The above is a text message I received from Pinoy Weekly’s Angel L. Tesorero at 10:25:31, an hour and ten minutes after Roco’s passing. For a “journalist” who only gets his information from the internet to make salsal stories, Angel was unusually quick this time.
But Angel was far from just performing his journalistic duties, of course. I knew he wanted to make kantiyaw. And being in a reasonable mood, I gave Angel what he was fishing for. I texted him back and told him “I had nothing to do with it.”
Roco and I crossed swords a few times in the past. He was the education secretary when I was the secretary general of the militant Alliance of Concerned Teachers-Philippines. We had to disagree.
But it did not start that way.
I was in college when I first heard of the name Raul S. Roco. He was among the many Bedan congressmen when Bedan Ramon Mitra was Speaker of the House of Representatives. The school was very proud of all of them. Roco was more esteemed than the rest at the time (except of course Esty Juco). He wrote the lyrics of the Bedan Hymn which was put to music by Fr. Aloysius Maramba, OSB. I later got to sing “UP Naming Mahal” but I still believe that Roco and Maramba’s work is the best school hymn around. Kahit na Ingles.
Roco was The Bedan’s editor in chief in his senior year. I got to play that role too when I was in mine. Roco became national president of the National Union of Students of the Philippines while I became vice-president of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines myself. (Mitra was one-time CEGP prexy, too.)
I am not comparing myself to Roco. But we had a couple of things in common. I am not even ashamed to admit that when he first ran for the senate in 1991, I campaigned hard for him in our town but I did not mention it to anyone in Manila nor to him when we first met in 2001. Previous to that, as head of the senate committee on education, he never honored our invitations but he sent his gracious wife Sonia a couple of times to attend in his behalf.
After People Power II (which we both helped happen in different capacities — he as senator in the impeachment trial and I as one of the emcees of the many rallies against Erap at Edsa, Ayala and Mendiola), he was appointed by GMA as education secretary. We at ACT asked for a meeting because we felt we deserved an audience with the new secretary as absolutely no other education-based organization worked as hard for Estrada’s ouster. He refused. We held a rally at the DepEd in his second day in office. (Ibinalato na namin sa kanya ang unang araw for his swearing in at Malacañang.)
We were in place a few minutes before he arrived at DepEd. Because the cameras where whirring, he had no choice but to come to us and shake our hands with his patented politician’s smile. But, all the while, he was muttering under his breath “Pambihira naman kayo. Bagong-bago pa lamang ako.” Unvoiced, I thought “That’s what you’ll be getting more of if you keep on ignoring us, Mr. Secretary.”
The meeting was a disappointment because he made clear that he is his own man and that he wouldn’t be easily swayed by anybody, including us and especially foreign interests in the education department. That would have been fine with us but he implemented the patently colonial curriculum change at the behest of the Asian Development Bank anyway. So much for not being swayed especially by foreigners.
We resisted his program hard and we succeeded in making a national debate out of it among teachers, concerned parents’ organizations and in the media. For someone who was used to getting his orders followed without much question, we must have infuriated him so.
This much I concluded when he began marking us as his enemy. He got personal. When asked by the media what he thought of our arguments against his curricular change, he dismissed us by calling Manila Public School Teachers Association president Benjie G. Valbuena as a mere “electrical subject teacher” and I as a “bogus teacher.” Sensing blood about to be spilled, the media always made sure that they’d interview us live at the same time. During Pinky Webb’s news commentary program over ANC, Roco again dismissed me as “someone who is not even a teacher.” My swift retort floored him. I said in a tone dripping with obvious put on respect and sarcasm, “I want to assure the good secretary that I have spent more time in a classroom as a teacher than he ever did.”
I was asked in many subsequent interviews which unfortunate schools hired me as a teacher. Never in my wildest dreams did I think that would be of particular interest to anyone outside my family and friends. Roco henceforth amended his attacks by saying I am “not even a public school teacher.” While he toned down his assault against my person later, it was a measure of his contempt that he never addressed me by my name.
