Remembering the greatness of Sergio Osmeña

Yesterday was the 132nd birth anniversary of one of the greatest Filipinos that ever lived, the great Don Sergio Osmeña Sr., which is why Cebu is having a very long, four-day holiday weekend starting yesterday. Call it unfortunate that Osmeña Day is only celebrated in the Province of Cebu, but history has judged that Don Sergio Osmeña’s greatness has caused the granting of independence to the Philippines from our last colonizer the United States of America on July 4, 1946.

One of the treasures that my father, the late Atty. Jesus “Lindong” Avila bequeath to me was the two-volume biography of Don Sergio Osmeña authored by Vicente Albano Pacis. I consider this set of books as part and parcel of Philippine political history and I lament the fact that the Department of Education (DepEd) even today doesn’t allow the reading of this book for all Filipino students because no one would ever know or appreciate how our political leaders in that era fought for Philippine independence.

Allow me to reprint the first few paragraphs written in the preface of this biography on Don Sergio Osmeña: “This book delineates the stellar role that Sergio Osmeña played in the drama of Philippine-American affairs. As his life and labors were continuous highlight of the American Regime in the Philippines of half a century, he contributed decisively to the making of American-Philippine history.

“In 1907 at the age of 29, he burst upon the Philippine national scene to become the official leader and spokesman of the Filipinos. He was soon also acknowledged the best interpreter to his people of America’s presence and purpose in the Philippines. More than anyone else, American or Filipino, he wedded Filipino nationalism and American “Imperialism” together into a movement that directly resulted in the world’s first negotiated and peaceful independence of a colony from a colonial power. Philippine Independence became the prototype of the general world decolonization that followed World War II.”

Indeed, the work of Don Sergio Osmeña in forging Philippine independence became the template for other colonizers like the Dutch in giving independence to Indonesia, like the British in giving independence to India and Pakistan and a bitter lesson to the French for not giving up Indo-China.

Historians have always insisted that Philippine independence was granted by the Americans on July 4, 1946. But then Pres. Diosdado Macapagal who was sore at the Americans changed history and declared that Philippine independence was declared by Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo when he flew the Philippine Flag in his residence in Kawit, Cavite on June 12, 1898. But as I’ve pointed out many times before, no nation on earth recognized this declaration of Gen. Aquinaldo; hence we really didn’t get our independence yet.

However, little do Filipinos know or realize that Speaker Sergio Osmeña also declared Philippine independence before the Philippine Assembly on June 19, 1908 which as history teaches us truly led to the July 4th Independence of the Philippines. Allow me to reprint the very words of Don Sergio Osmeña when he made this historic declaration.

“Gentlemen of the Assembly, with your consent, upon my conscience, as an Assemblyman and as a representative of the country, and on my responsibility as Speaker of this House, I declare solemnly before God and before the world that they consider themselves capable of conducting an ordered life, efficacious for themselves and for others in the concert of free and civilized nations; and that we believe that if at this instant the people of the United States should decide the case of the Filipinos in favor of their liberty, they would, upon assuming all the consequent responsibilities, be able to comply with their duties to themselves and to others, without detriment to liberty, justice and right.” This is the very first time I wrote this declaration in my column.

At the end of his preface, biographer Vicente Albano Pacis wrote about Don Sergio Osmeña, “His faith in America and his insistence that any imperfections in the Law would surely be corrected by the US Congress in due time were thus vindicated. As Acting President starting in June 1943, due to the continuous serious illness of President Quezon, he performed the high functions of the exiled Commonwealth Government in Washington during the war. He resumed the premier leadership of the Philippines by succeeding to the presidency when Quezon died in Saranac Lake, New York during the war exile.

Osmeña became president of the Philippines to perform the near-impossible task of mending a country badly shattered by war and preparing it for the imminent advent of its scheduled independence. Like the great Winston Churchill, however, he was dismissed from public responsibility by the Filipino electorate soon after the war on the very eve of the formal proclamation of the national independence of his country for which he labored all his life.”

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