Most influential taipan

HONG KONG – The title of this column comes from the subject itself. I had known her since schooldays as silent and diffident in a class of about 40 girls in St. Scholastica’s College. Indeed, as she recounts those days, one of the nuns was so exasperated with her inscrutability she called her "a good for nothing". Well, enough has happened to prove the nun wrong. I am talking about ‘Mader’ Lily or as I knew her then – Lily Yu. Of late we have been seeing each other and relish returning to those days when we were younger, trying to bridge the years. She said, "I am not a big taipan, only a small taipan." She might not have the millions, even the billions of Henry Sy or Lucio Tan or George Ty or John Gokongwei but for me she is the most influential taipan in the Philippines today. Why? Because the commodity she purveys are values and ideas and the reach of these values and ideas goes down to the masses. She may not be aware that is power and she can use that power for good or ill.

So when she called for a lunch date at Mandarin’s Paseo Uno, I was elated but not surprised. She likes to think that being a journalist, it is I who has influence. Maybe, but not as much as the influence she has as a movie producer.

Across the table as she talked about her new film Mano Po 2 I realized that this lady holds an important key in the shaping of the Filipino psyche.

In her early days as a movie producer, she approached the enterprise from how the films fared on the box office tills. She would junk ideas that did not make money. She wanted to help the country and once produced the more serious film, Stella L which starred Vilma Santos, now Lipa mayor, who played a revolutionary nun and it did not make money. So she went back to making money-producing but trite films. And then one day, even these trite films were not making the money it used to. No matter how imperceptibly it seemed, the movie audience changed. So she made Mano Po a blockbuster with a star-studded cast about the story of a Tsinoy family and their struggle in the Philippines, what she called "interweaving of past and present that illumines the complexity of human relations". The context of the cultural integration of immigrants was not directly told but it was never far behind.

It is fortuitous that I should be writing this column here in Hong Kong with ships sailing across the border visible from a window across my daughter’s desk. For good or ill, Hong Kong is the quintessential symbol of the integration of Chinese values handed down from the past through hundreds of years of tradition and global modernization. Mader Lily wanted to come to Hong Kong with me because she wanted to touch base once again with Veronica who is her inaanak sa kasal. Nor did she give any reason. But I have a suspicion she wanted the film project throughout Asia where there are millions of overseas Chinese.

Washington SyCip spoke about this group of about 500 million people in ASEAN at a convention of Chinese entrepreneurs in Nanjing. He advised them that their first loyalty should always be to the country where they reside and where they may have made their money.

"Give back to the country a major part of where your profits came from! Be part of the community and do not just join ‘Chinese associations’. Involve yourself in cultural and social projects that will benefit the majority of those that are not so well off," he said. Mader Lily’s Mano Po although about a Chinese family in the Philippines could well send this message to Asia’s Chinese immigrant communities. ‘Wash’ Sycip and Mader Lily may be speaking from different ends of the social spectrum but each can reinforce the values they hope to inculcate to future Tsinoy generations.

I know that some actors and actresses turned politicians have approached Mader Lily’s help for their campaigns. I hope she will consider these proposals with a firm conviction of what is good for the country. With an actor bereft of political and intellectual skills poised to run for presidency, Mader Lily does have a crucial role to help correct this political insanity.

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LETTERS: From Eliseo P. Ocampo, Executive Chairman, Sulong Bayan: "Solita Monsod’s "Parliamentary Could Be The Killer" in the other paper is a classic example of an intellectual commenting on an issue outside her area of competence. With half-baked knowledge of the subject or, worse, bias or prejudice she asserts the Davide impeachment case "would banish forever any lingering illusion that a parliamentary system is the answer to the problems of our country, referring to a combination of the presidential and parliamentary system along the French line. Except for some legislators, nobody seriously advocates the French parliamentary model, which to SulongBayan Movement is the worst model for Filipinos. The French model splits executive power between the prime minister and the president, a system that will not solve the fractious nature of our democratic ethic.

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"We want to advocate a parliamentary system that has a legislature (which may be likened to a board of directors in a corporation), which elects the prime minister (who may be likened to the president or chief operating officer of the corporation), subject always to the active and effective control of the people, through a people’s assembly and/or through legitimate and accredited people’s and non-government organizations representing the people at large (who may be likened to the stockholders in a corporation).

"It incorporates the best features of the English, Indian, Pakistani, German and other modelsith our own national culture and idiosyncrasies. Who said a parliamentary system is the answer to the problem of the country? The parliamentary system is the key to the solution of the problems of our country. It is still us who will solve our national problems with the appropriate parliamentary system. SulongBayan is ready to make a powerpoint presentation to any interested group to explain its proposed parliamentary system."

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