Pinoy Penman

Manileño for April 2007


I'VE JUST finished writing the first draft of the biography of a remarkable man—someone who, at 85 years old, still goes to his office at seven in the morning, carries his own briefcase, and goes abroad on business trips for half the year, following an itinerary that would cripple a man 40 years younger.

I’d like to share some highlights of that life with you, as I’m sure the book will be of great interest to many Filipino-Americans when it comes out in June. Its hero, after all, is a Filipino who took out American citizenship when he had to, but is, for most intents and purposes, truly a citizen of Asia, someone who has passionately believed that only by thinking and acting as Asians can we hope to be able to stand up to the economic behemoths of the United States and Europe.

The man’s name is Washington Z. SyCip—yes, the founder and longtime head of what in its prime was the largest and most prestigious accounting firm in Asia, SyCip, Gorres, Velayo & Co., better known by its initials, “SGV”—a marque that for decades stood for Good Financial Housekeeping in the Philippines and much of the rest of Asia.

SyCip got his name when his father Albino—a lawyer who graduated from the University of Michigan and who co-founded Chinabank—won an important case in Washington, DC at about the same time his third son was born in Manila. That son would be known as “Wash” for the rest of his life.

Wash SyCip was something of an academic wunderkind. He went to a public elementary school and high school at the insistence of his father, who didn’t want his children acquiring any airs. Skipping a few years of grade school and high school because of his superior intellect, Wash graduated from the University of Sto. Tomas, summa cum laude, at an age when many kids today will just be entering their freshman year—all of 17. He began teaching at that age, quickly took a master’s degree, and, still too young to be given his license to practice as a CPA, he went to the US for his PhD at Columbia University. He was on track to secure his doctorate in accounting at the age of 21 when the war broke out.

Marooned in the US, and having been told mistakenly that his father had been killed by the Japanese, Wash signed up with the US Army, joining a regiment of Filipinos being trained in California to be part of the liberation force. But his natural talents asserted themselves, and soon Wash found himself being trained as a cryptographer; soon he was shipped out to Calcutta in India, there to spend the war breaking Japanese codes. (For this, he had to become an American citizen.)

When the war ended, Wash rejoined his family in Manila—his father had been imprisoned but was alive—and realized that there were great opportunities to be found in postwar reconstruction. Passing up a lucrative offer to work as comptroller for a Conde Nast magazine in New York, Wash SyCyip decided instead to open his own accounting firm in a small office he shared with his brothers in Binondo, taking on his fellow tenants in the building as his first clients. He put up his shingle as “Washington SyCip & Co.”—and thus began a 60-year saga of growth that’s still miraculously going strong.

While he retired from SGV ten years ago—as you might think of doing when you turn 75 and your company’s in the pink of health—Wash continues to be involved in various international, corporate, and philanthropic activities. This was, after all, the man who co-founded the Asian Institute of Management in 1968 and the Philippine Business for Social Progress in 1970. Among other commitments, he chairs the board of Lufthansa Technik Philippines—which services large airplanes from all over the world in Manila—and is a member of Board of Overseers of the Columbia University Graduate School of Business and of the International Advisory Board of the Council for Foreign Relations.

But it isn’t just his longevity that distinguishes Wash. He has deeply held ideas about what’s wrong with the Philippines, and what could and should be done to set things right. He believes in democracy—Asian-style. By that he means the “benevolent authoritarianism” of our economically more successful neighbors like Singapore and Malaysia—whose humble origins he can personally remember from their backwater days in the 1960s. He bristles at US efforts to stamp its brand of democracy everywhere around the world. He asks: “Is it not possible that just as technology has to be adapted to account for available factors of production, political evolution similarly has to be adapted to take into account economic and cultural realities?”

If he had his way, Wash would pour huge amounts of money into basic education; cut population growth, no matter what the Church says; put economics ahead of politics, and insulate economic management from the politicians; and, perhaps most controversially, trade off certain political freedoms for stronger economic performance.

Not surprisingly, many of his prescriptions are falling on deaf ears—especially in a nation gearing up for another costly, confused, and potentially bloody election.

We can ignore him, but I have a feeling that Wash SyCip will yet have the last laugh—if not actually outlive us all.

Manileño for March 2007


(This column for the San Francisco-based Filipinas Magazine was written before the official senatorial tickets of the administration and opposition coalitions were announced.)

NOW WE can be absolutely sure: there are no real political parties in the Philippines, only real political dynasties, and it doesn’t matter which political flag individual members might march under, so long as the family survives.

