Edgardo J. Angara, man of destiny

A renaissance man of diverse interests and passions, Senator Angara was a also a dreamer.

The sudden demise of former Senate President Edgardo Javier Angara is a great loss to the Philippines, because he is one of the most hardworking and intellectually brilliant politicians whose numerous laws, projects and ideas have immeasurably benefitted us and helped lay the strong bedrock of our now fast-growing economy.

Unfortunately for the country, such an exemplary, well-read and enlightened statesman like him didn’t get to be elected president of this republic.

Although a topnotch lawyer by training, Angara’s interests were so remarkably broad, which is why it was always a delight for me to converse with him on topics such as law, politics, diplomacy, economics, art, history, the Manila Galleon (precursor of the modern Belt and Road Initiative, since this old sea trade route had made Manila and Acapulco as entrepots between China and the West), farming, the environment and business issues. He also had a good sense of humor.

Senator Ed Angara with (from left) former Young Star columnist Anna Angara, Senator Sonny Angara and wife Tootsy Angara

He didn’t forget his roots, he loved Baler passionately

Angara wasn’t the first great person to have come from the small, faraway town of Baler, because the colorful Commonwealth-era President Manuel Quezon was also from there, but it was Angara who had so vigorously modernized his hometown and the whole province of Aurora.

He and his son Senator Sonny Angara brought a lot of infrastructures, public schools and other projects to their region. He not only never forgot his roots, he also passionately loved Baler.

Angara was the country’s prime exponent of not only Philippine friendship with our former colonizer Spain, he wisely advocated rekindling our Hispanic cultural heritage, our lost fluency for global language and the need to boost our trade links with the world’s many other former Spanish colonies.

Every year on June 30, which Angara legislated as “Philippine-Spanish Friendship Day,” he’d invite me to visit his beautiful hometown of Baler where various foreign ambassadors, his family and friends would celebrate that day when General Emilio Aguinaldo of the First Philippine Republic issued a decree requiring the last Spanish soldiers — who had been besieged for almost a year inside Baler’s Catholic church and not believing that Spain had already lost its colony — be treated not as enemies and prisoners of war but as friends.

Ed Angara with wife Gloria and grandson Javier, the youngest son of Sonny and Tootsy. Ed and Javier were in Hong Kong a week before the senator passed away

For us members of the ethnic Chinese minority, we shall also forever be grateful to the late Senator Edgardo J. Angara and his son Senator Sonny Angara for filing the bill making our ancient Chinese Lunar New Year a non-working holiday, which is an official recognition that our community and our traditions are integral parts of our multi-cultural Philippine society. This holiday is also a big boost for our Philippine tourism, since most of our ASEAN and east Asia neighboring countries also celebrate this festival as a holiday.

I believe Senator Edgardo J. Angara — called SEJA by others — is a man of destiny.

Senator Edgardo Angara’s forebears were among the only six families plus a Spanish priest who survived a horrific tsunami catastrophe on Dec. 27, 1735, which wiped out the whole seaside town of Baler from the map.

The resilient six families and the parish priest built a new Baler in an area belonging to Sitio Sabali and located a league away from their obliterated old town. From those surviving six families descended one of the most successful, erudite, driven, energetic and visionary modernizing leaders of the Philippines, the dreamer and man of destiny Senator Edgardo J. Angara.

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