The Market Monitor Minding the Nation's Business
Many young Filipinos today, particularly in Manila, associate the late President Elpidio R. Quirino with the grandstand on the far end of Rizal Park or the avenue stretching from Santa Mesa to Malate. Their parents or grandparents, for their part, may remember his six-year administration as marked by postwar reconstruction and unrest in the countryside, among other things. Few outside his family are familiar with the details about his life and of his accomplishments.
To partly address this, the late president’s descendants—led by his lawyer-niece Lila Quirino and his indefatigable granddaughters Ruby Gonzalez and television host Cory Quirino—and the President Elpidio Quirino Foundation early last week held a series of events in Vigan City, Ilocos Sur province, to celebrate his 125th birth anniversary on November 16.
These included a boodle fight on a bridge in neighboring Caoayan town, where Elpidio, or Apo Pidiong, spent his elementary-school years and later became a schoolteacher at Barrio Capari-an; a commemorative program at the provincial capital’s Plaza Salcedo—led by members of the Quirino family and the politically prominent Singson clan—that ended with people laying flowers at the base of the president’s monument there; a Mass celebrated by the archbishop of Nueva Segovia and more than a dozen priests at Saint Paul Metropolitan Cathedral; and the inauguration of the Vigan City Archival Center and the launch of a English-grammar workbook for junior high-school students titled Maestro Pidiong: A Forgotten Trail of Greatness.
Also part of the day-long commemoration were the inauguration of the President Elpidio Quirino Children’s Park in Caoayan’s Pandan village and of the former Ilocos Sur provincial jail—where Elpidio was born, on account of his father Mariano being the warden at the time—as the National Museum Ilocos Region complex, where the late president’s possessions and memorabilia are on exhibit; and a one-time-only performance of Q: the Musical, based on his life, at the Vigan Convention Center.
As someone invited by the foundation to cover the culmination of its yearlong commemoration of Elpidio’s 125th birth anniversary, it struck me how very little today’s Filipinos knew of him—an ironic fact, considering that we’re in the age of Facebook—and how he and his administration, which lasted from 1948 to 1953, need to be fairly and thoroughly assessed.
Yes, people can learn about him and his achievements from biographies, history books and various Internet articles, but it’s a different matter when those who knew or were touched by him, like his descendants, testify to his greatness as a human being.
If there’s one thing about Elpidio that impressed on me, it was his compassion. He had shown this quality at various times during his administration: in offering amnesty to the Hukbong Bayan Laban sa mga Hapon (The Nation’s Army Against the Japanese), or Hukbalahap, headed by Luis Taruc; in giving refuge to the White Russians—so named because of their opposition to their Communist Red countrymen—who fled what was then the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (not an easy thing to do, considering that, at the time, our country was just starting to recover from World War II); and, most significant, in pardoning Japanese prisoners of war who were jailed in Muntinlupa City, after a Japanese painter named Tatsuo Kano had sent him an astonishing 43 letters requesting that gesture.
It must have been difficult for the late president to pardon them, and not just because his war-scarred countrymen had opposed it. He himself had been imprisoned by the Japanese for his refusal to join the puppet government they had set up; and, during the harrowing Battle for Manila in February 1945, his wife Alicia Syquia and three of their five children—Armando, Norma and Fe—were massacred by them.
That pardon continues to be greatly appreciated: Kano’s daughter Kayoko and her husband Jiro flew in from Japan to join in last week’s celebration, during which she presented to Mayor Eva Marie S. Medina of Vigan and the city government at the Vigan Convention Center her father’s now-famous letters—or, at least, copies of them—to Elpidio.
For me, this is one legacy—a legacy of mercy—that Elpidio Quirino and his time in Malacañang deserve not only be to remembered and cherished, but also emulated. At a time when many of us complain about the government’s perceived lack of empathy, one would wish that more of our leaders would follow his example.
For more information on the President Elpidio Quirino Foundation, visit elpidioquirino.org.