Pinoy Penman

An Interview with Lt. Gen. Hermogenes Esperon
for Filipinas Magazine, October 2006


THE PHILIPPINE Science High School, established in 1964, has produced a much more diverse and interesting lot than Nobel-track biochemists, computer engineers, nuclear physicists, and applied mathematicians. Its most unlikely graduates include international fashion model Anna Bayle, humorist Jessica Zafra, composer Joel Navarro, film director Auraeus Solito, economist Cielito Habito, Congressman Jun Abaya—and, perhaps unlikeliest of all, new Armed Forces of the Philippines Chief of Staff Hermogenes Esperon Jr. (PSHS 1970, PMA 1974). “Hermo,” as we all called him, was in the PSHS’s second batch of science scholars; I was a year below him, which meant that he was one of the officers whom we saluted as wet-eared and quake-kneed Preparatory Military Training (PMT) cadets. But even then, the future AFPCOS was anything but gruff and imposing. Though big and swarthy, he was friendly and soft-spoken, perhaps due to his being a self-confessed promdi from Pangasinan rather than a cocky city boy.

I recently ran into Hermo again in Camp Aguinaldo at a dinner and socials that he and about 30 other PSHS alumni in the uniformed services hosted for their former schoolmates. Months earlier, he and I had crossed swords—but cordially—at a PSHS Alumni Forum devoted to the political situation, then still simmering in the aftermath of the “Hello, Garci” case, in which Gen. Esperon, then Army chief, found himself implicated on yet unproven charges of abetting election cheating. After the forum, he gamely took to the stage with the rest of us and sang “Bus Stop” backed up by an Army band he had brought along.

I took the opportunity of catching the new AFP COS at dinner to put on my journalist’s hat and interview him about his roots, his role, and his plans for the AFP, from which he will retire when he reaches 56 in two years. With minor edits, here’s how our conversation went:


JD: Where were you born and what was your family background like?

HE: I was born in Asingan, Pangasinan—a sleepy, agricultural town with an all-weather gravel road. I went to elementary school there, and one of the teachers was my father.

JD: You got into the second batch of the PSHS in 1965. Were you seriously thinking of becoming a scientist then?

HE: Not at all, but we were seven in the family, and so my father, being just a teacher-farmer, always tried to find ways to put us through school. Ahead of me were four college students. When Papang heard about the PSHS, he took me to Dagupan for the exams. I was one of the last who got in—on a conditional basis. I boarded in the dorm. It was my first time to live in a house with running water.

JD: When did the idea of getting into the military strike you?

HE: Pangasinan had a lot of local tales about war heroes, starting with Diego Silang and our World War II veterans, so the kids used to play war games a lot. In Grade 3, one of the heroes pictured who attracted me was Gen. Antonio Luna.

JD: And then you got into the PMT.

HE: Yes. I think owing to my color, which is the Ilocano brown-black, I became a colors officer. (Laughs.)

JD: Were you decided then on entering the Philippine Military Academy after high school?

HE: Well, we were young then, and we had some exposure to the Left from our teachers like Nemenzo (Princess Nemenzo, the wife of Dodong Nemenzo, and who taught history at the PSHS). But we also got to hear the other side from people like Larry Ramos (the PMT commandant), and Pastor Censon (our Filipino teacher, who had been a lieutenant).

JD: And then you took the PMA exam.

HE: I told myself that I would go wherever I could first get a college scholarship, depending on the results of the exams. So I took the PMA exam, urged by my batchmate Pepu Chanco, who also took and passed the exam along with a third batchmate, Rogie Calunsag (now a rear admiral). We all got in, and from that point on, there was no turning back. We were ideologically unattached, and as young men we heeded the call of adventure. You know, the idealism of the young then was such that you either went to the Left—or you became a soldier.

JD: The Left never held any appeal for you?

HE: It did. Some of my best friends like Lazzie Silva joined the NPA. Lazzie died in Bataan in 1972. It was something that was “in” during those times, and you had to experience the push and pull of activism. I could have just been following my parents’ advice not to do that, but I was also attracted to the military, plus I needed the scholarship because I had four siblings in college.

