In Loving Memory

We miss you, Papa.

Our Papa Is Our Hero

The world has many heroes who have won a world of fame. Heroes who have given their all to win in life's great game. But of all the famous heroes that our changing world has had, there's not a one we look up to or admire more than our Dad.

To us, our Papa's a hero, though he'd turn away from praise. He's heroic in his quiet strength and his gentle giving ways. He may not make the headlines, you won't see him on t.v. But we think our Papa is everything a hero ought to be.

He always keeps his promises, on that we can depend. He's loyal to us, no matter want, and he'll always be our friend. So when we think of heroes and the great things that they've done, we feel the way we've always felt--our Papa's the greatest one.

Big Fish

I love watching movies.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not a film critic or anything of that sort. I just love watching movies. There is a movie that appeals to every human emotion or feeling. But sometimes, you come across a movie that just tugs at your heartstrings.

My father passed away almost two years ago. For a long time, my father had this crippling disease that left him bed ridden for many years. Painful as it was, my mother already told us then to be prepared because Papa is not getting any better.

Truth is, you can never really be prepared for it. When Papa died, it left me lost and disoriented. But most of all, I felt inadequate---wondering if I had ever shown him that love and affection, especially at times that Papa needed it most.

Then I came across the movie Big Fish. It is a heartwarming tale about a son who never really knew his dying father outside the incredible stories he told about growing up, finding his fortune, and how he met the son's mother. Called to his father's death bed, the son and his young wife lie in wait as the father recollects amazing memories from his past. From a big cat fish, conjoined twins, giants and midgets, to a dazzling field of daffodils--and finding the love of his life. With the tall tales that his father had said, the son doesn't know whether his father was telling the truth or crossing into the threshold of fantasy. But wanting to piece together a true picture of his dear father from the elaborate stories he loved to tell, the son becomes the story-teller in the end--learning to live within his father's imaginary world and to accept that stories can be more important than facts.

Watching the movie made me miss Papa. In retrospect, I realized that there are so many wonderful stories about him to look back to. All I have to do is remember, and Papa will be alive again in my heart. Stories need to be heard as much as they need to be told, and it is through our stories and the stories that we can get other people to tell about us, that we all achieve immortality.

You

Come in.
I’ve been waiting for you.
There’s a knock on the door
And love walks through.

And lights the fire, smiles…the smile,
As though love were going to stay awhile.

And the fire breathes
And weaves its spell.
But then, love runs out of lies to tell.

For love is restless.
Love’s a flirt.
It has places to go
And people to hurt.

Here’s the shovel
To smother the flame.
Tomorrow you’ll barely
Remember my name.

And I’ll try to forget you,
My dearest one,
As a prisoner tries to forget the sun.

For life holds no purpose
Love holds no charms
Since I beheld you
In another’s arms.

--'Til there was you.

Fallen Rider

On a recent getaway which found me in Zamboanga City for the weekend, I chanced upon an old house in Pasonanca whose charm called out to me the moment I saw it. A good friend, who hails from this part of the City of Flowers told me that it was the house of the late Mayor Cesar Climaco. The name was all too familiar and my first thoughts were of Eddie Garcia sporting silver tresses on a ponytail while riding a bad ass motorcycle.

You guessed it right. I got to watch the movie "Mayor Cesar Climaco" sometime in the past. But that was just the extent of what I know about the man.

Being there right in front of his mansion made me want to know more of him as I was intrigued about how Zamboanga embraced him as their champion. The people I talked to spoke highly of the late mayor. I wanted to know what kind of person was he in the eyes of people who knew and loved him--and this is what I got. Read on.


Remembering the ‘Cesar’ of Zambo
BY THE WAY By Max V. Soliven
The Philippine Star 10/31/2006


These are the days on which we remember our dead with prayer, specially on All Souls’ Day, Nov. 2. Many Filipinos, being eternal optimists, prefer tomorrow, Todos los Santos or All Saints’ Day, fervently believing all our loved ones have gone to heaven.

November is, therefore, a good month for remembrance. By coincidence, one of the finest men who served our country with faith and courage was killed on November 14th in 1984. He was felled by a single shot in the back of the head by a gunman who walked up to him as he sat on his motorcycle talking to some of his constituents – he had just come from helping put out a fire. The impudent killing of Zamboanga City’s irrepressible Mayor Cesar C. Climaco, in the heart of a crowd, should remind us that assassinations and murders "with impunity" were common even then.

The suspected gunman was Rizal Alih, a rogue policeman. Was he arrested? Not only did he get away, but on January 4, 1989, Alih and 14 renegades took Brig. Gen. Eduardo Batalla and his chief of staff, Col. Romeo Abendan, "hostage" in their own Constabulary Camp on Cawa-Cawa Boulevard in Zamboanga.

