R. Puod
and Annie Ruth Sabangan, Senior Reporters
(Conclusion)
SEN. Noli de Castro, this country’s most
successful news and current affairs personality, could also well be
the most-liked politician.
But his critics do not hesitate to say he is a
menace from which this country should be saved.
Many in Poblacion, Pola, Oriental Mindoro, where
Noli was born on July 6, 1949, cannot forget the simple boy who was
never a headache to his parents. Instead, he helped them and his
siblings struggle against their poverty. He even collected leftovers
from the neighbors to feed the pigs the de Castros raised for a
living.
The fifth child in the farming family of Manuel
de Castro and Demetria Leuterio, Noli—then in grade school—felt
the grief of his father’s early death. From then on, he and his
siblings were solely raised by their Inay Nene.
Noli de Castro finished elementary education at
the Pola Central School and secondary education at Pola Catholic
High School.
At first, most likely influenced by the role he
played in helping his Inay Nene in the piggery, he agreed with his
mother—who was paying the tuition—that he should be a
veterinarian. He enrolled at Gregorio Araneta University in Manila.
Later he shifted to commerce and earned a BSC degree, major in
banking and finance, from the University of the East.
His having been actually close to farm animals
in his youth surely was the germ that developed into his
environmentalist outlook. He has exposed ecologically harmful
businesses. On radio and TV and in the Senate, he has advocated laws
and regulations to create an atmosphere of more rigid and effective
protection, conservation and sustainable development of the
environment and Philippine wildlife.
Just recently, de Castro adopted a handicapped
eagle. The NGO and DENR people directly involved in saving it
honored de Castro by naming it Kabayan. When it had been nursed back
to health, thanks to de Castro’s ministration and funding, the
eagle was released to its natural habitat in Mt. Apo. Fanfare and
print and radio-TV publicity attended the event for it was timed as
a proenvironment and wildlife ceremony on April 22, Earth Day.
Some anti-de Castro officials and employees of
the DENR, however, doubt de Castro’s sincerity as an
environmentalist. “Pati inosenteng agila, sinasama niya sa
pulitika. Bakit ipinangalan sa kanya? Tama ba’yon? [He has
involved even the innocent eagle in politics. Why was it named after
him? Is that right?],” said a supervisor of the DENR’s Protected
Areas and Wildlife Bureau (PAWB).
Some people even suspect that his being
genuinely a nature lover has driven de Castro to violate
environmental laws for his private benefit.
De Castro has admitted maintaining a mini zoo at
his Tierra Pura house in Tandang Sora, Quezon City. Some of the
animals are said to belong to species officially identified as
threatened, endangered or vulnerable.
He told a newspaper he has a cockatoo named
Bayan, and a yellow macaw, Valentine.
The cockatoo is a critically endangered bird. It
was commonplace some 50 years ago but their numbers have fallen
sharply owing to the destruction of their lowland forest habitat in
the past decades.
“As far as I know,” said Carlos Custodio,
head of PAWB’s Wildlife Rescue Center, “we have no proof that
his acquisition of certain endangered species is legal.”
Although he has a degree in commerce, the
business world never turned de Castro on. He really wanted to be a
broadcaster.
His early training in broadcasting was from the
old DZBB, where he was hired by Bob Stewart who then owned Channel
7. In 1976 he became a field reporter for Johnny de Leon. He even
had the lowly job of voicing over and reading phone-in questions for
See True, an eighties’ celebrity talk show hosted by Inday Badiday.
His career in broadcasting was in the doldrums
for some years. In the first half of the eighties he was just a
standby announcer of DWWW, which was then owned by the RPN
broadcasting system. He went to America and worked there as a clerk
in an appliance store in Los Angeles for a year.
After the February 1986 EDSA uprising, the
Lopezes reacquired DWWW from Marcos cronies and renamed it DZMM.
There, de Castro came to anchor an early morning show, Kabayan—or
Kapangyarihan ng Mamamayan, Balita at Talakayan.
When Channel 2 reopened, de Castro became a host
for a portion in Pilipino of the sign-on program Good Morning
Philippines. The main host was Merce Henares, who migrated to the
United States. De Castro then took over.
The program was renamed Magandang Umaga and for
two years Noli was co-host with Korina Sanchez. The ABS-CBN bosses
tapped him to anchor the network’s prime-time flagship news
program TV Patrol. This gave him the career boost that made Kabayan
a national byword. Then in 1987 he got his own weekly public affairs
program, Magandang Gabi, Bayan.
“It can’t be denied that Kabayan has
practically become a part of every Filipino family’s breakfast and
dinner. On early mornings you hear him on the radio, at night you
see him on TV. For ordinary people like me, Kabayan has become the
voice of the masses,” said Jim Libiran, formerly of ABS-CBN’s
The Correspondents and now head for production of ABC 5’s news and
current affairs department.
With inputs from this report’s project
editor, Rene Q. Bas, assistant executive editor of The Manila Times.
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