JD: When you entered the military, did you have any inkling that you would end up one day as Chief of Staff?

HE: Not at all. My ambition was just to survive. Getting into the academy as a cadet puts you in survival mode, and that’s all you want to do—survive physically, spiritually, and emotionally. Even when you become an officer, it’s hard, especially when you’re always engaged in combat, and all you can do is to accomplish, accomplish, survive, survive—while bringing up a family on the side.

JD: What was your most memorable moment as an Army officer?

HE: I had a lot of them. I was mostly on combat duty, including nine assignments in Mindanao. I never asked for an assignment, except once, when I transferred to a unit that was going to Jolo, and after Ipil was burned, I volunteered to return to Mindanao.

JD: Did you kill any people?

HE: Probably through my directions. But not as the triggerman. Remember, I led a platoon, a company, a battalion, a brigade, a division. A division has about 7,000 men.

HE: What was the toughest campaign assignment given to you?

HE: It was probably when I was a lieutenant in Jolo and Basilan. But even when I commanded a brigade, I always went with my troops when we went looking for the Burnham couple in Basilan.

JD: Now that you’re COS, what’s the best thing you can do for the Philippine military?

HE: I think it would be making the Armed Forces become professional, capable, and responsive enough so that we could be a source of national pride. That’s our vision. Being professional is part of it. Doing good, looking good is part of it.

JD: Is there a role for politics in the Philippine military? What would you say to observations that it has become hopelessly politicized?

HE: We are not politicized, but we are politically aware. Don’t you think we should be? As responsible leaders, we should know what’s happening. I should know how the governor, the Senate, the Congress, the presidency works. I’ve been fortunate to be very close to these functionaries. You should be aware of all these things, and it’s all right for as long as you don’t become partisan. It’s like getting an education, and to be politically aware is to be educated.

JD: How would you respond to charges that you exercised partisanship in the last elections?

HE: If you recall, what was heard on the audio tape was that the guy speaking apparently asked my help for the relief of a brigade commander in Lanao. I will say with a clear conscience that I never talked to anybody about the relief of the brigade commander that was referred to. In the first place, if Comelec wanted to relieve an officer, during election time they (the local military) are under Comelec control. All they had to do was tell us that that guy should be relieved. Did they have to ask my help? No. Second, I never met whoever was supposed or suspected to be Garcillano. I never met him personally, and I don’t remember having talked to him. During the election, I was the chief of operations of the whole Armed Forces. In that capacity, I was the primary adviser of the Chief of Staff on matters of deployment, redeployment, shifting of forces, and utilization of all critical forces toward mission accomplishment. At the same time, I was appointed deputy commander of Task Force Hope which led all troops that were put under the control of Comelec. And so being a national functionary, and as operations chief, it was my duty to go all over the country, even without being appointed task force vice-commander, So they could have seen me anywhere, but it was all in the pursuit of my official functions. If indeed there was cheating, what could I have gained from that? If I were aiming for any higher position, I think my record alone could have put me at par or even higher than any contender.

JD: Do you agree with the popular perception that the military is disunited, and what’s the best way of bringing the Armed Forces together?

HE: We’re not really disunited. This is part of being aware. We may have differing views. The nature of the military is that we discuss, and when the commander has decided, everybody follows. So in that way disunity comes in the discussion and the presentation of all sides, but when a decision has been reached, we all go for that.

JD: What’s your number one priority for the AFP these next couple of years?

HE: I have to be equal to the task given by the President to defeat the New People’s Army, and everything I have to do will lead to that—training, equipage, support to priority areas and units.

JD: Is a military solution feasible? Can you really wipe out the NPA in two years?

HE: We have our part to do. But the military portion is just a small part of the holistic approach. You must remember that this is not the fight of the military. The matter of asserting preference for democracy, peace, and development as the better alternative to communism, terrorism, and oppression should be the war of the whole Filipino nation.

JD: What will you do after the AFP?

HE: Take care of my family. I’m simply looking forward to a nice retirement with my family—for now.