On January 6, government troops launched an assault on Camp Cawa-Cawa to rescue the hostages and capture Alih. Helicopter gunships fired rockets, tanks attacked with cannon. When the cannon fire and shooting stopped, and the smoke cleared, sixteen bodies were found – the charred or mangled bodies of most of the renegades, and those of their two officer-hostages as well. By golly, Rizal Alih, the killer-cop managed to escape. He later fled to Sabah where, it was subsequently alleged, the Malaysian police and military caught him for banditry – and he was executed.

Here’s what I wrote in MANILA magazine in 1984 when I heard of Cesar Climaco’s murder: "The world, admittedly, lives under the assassin’s gun. I was in Vienna when I heard the news on television that Pope John Paul II had been shot in St. Peter’s Square. Only two weeks ago, Britain’s Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was almost blown up by a "bomb" in Brighton. And, of course, there was Indira Gandhi of India recently felled in a burst of gunfire in the garden of her official residence, by two of her own Sikh guards."

In the same article in 1984, I had referred to the escalating violence of the past year: "Provincial newspaper editors, mayors, vice-mayors and local officials have been mowed down in rapid succession by unknown killers . . . the question is whether these murderers are Death Squads of the military (the operative and illogical term is ‘salvaging’) or hit men of the Sparrow liquidation unit of the Communist New People’s Army."

Mind you, these lines were written 22 years ago. Don’t the newspaper columns and TV reporters of the past few months give one a sense of deja vu? Is there anything new, including murder, under the sun?

* * *

But let me not digress. I was reminded of Zamboanga’s feisty late Mayor Climaco when I addressed a wonderful audience, the members of La Hermandad Zamboangueña at their 46th anniversary dinner held in the Manila Pavillion Hotel on Saturday, October 21.

I first met Cesar in 1960, when I was introduced to him by another two-fisted politician, Manila’s late Mayor Arsenio H. Lacson. We called Lacson "Mambo," a nickname given that cocky, big-shouldered former sports writer and columnist, who became the fightingest Mayor that Manila ever had. Lacson had called to me from across the room in his favorite watering hole, the bar of the Hotel Filipinas (since then burned to the ground).

"Come over here, Max – I want you to meet the Arsenio Lacson of the South!"

I walked over and peered curiously at a stocky fellow in a baggy shirt (Cesar’s shirts never seemed to fit him) and saw someone who looked more like a retired prizefighter – broad pug-face, cauliflower ears – than a city mayor. Climaco’s battered features then split into a wide grin which completely transformed his face.

Like Lacson whose doubled-barreled mouth was the terror of Presidents, Climaco proved to be a man of a few thousand words. He could never resist a pun. He had been swept into office on November 10, 1955, as the first elective mayor of Zamboanga City. He immediately made waves. He defied tradition, shunned orthodox measures, and refused to compromise with pressure groups, whether from Malacañang Palace in faraway Manila, or within his own community.

One of his first efforts was to clean up the town by requiring all calesas (horse-drawn rigs) to tie "diapers" beneath the horses’ tails to prevent manure from littering the city streets. When a large delegation of cocheros marched angrily on City Hall in protest, Climaco bluntly told them he was mayor of all Zamboangueños, not of cocheros alone.

He clamped down on bingo games. Climaco’s reasoning was that there was nothing intrinsically wrong with "bingo" as a gambling game – as long as it was played by those who could afford it. But he pointed out that "bingo" parlors which ran all day and night were taking money from the poor.

Disgruntled elements grumbled that this brash fellow would never get reelected this way, but Climaco proved all of them wrong by being returned to office overwhelmingly in 1959.

He consistently refused to spend big money on his campaigns, as our politicians usually do as a matter of course. "Give the people good government," he insisted to the very end, "and they’ll always back you up." The Zamboangueños of that day did just that. He never lost an election in his home bailiwick.

On May 14, 1984, Zamboanga’s voters by a huge margin elected him a member of the Batasan Pambansa (the Marcos-time National Assembly) against two formidable opponents, one of them backed to the hilt by the Palace. However, Climaco said he would join the Batasan only after his term as Mayor expired in 1986.

He couldn’t resist the quip: "I would prefer to be known as mayor, rather than an Ass (Assemblyman)."

Climaco, who did not drink, smoke, or dance but sheepishly admitted that sometimes he swore, was never one to run away from a fight. In his early years as mayor, he once broke the nose of a hefty Constabulary captain with one well-directed punch – but afterwards drove his bleeding adversary to the hospital.

When the Mayor swore, it was mostly against the high-centralized system of government which had made Malacañang and Manila the fount of all blessings and "pork barrel" funds.

