Farewell, Ninong Ed

It wouldn’t be a stretch to think that the late senator and former Senate President Edgardo J. Angara could have been the best President the country never had.

I just think of what he did at the University of the Philippines (UP) when he was its president from 1981 to 1987 — a time I witnessed -— to bolster this belief.

Though the UP population generally distrusted him in the beginning because of his association with then Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile and the administration, Angara proved to be a surprise. He is remembered for defending the state university’s tradition of dissent, and obtaining fiscal autonomy. His efforts contributed to upholding UP’s reputation for academic excellence as the country’s premier educational center.

After interviewing him for the STAR! Monthly magazine, upon the instructions of my editor Betty Go-Belmonte, I was totally in awe of Angara — the promdi from Baler who rose to be a hotshot lawyer and then UP president. When my husband Ed and I got married in 1985, I was honored that both Angara and Mrs. Belmonte agreed to be our wedding godparents.

“People in UP were a little naughty; they saw me as the right hand of Enrile. And I was really unknown in the academe. But I soldiered on and, in the end, I think, the whole community accepted me because I effected really, really wide-ranging change in the university — in the curriculum, in physical appearances, in pay. I think I improved the morale of the faculty, students and staff as a whole,” Angara told PeopleAsia magazine when he received one of its People of the Year awards in 2012.

I remember that the toilets in the UP College of Arts and Sciences at the time (1981), which had no running water, suddenly had faucets and flushes that worked. Morale was high because during the university’s diamond jubilee, Angara raised P75 million for professorial chairs.

I remember how he defended the sanctity of the ballot as a member of NAMFREL in the 1986 snap elections — he was risking his law career, his law firm, everything, by speaking out when he thought the outcome of the polls would be compromised.

Angara and wife Gloria during his 77th birthday.

Later on, Angara would be elected senator in 1987 as part of President Corazon Aquino’s slate despite the fact that he couldn’t campaign, having suffered an apparent heart attack while playing tennis. With his beauteous and supportive wife Gloria campaigning in his stead, he still emerged as one of the topnotchers of the election.

Cory lent him a rosary given to her by Sister Lucia of Fatima, which Angara credited for his full recovery. He recalled that when he was about to be wheeled into the operating room in a US hospital, the doctors took another angiogram and his doctor told him, “There’s nothing wrong with your heart! There’s no block!”

He was told that what he had was a bad spasm caused by lack of sleep and too much smoking, and indeed it caused his heart to stop. He felt, since then, that he was given a new lease on life.

And he lived his second crafting and passing laws that would benefit all Filipinos, “from womb to tomb.”

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Sen. Sonny Angara with son Manolo and father Ed Angara some 10 years ago. Photo from Tootsy Angara’s Instagram account

An educator, lawyer, banker, farmer, patron of the arts, Angara was the longest-serving senator in the post-EDSA Senate. Except for a mandatory term break, he had been elected to four consecutive terms of six years each.

“Fortunately, looking back at almost 20 years of lawmaking, I probably have the most — and not just number but quality legislation — that have implications and benefited people, high school students, senior citizens, culture, scholarships. My scholarship is probably the biggest in the country. Science scholarship was mine. The scholarship system was my conception.”

He told me in one of our conversations over coffee, which he loved and consumed many cups of in the past, “I’m always consistent and firm in what I want to do as a public servant. I’ve gotten to that very consistently. Education, health, culture and agriculture. Now, my emphasis is on science and technology. So I created a commission on mathematics, science and engineering.”

Angara was able to push for the passage of some of the country’s most memorable laws. These include the Free High School Act, Commission on Higher Education (CHED), Technical Education and Skill Development Authority (TESDA), the National Health Insurance Act (PhilHealth), Senior Citizens Act, the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act (AFMA), the Renewable Energy Act and the Procurement Reform Act.

To him, a patriot was one “who puts the interest of his country first and foremost, even above himself.” He preferred to be a patriot rather than a martyr.

“I like a patriot who is alive and doing really good for his country and not serving their personal interests. Why, because people will always act on their own self interest. But it’s amazing because there are people, they’re human, but go beyond their interests. I think we have that in the Philippines and they’re unrecognized, unrewarded.”

I once asked him what he would have been if he were not who he was then.

“A scientist! Ang galing ko sa Trigonometry, Algebra noong high school ako. Ang galing ko sa Math. I should have done Engineering and then taken up Law. I could have done Accountancy.”

But Angara believed, and I agree, that he was no nerd, either, despite his interests.

“You’ll never succeed, advance projects and head many organizations if you didn’t have a high emotional quotient (EQ), and I don’t think I would have succeeded if it’s just intelligence.”

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President Duterte appointed Angara as special envoy to the European Union last year. He was deeply involved in cultural projects that put his beloved Baler on the map, and the Spanish Galleon trade that was part of the cultural fabric of Filipino people.

His last text message to me on April 26, just over two weeks before he passed away, was, “Please block off June 29 to July 1 for Baler, Philippine-Spain Day. The diplomatic corps will be there.”

Till the end, my Ninong Ed was the patriot he aimed to be.

(You may e-mail me at [email protected].)