Manileño for September 2006


BY THE time you read this, I should be ensconced in a small liberal arts college in northern Wisconsin, teaching a course in Philippine history and culture and another on the American short story. I’ll be here for one semester as a visiting exchange professor, the result of a longstanding and fruitful memorandum of agreement between the University of the Philippines and St. Norbert College in De Pere, Wisconsin.

De Pere’s one of those postcard-pretty Midwestern places we Pinoys have always imagined America to be. I’d actually been here before, on a short visit five years ago, to give a lecture on Philippine politics and culture (in other words, on Erap Estrada as our new president). Even then I was already impressed not just by how scenic the SNC campus was but also by the sharpness of the students and by their openness to cultures far removed from their own.

In St. Norbert’s case, we’re benefiting from years of personal contacts between SNC and UP faculty members. In other words, we’re lucky that someone knew something about the Philippines, and took the initiative of formalizing that interest into an exchange program.

I remember when—as a graduate student in the US, also in the Midwest, in the mid-‘80s)—I had to keep explaining to my American friends where the Philippines was and what the US had to do with us. (This wasn’t California or New York, mind you, but Michigan and Wisconsin.) Asian-American studies were already in place in many major universities, but we remained far behind China, Japan, India, and even Vietnam in terms of visibility in course syllabi, say in literature, if we even got on the syllabus at all.

I found that the easiest way to get the attention of American audiences was to introduce the Philippines thus: “We were your first Vietnam.” It’s hardly a pleasant thought; it’s no great surprise that most Americans don’t realize that we were ever at war with them, but it’s sad when you think that many young Filipinos today don’t know that, themselves—that there was, indeed, a Filipino-American War that caused, by one count, half a million Filipino casualties. (And why even bother remembering these things? Because it helps us form more sober attitudes towards things like Iraq. Incidentally, I was teaching in a Milwaukee classroom when the first Gulf War erupted in January 1991.)

But I digress. I didn’t come here just to wake up the ghosts of the past or to lay a guilt trip on the innocent. I came here to try and show young Americans that understanding us—and the rest of the world—is just as if not even more important than us understanding them, in this age when, as it’s often said, America remains the world’s only superpower.

I have high expectations of my students here. Young people everywhere in the world have been put down for being too materialistic, apathetic, and self-centered (as if their parents weren’t), and young Americans would seem to be the perfect target for these charges. But we also forget how much smaller the world is to these people who grew up on the Internet and satellite TV, and therefore how more natural it is for them to see how things are connected, politically and economically as much as electronically.

I’ve taught American students before. In Ann Arbor, they were smart, well-scrubbed middle- and upper-class kids who displayed great confidence in their abilities, in their sense of entitlement to a first-rate education and the good life. In Milwaukee, they were inner-city veterans who wrote freshman essays about gang wars and rape, and yet also about the irrepressible yearning of youth for a better life. In both places, I appreciated the candor and the coolness of my students, just as I hope they appreciated the efforts of a man from across the ocean to enlarge their view of the world and of their future in it.

That’s going to be my aim in these two courses I’ll be teaching. The Philippine history and culture course is self-explanatory, but even the American short story course opens wonderful possibilities for showing young Americans that America isn’t just the Midwest—and not even just Ernest Hemingway, John Updike, John Cheever, and Raymond Carver, but also Bienvenido Santos, Jessica Hagedorn, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Jamaica Kincaid. It’s a lot of material to cover—but you can say that about practically anything American.

And don’t worry: I won’t be staying here too long. As much as I’m sure I’ll enjoy the Midwest all over again—think Saturdays in the ballpark, watching a double-header with brats and beer in hand—something very strange happens every time I revisit America, or some other place with all of 21st century life’s amenities (what Brits call “mod cons”): I develop a terrible longing for home, the same home I feel awfully oppressed in and oppressed by half the time I’m in it.

If all goes well, Beng and I should be joining my mom, my sister Elaine, and my daughter Demi for Christmas in Virginia—and then start packing up for home, remembering what a great semester it was and how quickly the time flew.