The Philippine political climate is roiling with uncertainty as I write this piece, a couple of weeks before the deadline for aspirants in the May election to file their certificates of candidacy—and declare, in effect, who they’re running with and what they’re running for (besides wealth and power, of course). The uncertainty comes from the intense jockeying for positions in both the administration’s and the opposition’s 12-person slates.

In other, saner places, those slates would have been formed long ago, defined by the candidates’ staunch adherence to party principles. Here in Manila, they’ll remain maddeningly inchoate until the very end—and then again, even after the party slates will have been announced, you still wouldn’t know whom to trust as a partymate.

Picture this: the GMA/administration coalition will have some predictable names on its roster—including Palace chief of staff Mike Defensor and the President’s drum major in Congress, Rep. Butch Pichay. But that team will also include—courtesy of a last-minute switch to a coalition-partner party—Estrada loyalists and former senators Tessie Aquino Oreta and Tito Sotto. (And please make way for actor Richard “Goma” Gomez, who’s just announced—to Pichay’s horror—that he was also going to be on the Palace team. Another actor, Cesar Montano, had been threatening to play the part of a senator, while, more modestly, boxing champ Manny Pacquiao seems to have decided to go lightweight and become a mayor.)

If the thought of Oreta and Sotto tooting GMA’s horn bewilders you, how about the idea of former Estrada tormentor and now Senate President Manny Villar joining the Erap-led opposition? Another Erap gadfly, former Sen. Loren Legarda, might also join that posse.

These contortions have been made possible by rank opportunism and rampant factionalism in our political system, where no sanctions—legal or moral—face brazen turncoats, and where the solution to not getting your party’s nod is to jump ship, or to create a new one. The buzzwords “unity” and “reconciliation” are used to justify their complete opposites. And there’s no great mystery nor pain to switching sides, with party platforms and ideologies coming out of a Xerox machine, leaving just a blank space for the party name.

In the US, of course, the idea of a “party slate” would be a strange one, since senators represent their states. In the Philippines, we’ve chosen to elect our senators at large, effectively guaranteeing a free-for-all, with even candidates from the same party duking it out for the last few slots come crunch time. This has also encouraged the widespread practice of “junking,” by which candidates discover who their real friends (and sometimes also their real parties) are; in other words, you could be on the ticket of the XYZ Party in the national advertisements, only to find that you’re a non-entity in Southwestern Mindanao, having been replaced on the crucial sample ballot by a candidate from the Lapiang ABC, someone more palatable to the locals or more generous with his largesse.

The faithlessness of parties could be one reason why candidates—and voters—have tended to rely more on old family names than whatever alphabet-soup coalition they might choose as a flag of convenience. As the deposed President Estrada likes to pontificate from prison (or what passes for one), the only thing that counts is “winnability”, and there’s often nothing more “winnable” than a tried-and-tested surname and all the resources that go with it, never mind the baggage.

I don’t have the exact figures at hand, but it’s an easy guess that more than half of all our 70-plus provinces are ruled by one family or other, with members alternating in the positions of governor, congressman, and mayor. The strongest families—the Osmeñas, the Roxases, the Aquinos, the Marcoses, and the Estradas—will gun for higher office, and there gain the kind of clout and visibility that no tinpot mayorship can bestow.

This year, three relatives of sitting senators are seeking entry into that exclusive club on the opposition ticket: Koko Pimentel, son of Sen. Nene Pimentel; JV Ejercito, half-brother of Sen. Jinggoy Estrada; and Alan Peter Cayetano, brother of Sen. Pia Cayetano.

I’m no great fan of former Sen. Francisco Tatad—who will probably never outlive his role in sanitizing the Marcos dictatorship, at least to this ex-detainee—but I’d have to share his dismay over the prospect of having six members of our 24-person Senate belong to the same families, regardless of the parties they represent. (To his credit, Rep. Rufinito Biazon—the son of Sen. Rodolfo Biazon—declined his nomination by the Liberal Party to the opposition’s senatorial ticket. His inclusion could have theoretically brought the six up to eight!)

And this is just the Senate, folks. Imagine what it’s like down at the provincial and local levels, where you can expect so-and-so’s son to be fielded against so-and-so’s daughter, or where uncles give way to nephews so the aunt could run for Congress instead of the governorship, ad nauseam.