Oh yes, Cesar lost one election. He ran for Senator on the Liberal Party ticket and was trounced in the general rout of his party. He shrugged cheerfully and mumbled that he was just a "country boy" and should never have tried to gatecrash into the Big Time with those smart city slickers.

* * *

As Mayor, Climaco was the terror of the Zamboanga police. In his first term, he would patrol the streets in his creaky jeep in the dead of night, swooping down unannounced on police outposts to see whether any of his cops were asleep on the job. To test their alertness, he once drove around the city in his jeep from 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. without any lights on his vehicle – then summoned the policemen to a meeting to express his disgust. Not one cop had been around, he complained, to apprehend him for this violation.

"I’ve heard of blind justice," Cesar roared, "But sleeping justice is too much!" At one outpost, he discovered a group of policemen wrapped in accustomed slumber. Tip-toeing into the precinct, Climaco carted away the police typewriter. The next day, the policemen shamefacedly had to admit, when he confronted them, that their typewriter had been stolen. They didn’t understand how – they swore they had been awake all night. Climaco stormed out to his jeep, got the typewriter, and shoved it into their hands. "I took it myself," he raged, "while you were sleeping like babies!"

In October 1961, the mayor again happened on two policemen in Pasonanca Park, snoring at their posts. Climaco lifted their official "Pershing" caps, gift-wrapped the head-pieces and had them delivered to the police chief. He informed the chief that these caps were a present "for the sleeping cops of Zamboanga City."

Unable to fire those erring policemen under Republic Act 557, Climaco charged them with "sleeping on duty." Political padrinos brought pressure to bear on the City Council and the sentence was progressively whittled down from six months to only ten days. "This is because the Council differentiated," Climaco snorted in disgust, "between sleeping and dozing."

When GMA’s father, Diosdado Macapagal was elected President, he borrowed Climaco from his beloved Zamboanga and appointed him Presidential Graft Buster, administrator of the Office of Economic Coordination, and concurrently Customs Commissioner. The latter job proved to be one of Climaco’s greatest frustrations.

The entrenched pier syndicates played a clever game with him. Knowing Climaco to be a do-it-yourself "action man," a ceaseless chaser after firetrucks and ambulances, they allowed him to intercept a few petty smuggling attempts while sneaking big shipments into the country elsewhere, behind his back. An "intelligence" report that a shipment was being smuggled in at the port of Cebu would send Climaco rushing to that southern city. While he was away, more important "consignments" would be pushed through in Manila or other ports or airports by the corrupt Customs mafia.

Climaco soon discovered that you may constantly seek to fight evil with vim and vigor – and epigrams – but no man, even a human dynamo like himself, could be everywhere at once.

He vented his frustration before he sadly asked Cong Dadong to release him from his Customs post so he could return to Zamboanga: "I appointed a watchdog committee to investigate, later I had to appoint another watchdog group to watch the watchdog committee – I give up!"

Fearless to the last, however, he defied Apo Ferdinand Marcos’ martial law. Cesar made a vow to never surrender to a tyrant – and that he would never cut his hair until the country was "once again free." Climaco’s graying hair, indeed, grew longer and longer over the first 12 years of martial law – but it also started falling.

He replaced his battered jeep with a motorcycle. He was a familiar site in Zamboanga and in its farflung barrios – zooming up and down those rutted or muddy provincial roads. Kids would rush out to greet him and wave at him, for he always stuffed his bike’s saddlebags with heaps of candy which he would fling at the children as he whizzed by.

He didn’t have any security vehicles with wang-wangs tailing him, he didn’t believe in bodyguards. He didn’t carry a gun.

"When they get you," he used to tell me – prophetically as it turned out – when I remonstrated with him, "They’ll shoot you in the back anyway. You’ll never get a chance to shoot back."

* * *

He was respected and loved by Muslim and Christian alike. (In those days, the Muslim community was located in Rio Hondo).

He irritated the military and police by keeping a huge scoreboard of the local crime rate posted prominently in front of City Hall – a daily reminder of how weakly the military and police were coping with violence and crime.

When his friend and hero, Ninoy Aquino was assassinated at Manila international airport, he sorrowfully and proudly renamed one of Zamboanga’s main squares "Aquino Plaza." He declared: "This is the Plaza where freedom begins."

His was a voice which could only be silenced by death. And one day death caught up with him.

In one of our meetings, I had told Cesar that the Crisologo warlord faction then at war with Chavit Singson, had placed a murder "contract" on me. Climaco had laughed merrily and said: "Why worry? Do you want to live forever?"

Nobody lives forever, I agreed with Cesar, but in the end he was wrong. Cesar Climaco will live forever in our hearts.

Bale el istorya. Thanks MFG!