Manileño for August 2006


WHILE PRESIDENT Arroyo was busy presenting a freshly minted death penalty repeal law to Pope Benedict last June, another figure identified with progressive forces (read: accused of having been a communist sympathizer) was brutally murdered. Mayor Delfinito Albano of Ilagan, Isabela was shot by three men while on a visit to Quezon City; police counted 20 gunshot holes in his van. The day before, a leader of a Left-leaning farmers group was killed in Negros, also by unidentified men.

The killings ran up a grisly total ranging from a low of about 230 to a high of 600—the reported number of militants killed since GMA took office in 2001. Many were journalists, NGO leaders, and former Left leaders such as Sotero Llamas, shot to death in May in Tabaco, Albay; Llamas, who had been an NPA commander in Bicol, was also a consultant of the National Democratic Front and a founding member of the Bayan Muna party-list group.

Not surprisingly, the Left and many human rights organizations have pinned the blame on Mrs. Arroyo’s government, which—if the allegations are true—would seem to have declared open season on its enemies, and never mind the consequences. “The fight against the Left is the glue that binds,” GMA thundered last June, releasing P1 billion for the military to wipe out the CPP-NPA.

Even if the charges aren’t true or haven’t been proven—a smoking gun has yet to be found directly linking GMA to the killings—there’s plenty of circumstantial evidence to suggest some degree of culpability on the government’s part. Her military and security advisers have hardly minced words justifying the killings in terms of the Left’s own history of violence, and blaming most of the murders on internal struggles.

But even granting that the government has done nothing to bring an abrupt and horrifying end to the lives of hundreds of Filipinos who just happened to think differently, it has also done precious little to bring the culprits to justice, or even to identify them.

It all amounts to what one bishop has called a “culture of impunity”, manifest not just in these murders, as ruthless as they are, but also in the larger sense of a government no longer feeling accountable to almost anyone but itself. Since it survived the “Hello, Garci” scandal and the failed first impeachment bid of July 2005, the Arroyo administration has had no qualms about suspending civil liberties under a dubious proclamation later emphatically struck down by the Supreme Court, ignoring summons by the “obstructionist” Senate for high government officials to account for questionable transactions, and slapping ridiculous charges of sedition against citizens—including a brave girl who had heckled GMA at her graduation.

Despite the absence of an enabling law that would have made it legal, GMA’s henchmen have been pushing a signature campaign to amend the Constitution through a “people’s initiative”—the legalities be damned. When the truth occasionally surfaces—such as from acting Education Secretary Fe Hidalgo, who publicly expressed her concern over a shortage of classrooms—the response from GMA has been rebuke and humiliation.

If all that isn’t “impunity,” I don’t know what is. The dirty war against the Left is just its bloodiest and most heinous aspect, a harrowing reminder of the darkest days of martial law.

But what’s even more disturbing is the lack of a response, the absence of outrage from a public seemingly grown inured to politics of every stripe. No huge rallies have protested the killings, feeding into the government’s sense that the Left has alienated Filipinos too much for them to care, and emboldening the perpetrators of this dirty war to do even more dastardly deeds.

That apathy will have long-term consequences in a dispirited citizenry that just might find itself saddled with a new Constitution it had little to do with. In the medium term, living with GMA for at least the next three years will be the price to pay for our immediate silence. She’s facing a second impeachment case in Congress; in all likelihood, that will fail, thanks again to a fractured opposition and an indifferent, war-weary public.

I recently interviewed two gentlemen—one of them a Philippine business pioneer and icon, the other a foreigner, but respected for his insights into Philippine affairs. When I asked them what our best way to a good future was, both answered “Strong leadership.” But both of them—and neither was in any way even vaguely Leftist—also agreed that the Palace incumbent wasn’t the one to provide it, notwithstanding her fantasies of a “Strong Republic.”

Real strength proceeds from a moral core, which Mrs. Arroyo’s government sorely lacks. Need proof? How about abolishing the death penalty as a present for the Pope—then presiding over the systematic execution of your political enemies?

Manileño for July 2006 (for the San Francisco-based Filipinas Magazine)


NOW THAT all the tearing of hair and gnashing of teeth over The Da Vinci Code (the book and the movie) is hopefully over, we can take a step back, exhale, and agree on just how silly the whole thing was: the book, the movie, and the rabid reactions they drew from everyone, pro and con. Or can we?

