Farewell to Manang Letty

We join our good friend and fellow writer Lila Shahani, her siblings Ranjit and Chanda, her uncle, former president Fidel V. Ramos, and the rest of our countrymen in mourning the demise of former Senator Leticia Ramos Shahani.

Numerous paeans have already expressed a nation’s gratitude and established the worth of her patriotism throughout an extended career as a public servant: as a diplomat, an intellectual and humanist whose advocacies included education, culture, and gender equality, among others, and as a Senator of the Republic for 11 years. 

We enjoyed best the warm recollections of Sylvia Muñoz-Ordoñez and Howie Severino, both of whom painted her as a fine lady of incalculable substance and graciousness, even as her intellectual energy manifested itself in public forums and numerous initiatives. Sylvia recalled that when the lady who eventually gained the loving honorific of Manang Letty was still with the DFA, and eventually participated in the UN Fund for Women, she had seen to having its first grant awarded to an YSTAPHIL project that “won (as the) best rural project for women in the world in Nairobi.”

Much later, Sylvia joined her in the national commission on the role of Filipino women, which Leticia Ramos Shahani chaired. Sylvia’s husband Ernie Ordonez also gained then-Senator Letty’s help “for the passage of a law on SMEs related to credit and banks. On the mere passage of this law, money lent to SMEs increased.”

Sylvia’s loving tribute ends this way: “Senator Letty was a model feminist leader. She was an inspiration. I will miss you. I will miss the times when you served me Ilocano home-cooked food in your home… and allowed me into your room while you were packing and you continued to counsel me, a 19-year-old youth learning from you. Paalam. You will always be a part of me. I will continue your advocacy to promote agriculture and gender.”

For his part, Howie Severino recalls an unexpected chat with Manang Letty only last November when they crossed paths after a forum at the Asian Institute of Management. The lady made it known how her father, former Foreign Secretary Narciso Ramos who was an original signatory of ASEAN’s founding document, had thought very highly of Howie’s grandfather, Rod Severino pere, who had also worked as a foreign service officer. 

Howie shares: “I recall that moment as a singular act of sweetness. She could have just walked by; instead, my last memory of her was our fond reconnection as fellow members of diplomatic families, even if mine was nowhere near as prominent as hers.”

Here’s more from Severino, whose father Rod has also distinguished himself in foreign service: 

“Long after she retired, she still had a public life in my view, and that was her frequent appearances at Legaspi Sunday Market in Makati where she sat in the heat for hours and, to anyone who cared to listen, extolled the virtues of the carabao milk for sale from her Pangasinan farm. She brightened even rainy days with her sunny demeanor.

“That brief encounter at AIM last November when she recalled my lolo defined to me her warm and gracious character.

“But it was at the AIM forum an hour earlier where she demonstrated her sterling qualities as an intellectual and patriot. She argued forcefully but elegantly for the government to use the international tribunal’s favorable decision on the South China Sea to pursue the national interest. She was plainly exasperated with the government’s concessions to China.

“What struck me and perhaps others in the audience was not her principled position, but the fact that she could expound so lucidly and firmly for someone who was supposed to be debilitated by an advanced stage of cancer.

“As ill as she was, she found the strength to tell us to do the right thing.”

We were also fortunate to have engaged socially and academically with dear Manang Letty last October and November, when we had a hand in her being invited to deliver the 2nd Annual Ikeda Peace and Harmony Lecture at Singapore Management University.          

A month earlier, our friend Dr. Kirpal Singh, director of the Wee Kim Wee Center of SMU, had come to Manila to meet with Madame Shahani. Over a lovely dinner at Museum Café together with her daughter Lila, then freshly designated as secretary general of the Philippine National Commission to UNESCO, and the distinguished scholar and author Vince Rafael, Manang Letty had graciously accepted the invitation.

We joined Letty and Lila in Singapore and attended the lecture on “Re-Thinking ASEAN: The Problems and Prospects for Regional Peace” at the fully-packed Ngee Ann Kongsi Auditorium on November 4. The guest speaker was introduced by SMU president Arnoud de Meyer, and after her 45-minute lecture, she gamely fielded questions during the open forum, even as these sought to elicit provocative statements on the matter of the South China Sea. 

That evening, Philippine Ambassador to Singapore Antonio Morales hosted for dinner at his residence, and the conversation was just as lively and cheerful as the special guest’s performance at SMU. All of these belied her medical condition. Like Howie, we now marvel at how she persisted in serving her country to the best of her merits.

Earlier onstage, she had outlined ASEAN’s history, stressing how “the Malay principles of ‘Mushawarah’ (consultation) and ‘Mufakat’ (consensus) are deeply embedded in the foundations of ASEAN.”

Towards the end of her lecture, she had waxed hopeful, and eventually, wistful, as she rhetorically regarded the challenges ahead. We share here the final passages of the last lecture delivered by a Filipino patriot of the highest order: 

“There is every reason to hope that the ASEAN of the future, along with its major partners, can successfully combine the avoidance of confrontation or undue interference in the domestic affairs of other nations by adhering to the rules of international law in an increasingly globalized and crowded world. Thus, we shall combine the best features of a rules-based, modern Southeast Asia which retains the best practices of our cultures as well as the guarantees of freedom and democratic dialogue, with our neighbors, and with the rest of the world.

“I want to end this lecture on a personal note. I was born in 1929 in the capital town of Lingayen, Pangasinan, a town right smack by the West Philippine Sea. As a five-year-old child, I was already aware that our local fishermen would go to fish in the nearby bountiful waters of Bajo de Masinloc, or Scarborough Shoal.

“Millions of Filipino households have depended on the sea for their survival, the Philippines being a quintessential archipelago and having the 7th longest coastline in the world. But my country does not have — is unlikely to have for a long time to come — the budgetary means to guard and protect this long, variously indented coastline.

“When I reflect on the geopolitical implications of the conflict over the South China Sea islands, I cannot help but ask: what will happen to the sea of my childhood, the sea on whose beaches I played and waters I swam, where crabs were harvested to be turned into tasty delicacies after hours of picking through their fat, eaten with steamed rice and vegetables? Will these waters still be hospitable to the games and memories of not only Filipino but all ASEAN children? Will the seas continue to serve as a dependable family doctor for colds and painful insect bites or will they become militarized zones of conflict, colonized and contested for years to come? Will ASEAN be able to do something to lessen this possibility, or will it simply allow the great powers to decide the fate of these waters and the coasts of several of our ASEAN Member-States?”