Cerge

For nine years now, Cerge Remonde blamed me for his landing a job at the Palace. Or, for that job landing on his lap.

He said that when offered the job of press undersecretary shortly after Edsa 2, he readily accepted because he assumed we would be working together at that agency. I could not imagine why he assumed that.

When he first told me that story, I told him I was least fit for the job he assumed I would take. To begin with, my tongue was always sharper than my brain — a surefire formula for trouble. My wit was cruel and my sarcasm biting. I never was with the working press and was never comfortable with the prevalent attitude in the local media that always saw journalists and government as adversaries.

Besides, I told him, I hated dressing up for anything. The major part of my wardrobe consists of golf shirts and battered slacks.

For this reason, Cerge, whenever he saw me, always suspected I was coming up from the fairways. I can’t blame him. The man was golf-deprived. I always imagine him sitting on his desk, wishing he was playing out in the sun instead.

Nearly each time I saw him, which was very often on some golf course, Cerge would click his tongue and groan about how tough his life was and how easy mine is. He cultivated this caricature in his mind about him always working and me always playing.

We had contrasting personalities, to be sure.

Cerge loved to dress up. He was very good at backslapping and enjoyed hanging out with his friends in broadcast. He was a man of infinite patience and boundless cheer. In his private universe, everyone was a friend.

When the man eventually assumed the post of Press Secretary, I thought it suited him. It was a tough job; but I suspect he enjoyed it immensely.

All the posts he held at the Palace were tough to begin with. He was trouble-shooter for the President. He was tasked with looking after the administration’s anti-poverty programs. He accepted the thankless, tiring job of running the Presidential Management Staff after his predecessor, completely exhausted, begged to be relieved. Serving a workaholic President meant the PMS Secretary had to be on the job 24/7.

Of all the responsibilities he had, loyally serving his President, the job of Press Secretary was probably the most exasperating.

Cerge let some of that exasperation show when, given the miserable popularity ratings of his boss, the man took responsibility for that outcome. His President was working very hard. If the people did not appreciate that, Cerge thought that the failure must lie in his inability to communicate the great things being done.

I am certain Cerge did not say that for effect. He must have been carrying the disappointment in his heart and allowing us a peek. He, too, like his principal, was working very hard — with little results to show.

Like his principal, Cerge must have felt like he was rolling a rock up a hill. There was much to crow about. But unless the poverty picture was being dramatically altered, all the work seemed for naught. Public cynicism had hardened, abetted by the incessant hostility of the media.

There were days, surely, when it must have seemed that no good news could be allowed to filter through the prejudiced lenses of the media community. They had installed a prism for interpreting everything that happened, a template of failed leadership and callous administration, a storyline of a presidency constantly conspiring against its own people.

Several times, Cerge invited me to sit down and discuss a communications strategy that could work. I told him bluntly that was futile. The chasm of distrust carved out by our poisoned politics and scorched-earth media attitudes could no longer be bridged. There was no field of maneuver. The trenches have been dug. Everything had become a caricature, rendered in black and white.

I regret now not having done more to help Cerge. But in my mind, I always thought that time was scarce and energy finite. I would rather use both doing things where some measure of progress may be registered. The poisoned climate of public attitudes could not be helped.

Cerge, by contrast, never gave up. He worked and worked and worked to get his message across channels of communications controlled by the cynical.

Now we can literally say he worked himself to death.

No matter the political coloration we nurse, all of us should agree Cerge was a public servant we could do with more of. He worked tirelessly and refused to be distracted by the lines of partisan distinction.

Last Sunday, I caught sight of Cerge at the Cebu airport. We were boarding the same flight to Manila, but he was on the more privileged section of the plane.

I was sort of relieved he did not see me coming in. He would have needled me, as he always did, about having the luxury of time for golf, a luxury he had foregone long ago. My reddened skin would have completely betrayed the fact I was out in the sun two days in a row.

When news of his passing reached me Tuesday, I regretted not having walked up to Cerge at the plane last Sunday to shake his hand and thank him for all the work he was putting in. No one else wanted to do this thankless job of putting shoulder to the rock which, since it could not be pushed further uphill, must at least be held in place.

I can almost hear him chuckling at such an irreverent quip.