I’m writing this about a week after the movie opened to full houses here in Manila—well, not exactly in Manila, where the city council passed an ordinance banning the movie from being shown in local theaters. But I guess that tells the story: go try and ban a movie—and see it rake in millions.

DVC may have stirred up controversy all around the world from Milan to Malolos, but it was typically again in Manila where hysteria and Hollywood met with a half-bang, half-whimper that makes you wonder if we Pinoys really have our marbles sorted out.

The bang was, predictably, provided by some politicians and prelates who thundered mightily against DVC’s showing in the Philippines. No less than Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita was quoted as saying that " We should do everything not to allow it to be shown… I don't see how we as a Catholic nation or as practicing Catholics would ever tolerate such a plot to be propagated in the name of freedom of expression," he said. (And then he admitted to not having even read the book.)

Archbishop Ramon Arguelles weighed in with his own pledge to work for the movie’s banning. (The Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines issued a pastoral letter that called for “discernment” rather than banning.) After the Manila city council got the movie off city screens, Manila 6th Dsistrict Congressman Bienvenido Abante Jr. called for a nationwide ban, citing “blasphemy.” Even the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) was quoted as being for imposing a ban on DVC.

Refreshingly, given its recent history, the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (what Manila oldtimers know as the “Board of Censors”) did nothing of the sort. They gave it an R-18 rating—restricted enough to keep it out of the giant SM Mall cinema chain, which has an internal policy of showing only “wholesome” movies—but come May 18, it was being screened and seen nearly everywhere else, playing to huge crowds. Pinoys had voted, as usual, with their feet, turning all the hellfire-and-brimstone sermons against DVC into a whimper.

There’s nothing like religion and sex to get Filipinos all worked up (there’s politics, of course, but we seem to have, for the moment, tuned out of it). When religion and sex get together—as they do in DVC—it’s even worse. But what did we learn, if anything, from the DVC brouhaha?

First, that people can’t seem to remember that the Philippines may be a predominantly Catholic country, but that the Republic of the Philippines, the last time we looked, is a secular and at least theoretically democratic state. No Church or government poobah or flunky should be able to tell citizens what they can or can’t read or watch on religious grounds.

Second, that—much to their credit—most Pinoys can still distinguish sensibly between preaching and pragmatism. We stand in Sunday Mass listening to priests inveigh against condoms and pills and the evil that men do with them—then we go home and use them anyway; and when we don’t, it’s likely for some reason the Church never had in mind.

Third, that banning books and movies can’t work in this age of the Internet and the DVD, and will only fuel the opposite effect, given the Pinoy’s catlike curiosity and inborn irreverence. Where you have a government with near-zero credibility and a Church that can’t seem to make up its mind whether to play footsie with the devils in the Palace or drive them out the way Jesus cleansed the temple, anything they want banned can only be fodder for the popular imagination.

Fourth, that bad books and bad movies (and yes, let’s at least be honest, folks, DVC was both of these) can sell much better than anything written by Jose Rizal or William Shakespeare for that matter, given the right conditions and the right publicity.

Never mind what professional snobs like me said: as awfully as I thought the book was written and as ho-hum as the movie was, DVC succeeded beyond Dan Brown’s wildest dreams because the world was looking and ready for something like it: a diversion from Iraq, tsunamis, oil prices, and all those bummers. Its contention that conspiracies can keep the “truth” hidden for centuries was comforting for those of us obstinately convinced that we’re being screwed by someone or something up there, and I don’t mean the Almighty.

The sorest and the poorest losers in this debate over DVC were those who insisted, despite its being fiction (and forget what Dan Brown himself claimed—he was trying to make a buck), that the book was factual and therefore either (a) great, or (b) terrible, and those who gurgled, without having read much else, that DVC was the greatest book ever written.

We took DVC more seriously than it deserved, and the only winner in the end was Dan Brown, who’s reportedly earned close to $400 million for his page-turner. That’s one smart fella, almost like Leonardo.