Ironically, this parasitical variety of familial politics blossomed as a result of the imposition of term limits, which we thought were meant to encourage the entry of fresher faces into the political mainstream. They’re fresher, all right—because they’re someone’s progeny, dressed up for the 21st century. There’s a provision against political dynasties in the 1987 Constitution—but no enabling law has been passed by Congress to implement it. Should we even wonder why?

Hay, naku! The party is dead—long live the family!

Manileño for February 2007


You all know how this feels: you fly out of the country, get instantly homesick, and can’t wait to come home—and then you come home, get instantly sick (of such things as you’ll find below), and can’t wait to fly out.

As my friends and family know, I love the Philippines to pieces, and have—in quiet but fervent ways—pledged allegiance to it many, many times, refusing well-meant entreaties to explore the possibility of moving abroad, and vowing to push up daisies here in the boonies of Diliman. I have nothing against living in America—I enjoy vacationing there, which I suppose is entirely different from having to be a working stiff from 9 to 5—but I worry about missing too many things back home.

I’ve just realized, for example, that the Philippines is, well, a huge Filipino food store, the mother of all Asian food stores and Asian restaurants. Here you can cook tuyo and eat bagoong all day without having to shut the windows to keep the neighbors from complaining about the stink. Heck, you can even take a stroll around the neighborhood, pluck a few leaves of kamote or kangkong and a calamansi or two from someone’s backyard, toss those into a pot with an alumahan or hasa-hasa from the talipapa, and slurp the sinigang loudly enough to wake the dead.

That’s the fantasy, anyway, the kind of memory imprinted onto your taste buds that brings hot tears to your eyes in the dead of a Midwest winter. And then you begin to wonder what you ever left the motherland for, and swear that the next time you can get two weeks off and save enough money by forsaking all those Krispy Kremes, you’re going to fly home for that blissful reunion with your old friends, and indulge yourself in an unlimited supply of Chocnut, Skyflakes, and isaw.

I wasn’t away long enough to pine for anything but my pet cat, but I’d convinced myself that home was where my Pinoy heart was, and that, for all its purported flaws and failings, the Philippines was still worth living in and dying for.

And here, at this point, is where the movie image turns into a fuzzy ripple—you know, where the romantic fantasy dissolves into some gross reality. And we have gross reality aplenty in the Philippines, staring you in the face the minute you step out of the airport (which, of course, is still the old one, because we somehow can’t get ourselves to open that new Terminal 3 that’s fast turning old after sitting idle for, oh, three years now?).

Within days after I arrived, I compiled enough reasons to make me want to fly right back to the wintry woodlands of Wisconsin—choice gems of political and cultural lunacy that make you wonder why we even bother with elections (ah, yes, they’re coming up in May!) when we just end up making fools of ourselves by electing fools to high public office.

Here’s a quick rundown of the daffy news:

1. Virgilio Garcillano—the election commissioner of “Hello, Garci” notoriety—is running for congressman in Bukidnon. Do you think the Palace is keeping a prudent distance from him? Heck, no. “If one is a member of the administration alliance, he would be given moral support at least,” said Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita about Garci’s running. I’m absolutely sure Garci will win; I just wonder how.

2. Borgy Manotoc—the fashion-model grandson of Da Apo—is contemplating a run for the Manila mayorship. I’m almost tempted to say “Right on!”, if only to spare my eyes the agony of more trademark Atienza shirts (Lito Atienza’s son Ali is also reported to be running for his dad’s post, raising that floral specter).

3. Alleged jueteng lord Bong Pineda’s wife Lilia is taking on the Lapids for the governorship of Pampanga. Thank God I’m not a Capampangan.

4. “Enteng Kabisote 3” won the Best Picture award in the Metro Manila Film Festival—despite winning no other trophy! How’s that again? The judges decided to allot 40 percent of their scores to “commercial viability.” Lino Brocka and Ishmael Bernal must be turning in their graves.

5. President Arroyo hastily turned a convicted rapist over to the Americans even before our own courts had decided on the jurisdiction issue, then went on TV to plead for her countrymen’s understanding. Understanding what? That American soldiers who rape Filipino women are too good for Filipino jails? The turnover was done at midnight, too—to avoid the traffic, said Interior Secretary Ronaldo Puno. That makes us not only supine, but supine idiots in these officials’ eyes.

6. A lady senator took to task Visiting Forces Agreement Commission head Zosimo Paredes, who had criticized the transfer, for “speaking out of turn.” If you’ve ever listened to this voluble vixen—I mean the senator, not Paredes—you’d have to wonder if she knows whereof she speaks, which often as not is out turn, having consistently used the Senate floor to bring up personal issues rather than matters of state.

