Don Eñing’s legacy

(Second of two parts)

Oscar M. Lopez, chair of the Lopez Group of Companies, recalled on several occasions, the legacy left by his father, the late Eugenio Lopez Sr., whose 105th birth anniversary was observed by the Lopez clan , July 22 in Jaro, Iloilo, Oscar talked about his father’s multi-faceted career: lawyer, businessman, tri-media magnate.

It was the late Lopez’s values that Oscar cherishes most - values that led him and his living brother and sister and their children to launch four social development projects in Jaro, Iloilo.

The Lopez family finances, with the guidance of Gawad Kalinga, the construction of 50 houses for church workers at a parcel of land donated by the archdiocese of Jaro at Barangay Buntatala. As in all GK projects, the structures were built by the homeowners themselves. The materials of concrete and wood cost P60,000, and would have cost more outside the GK program.

(It must be mentioned that the Lopez Group of Companies is partnering with Gawad Kalinga for other housing projects in San Pablo, Laguna, Quezon province, and Malabon. Its sister company, the Manila North Tollways Corporation, has put up the first three of 50 houses for squatter families in a barangay in Marilao, Bulacan.)

The second project launched at the Tacas Elementary School was "Gift of Knowledge," which provides 15 public elementary schools and three public high schools with media-based learning, and educational television and teachers’ training. The project is supported by Knowledge Channel and ABS-CBN Foundation’s E-media.

The Bantay Kalusugan project benefits the city’s malnourished children. This was started in February, and statistics have shown that the feeding sessions have resulted in 52.5 per cent of 600 malnourished children obtaining normal status. The target is 85 per cent, which is likely realizable by this month since mothers and teachers have been trained to prepare nutritious meals for malnourished children.

The fourth project is close to Oscar Lopez’s heart. The Lopez Group is partnering with the Family Planning Organization of the Philippines Iloilo Chapter. The "Pamilya Ko, Palangga Ko" program seeks to improve the over-all health, responsibility and well-being of selected communities in Jaro by supporting reproductive health and family planning activities. Other events such as "Pamahaw ni Inday, Kabaskug sang Iloy: Kapag-on sang Pamilya," and a "Maginoong Pinoy Club" a program involving 200 trisikad/tricycle drivers (who happen to be all male) help raise awareness of family planning methods.

A grandson, Gabby Lopez, who is president of ABS-CBN, spoke about the four projects above as expressions of his Lolo Eñing’s commitment to corporate social responsibility. He said that his grandfather had always emphasized returning the benefits acquired by the Lopez Group to the community through foundations, schools, and hospitals.

Gabby said the launches in Jaro marked "the passing of the torch to us in the Third Generation of Lopezes." Through those projects, "We want to plant the seeds of hope for a brighter future for our province mates in Iloilo," And oh, yes, he said the Lopezes are not only back in Iloilo, "We are here to stay."

It is possible for the young Lopez generations to fund long-term social development projects because of available resources. What makes them different from the rich and powerful is their commitment, like their grandfathers’, to returning back to, and sharing with, their townsfolk, those resources.

Don Ening made possible the sharing of resources. After the Second World War, Eñing’s brother Nanding went into politics, but he continued his entrepreneurial career. He resumed the operation of his airline business, now known as the Far East Air Transport, Inc., or FEATI, which he later sold to Philippine Airlines. With the profits derived from the sale, he bought the Manila Chronicle from its newspapermen owners. The paper never made money, said Oscar, but his father enjoyed publishing it "for all the power it gave him."

Don Eñing spent the next eight years expanding a business based that revolved around the sugar industry. This included the acquisition of control and management of the Binalbagan Isabela Sugar Company, then the largest sugar milling company in the country, and a few years after, he acquired control of the Pampanga Sugar Mills (PASUMIL).

From 1956 onward, he focused his attention on the communication industry. He established the Chronicle Broadcasting Network, a radio broadcasting sister company of The Manila Chronicle. Then he acquired the Alto Broadcasting System and the only TV station in the county, the Monserrat Broadcasting system, and formed a corporate consolidation of all these broadcast assets for radio and television into the ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corporation, the largest and most modern in the country. By the early 1970s, he controlled the biggest tri-media empire in the country.

In 1961, he led a group of Filipino investors to form Meralco Securities Corporation for the purpose of acquiring ownership of Manila Electric Company (Meralco), which was owned by General Electric Utilities of the United States. In January 1962 the "historic buyout and Filipinization was closed," recalled Oscar.

What followed over the next decade was a veritable "golden age" for Meralco and the Lopez businesses. Business was good, with expansions funded entirely from private capital, with no government loans or guarantees. Other businesses developed around Meralco – Meralco Securities Industrial Corporation (now FPIC), the pipeline company; Philippine Electric Corporation, Philippine Petroleum Corporation, Philippine Engi-neering and Construction Corporation, the forerunner of today’s First Philippine Balfour Beatty.

The third of Don Eñing’s son, Manolo, now president of Meralco, said in Jaro that when his father’s group bought the American company, people doubted if it could run Meralco. "My father took these doubts and apprehensions as a personal challenge. He vowed that he would prove that Filipinos could run Meralco even better than the Americans. He was not only nationalist theory, but in deed – he was an economic nationalist." Under his father’s leadership, recalled Manolo, Meralco increased its generating capacity fivefold in ten years, while simultaneously offering the cheapest power in Asia.

How did his father do it? He was not an engineer nor a finance man, and knew nothing about electric power. His formula for Meralco’s success depended on a very simple equation: for Meralco to serve its customers well, it took care of its employees. "It was a principle that he followed to the full – and one that I try to keep faith with today."

By 1971, Oscar recalled, his father, confronted by "an insidious and rowing kleptocracy at the highest levels of government," dared to openly criticize the Marcos administration.

Martial law was declared, and Eugenio Jr., or Geny, Oscar’s older brother, was imprisoned as a hostage to compel Don Eñing to surrender ownership of Meralco and Meralco Securities Corporation. ABS-CBN and the Manila Chronicle were closed. The Lopez family had been disenfranchised of its holdings. But up to the very end, recalled Oscar, his father "refused to make peace with the Marcos dictatorship and he lived out the rest of his life in self-imposed exile in San Francisco, where he died in July 1975."

But in death, the Lopez patriarch left his children "with a rich legacy of family unity, a strong work ethic and an equally strong spirit of enterprise. This is the legacy which enabled us to raise in 1986 from the ashes of martial law like a Phoenix to become 15 years later – one of the biggest conglomerate groups in the country once more."

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