My relationship with my former idol turned for the worse. Among his numerous decrees as education secretary, Roco, I think, was most proud of his order that absolutely no fee should be collected from the students upon enrollment. But since public schools are perennially short of MOOE (Maintenance, Operations and Other Expenditures) funds anyway, this is never followed even to this day.
So at the start of the 2002-2003 school year, I made the customary rounds of television and radio stations along with then NUSP president Raymond Palatino. Since I was chummy with ABS-CBN staff anyway, we were allowed to be interviewed live by the feisty Korina Sanchez over DZMM. At the outset, Korina did not want Roco in her program. She wanted any DepEd official but Roco. But it was Roco that the staff did manage to contact on his cellular phone anyway.
Korina interviewed me first. All the while, Roco was put on hold for about fifteen minutes. Korina and I had no way of knowing that Roco was on his way to a school in Fairview, Quezon City with education-beat reporters inside his van and that they had to park on a roadside just so he could take the call. When finally, Korina asked him his reaction to my information, Roco was immediately on the attack. He castigated Korina for keeping him waiting for so long. When Korina was about to explain, he told her off by saying she should be more fair by letting him say his piece without interruption. Then all hell broke loose. Korina said “How dare you tell me off in my own program, Mr. Secretary,” to which Roco shot right back, “The problem with you in the media is that you can not take what you dish out.” Then they got to talk, no, shout, about my so-called allegations that Roco failed in implementing his own order. I was put on the spot by Korina a couple of times during the exchange but I was so dumbstruck at the sudden turn of events that I knew I stuttered and I had no idea what I was saying live on air.
The next day, it was front page news on the Inquirer.
Korina did not let me go for three straight days after the incident. I got to witness firsthand why she became one of the country’s most popular broadcast journalists. After her tussle with Roco, she came out with a three-part series against the real situation of the education sector. She was good.
Then I got hear many incidents involving Roco’s by now infamous temper with the critical media, my dear friend Karen Davila included. But since they were told in confidence, akin na lang ‘yun.
Roco’s temper got to everybody, I think. While he was throwing bombs our way, he managed to incur the ire of the DepEd Central employees on the side. They wanted him out. We joined forces, held daily pickets at the DepEd offices every lunch break, and filed charges against Roco. GMA must have already decided she would run for president in 2005 and she saw Roco as a dangerous adversary. So she gave the go-ahead to investigate the secretary. Roco resigned in a huff.
After that, I got invited to Ricky Carandang’s program over at ANC along with GMA apologist Alexander Magno. At one point, Ricky asked me a salsal hypothetical question. He asked, "If I were to hold a gun against your head and I make you choose between GMA and Roco, what would you say." "Shoot me," I replied.
I did not have much chance to meet nor quarrel with Roco after his hasty leave from DepEd. There are only two incidents after that that come to mind.
The first was when I attended Bayan Muna’s national convention before the 2004 elections. He was invited. When he arrived, he shook hands with the people in the first two rows of the seats right before the stage. When he passed by me, I thought I saw a flicker of recognition in his eye. He did not offer his hand to me for a politician-in-a-campaign-period handshake. I did not offer mine either. Shortly thereafter, he suffered a cancer relapse and he badly lost in the last elections.
The last happened just a few months ago. Before going to meet Ms. Connie Ledesma at the Sanctuario de San Antonio, my colleague and I passed by RJ’s famous bulalohan near the Mandaluyong-Boni Rotunda for lunch. Just as I was sipping their hot and cholesterol-laden soup, I happened to look up at the pictures of the eatery’s celebrity customers on the wall nearest our table. What do you know? There was Roco’s picture, beaming at me.
Boracay—The last time I was here was 13 long years ago. I did not have much time on the beach at the time because I was busy keeping the Panay-based hosts of the 1993 CEGP National Congress from gutting their UP-Manila, PCU and PLM delegates cum saboteurs who offended them. I sometimes think I should have been a little less effective that time just to teach ang mga putang-ama a neat lesson—you know, get them nicked on their earlobes by gleaming pocket knives. But politics in command, right?