7. Palace chief of staff Mike Defensor is running for the Senate on a “Free Erap” platform, pleading the cause of “national reconciliation.” Hmm, maybe that’s not as crazy as it sounds. Didn’t the mob choose to free the “notorious prisoner” Barabbas? Let’s free him—then nail the other one to the cross.

Ah, yes, don’t you just miss and love this country?

Manileño for January 2007

I HAD a very pleasant and engaging semester as a visiting professor at St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin, last fall, a welcome break from my teaching duties at the University of the Philippines, where I should be back in harness by the time your read this. Not only did my stint at SNC allow me to introduce the Philippines to about 50 of my own students, only three of whom were Filipino-Americans; I was also able to speak before several groups of students and compatriots in other schools—the University of Michigan, the University of California at San Diego, and Marian College in Fond du Lac, Wisconsin.

With UCSD having one of the biggest Asian-American student populations among US universities, my encounter with the students there after my formal talk proved the longest and most challenging. Here, a student raised a question that I would hear in other places: what was the best thing Filipino-Americans could do for Filipinos and the Philippines?

I’m sure that it’s a question that occupies Filipino-Americans all the time, and for which there are any number of answers, some easier and more obvious than others.

When a supertyphoon hits the Philippines and ravages the land, then relief goods are always welcome; when poor Filipino boys and girls can’t go to school despite their talents, their lives can be changed by scholarships from Fil-Ams who also worked their way up the educational and economic ladder. Many US-based doctors make regular pilgrimages home on medical missions to poor communities. Some Philippine schools receive loads of used books and computers from their alumni in America.

All of these efforts are noble and much appreciated, for sure. A few of them may have been undertaken more to burnish the image of the donor than to uplift the lot of the receiver, but in the end, it doesn’t matter: some public or private good has been done.

At the same time, such humanitarian projects are basically defined by a relationship of dependency, with America as the perennial giver and the Philippines as perpetual receiver. It’s a relationship that, like I told the students in San Diego, can sometimes grate on both sides, with Fil-Ams feeling like the only thing they’re useful for is another donation to another needy cause, and Filipinos feeling like they’re seen as little more than mendicants.

It gets worse when—dependency or not, and whether out of frustration, bossiness, or a genuine concern—some Filipino-Americans dispense quick and easy prescriptions for the cure of Philippine maladies as though nobody back home had the brains or the guts to come up with such ideas on their own.

One such bromide Pinoys often hear is, “Why don’t you just unite behind the President and stop bickering with one another?” Sounds good, but it makes me wonder why more than two million Filipino-Americans can’t get together under, say, just one dozen regional associations and one alumni association for each major university or college, and elect a congressman or US senator among themselves.

The fact is that the best and worst of our culture manifest themselves on both sides of the ocean. Our generosity, our sense of self-sacrifice for the good of the family, our commitment to education, and our industry and resourcefulness have helped us back home as much as they have gained our compatriots a firm footing in American society. On the other hand, the same sorry habits of inggitan, intrigahan, and siraan have fragmented Filipinos in Manila and Manhattan, in Cebu and Chicago, in Davao and Detroit (I’m using these cities metaphorically, but I’m sure you can supply the damning details). One of the worst examples I heard of recently had to do with the visit some years ago of a Philippine president to a Midwestern city—only to find two competing Fil-Am organizations holding two separate programs in two hotels facing each other across the street.

So what did I tell the bright and idealistic Fil-Am students who asked me what I thought they could best do for the Philippines?

Be good Americans, I said—whatever that may mean to each of them. Get engaged in America’s political processes, and make a difference in your own sphere of action. Vote not just for fellow Filipino-Americans—although a few more such voices in high places could help the community as a whole—but for political leaders who will make responsible decisions that will benefit peoples everywhere, including Filipinos. As the world’s only remaining superpower, America needs all the critical intelligence (and I don’t mean military intelligence) it can muster, and Filipino-Americans can make themselves heard on both domestic and foreign-policy issues, instead of simply going with the flow and making themselves as inconspicuous as possible.

And what’s our claim to being in a unique position to tell Americans and American leaders something they don’t know? Well, we lived with America for half a century. As I often tell my American friends, we were their first Vietnam; and yet we also view America with much greater affection—some would say unreasonably so—than they can ever expect from Afghanistan or Iraq.

Overseas charity is good for the soul and is always welcome; but as they say, it begins at home, as does good global citizenship.