Manileño for June 2006


I SUPPOSE it was a breather of sorts from the more explicitly political fare that gluts Manila’s headlines these days, but a recent brouhaha over the selection of the new batch of National Artists simply showed how everything in the Philippines is tainted by politics, even culture and the arts.

What’s a National Artist, first of all? He or she should be a Filipino who has achieved an exceptional level of distinction in the arts, as recognized by his or her peers; that recognition is formalized by the National Artist Award (NAA), usually handed out every two (now three) years. Since the first NAA was given in 1973 (to the self-exiled poet Jose Garcia Villa), about four dozen such artists have received the rare honor. The award itself is accorded by the President upon the recommendation of a joint committee of the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) and the National Commission on Culture and the Arts (NCCA), the country’s top two cultural agencies, with the CCP oriented more toward performances and the NCCA minding cultural financing and administration.

The selection process begins with nominations received by the NCCA, which then constitutes a “Committee of Peers” (now the “Committee of Experts”) whose members review the nominations, debate the relative merits of the shortlisted candidates, and pass on anywhere from zero to four names to a higher committee, which then makes its final recommendations to the President.

And there’s the rub, because the law creating the NAA effectively allows the President to appoint whomsoever he or she may wish to designate a National Artist, bypassing or ignoring whatever recommendations may have been made by the artist’s own peers. This has happened quite a few times, over the vigorous protests of the artistic community. It hasn’t helped that none of our Presidents since Marcos have been particularly known for their cultural savvy.

But this time around, the issue that rocked Manila’s cultural pages was poet Alfred “Krip” Yuson’s taking exception—in his column in the Philippine Star—to the final selection of nationalist critic Bienvenido Lumbera as National Artist for Literature over poet Cirilo Bautista, whose creative output seemed far more impressive. Yuson’s remarks provoked a flurry of animated and sometimes shrill responses from Lumbera’s supporters. (In painting, expect a similar row to explode over the umpteenth passing over of master colorist Mauro “Malang” Santos in favor of Benedicto “Bencab” Cabrera.)

Whatever the merits and demerits of the arguments expressed, it was a good thing that people were talking about Filipino culture and artistic judgments for once, instead of who was going to be booted out next of American Idol and Pinoy Big Brother. (Of course, this debate took place within a very small coterie.) The NAA even got to the headlines—perhaps for the first and last time—when Malacañang announced, and then retracted, a list of honorees for this year, only to retract the retraction shortly after.

But this tempest in a teacup also obscured far bigger issues with a far greater potential to do damage to the integrity of the NAA.

The first is the old specter of presidential meddling, revived. Coffeeshop talk has it that President Arroyo will declare two people—sculptor Abdumari Imao and the late poet-politician Francisco “Soc” Rodrigo—National Artists even if neither had been shortlisted by the usual process. Sure, GMA may have a legal right to override that process—but what does it do for the reputation of the awards, and for that of the backdoor awardees themselves?

The second issue is even messier. For some reason or other, the NCCA (and/or the CCP, I’m not sure which) decided to expand the categories for the awards (which had covered literature, painting, sculpture, music, dance, theater, film, and architecture) to include fashion design, broadcasting, and print journalism. Now, we can argue until we’re blue in the face about whether these are “arts” comparable to the more traditional genres; but someone please explain why, for example, broadcast journalism is a category unto its own, while print journalists have to slug it out with novelists, poets, etc. in the “literature” category.

I was a member of the “Committee of Experts” for literature this year, and experienced both the exhilaration and confusion that typically attend the elevation of an exalted senior to the NAA peerage. There was spirited discussion of the merits—absolute and relative—of Lumbera’s and Bautista’s life work, and in the end it was resolved to send up both names.

Much to their credit, the committee in charge of broadcasting decided that none of their nominees deserved to be a National Artist. Among the fashionistas, Ramon Valera proved a popular choice. In theater, Naty Crame Rogers got the nod, reportedly because she had already been chosen the last time but had been pushed aside to give way to a Palace favorite.

And so it goes in Philippine cultural politics, often no less thornier than the bigger tangle of our national concerns.