Max Soliven biography to be launched today

Today is a red-letter day for the family of the late Sir Maximo V. Soliven who died last Nov. 24, 2006, as his biography entitled Maximo V. Soliven: The Man and the Journalist authored by our dear friend, Nelson Navarro will be formally launched today at the Manila Peninsula from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. I’m looking forward to seeing the “Old Boys” inner circle of Sir Max in today’s book launching, so it will be a reunion of sorts.

I have no doubt that Nelson Navarro’s biography of Sir Max would be a bestseller, simply because in writing the life and times of Sir Max Soliven, you are actually writing the history of the Philippines. After all, Sir Max served 15 Philippine Presidents and yes, he shared a jail cell with our hero, the late Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., although he languished there for only a few months, while Ninoy stayed for many years. But certainly those intimate stories that Sir Max would often tell us about Ninoy would surely be out in this biography.

I have the two previous biographies written by Nelson Navarro, one is entitled What’s Happening to our Country? The Life and Times of Emmanuel Pelaez, which was launched last July 31, 2009 at the Casa Gorordo in Cebu City and the other is entitled Rodolfo & Elsa Pelaez: A 20th Century Legacy. Somehow while these two personalities came from Mindanao, because of their close proximity to Cebu, their stories also included life in Cebu during their younger days. Certainly, the political history of Manning Pelaez is a must read for political science students.

I’ve written several times in the past that I met Sir Max when I was the external vice-president of the Cebu Chamber of Commerce & Industry, Inc. (CCCI) when we invited him to speak in Cebu after the EDSA Revolt. As I was assigned to fetch him from the airport and be his driver, it was then that he asked me to join The Philippine STAR as his reporter in Cebu, giving me a fancy title of Cebu Bureau Chief that he insisted I use.

Back then, my only involvement in journalism was my being a director of the Cebu Newspaper Workers Foundation, Inc. (CENEWOF) due to the fact that my grandfather Don Jose Avila had the first English Language newspaper daily in Cebu dubbed “The Cebu Advertiser”. Nope, I never wrote anything in high school nor in college. Perhaps that was the big challenge to Sir Max when he asked me to join him so he could teach me how to write and 25 years later, I’m already considered an “old hand” in Cebu’s journalism. I can only attribute this to the gift of friendship that Sir Max bestowed on me... a gift that I would carry to my grave.

If there is anything that Sir Max imparted to me it’s never fear when you are writing the truth. I guess this is the reason why the masthead of The Philippine STAR declares, “Truth Shall Prevail.” For sure, the biography of Sir Max would point to many truths that often we columnists do not write in order not to discredit or embarrass a person. This is why I believe that his biography would be a bestseller. Sir Max has been gone for five years now, but a day never passes that I don’t think of him.

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Last week, I got a mysterious email sent to me on the Senate investigation of the Development Bank of the Philippines (DBP). While this investigation is focused against businessman Roberto V. Ongpin, there are many other questions that remain unanswered about the dealings in DBP, especially regarding the so-called non-performing assets (NPA) of the DBP.

As it turned out, in the year 2006 the DBP wrote off almost P10 billion of its NPAs to a special purpose vehicle (SPV). My attention was focused on the write off by DBP of some P1.67 billion to the Lopez Group of companies, the biggest chunk came from the Maynilad Water, which got a loan in the year 2000 (I guess this was still during President Erap’s time) and by the year 2005 Maynilad defaulted and the loan of P710 million was written off.

What we are seeing here is a big conglomerate getting their loans written off by the DBP, while the rest of us lesser mortals who often have problems paying their bank loans get threatened with a confiscation of collaterals by uncaring bank officials. So if any, we call upon the Senate to get their act together and find out from DBP officials who facilitated to have these bank loans written off? Now that should be an interesting news item.

This incident reminds me of what the late Sir Max Soliven used to tell us that if you owed the bank a small loan, you are subjected to the whims of the bank’s officers who will pound on you. But when you owe the banks hundreds of millions in loans, it is now the bank who is subjected to you.

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