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FOCAP: The Day of Creation |
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By Teodoro Benigno
 Teodoro Benigno
She had regaled us with virtually her life story, yes a tour d'horizon from the Rose of Leyte to Maganda of Malacañang.
Now she broke the news that was supposed to shock all of us. She said and her husband would step down from power very soon. What? They had had enough of the dizzying heights. Now it was time to get down the spiral of power, go back to earth, say goodbye, retire into the quiet simplicity of life. What would she do? Imelda answered, as I remember, "Oh many things. I will spend a lot of time for charity, helping the poor. Yes, I will probably write my memoirs, that should be interesting. Oh so many things."
Something in me prickled, a raw nerve coming alive somewhere. I suspected something was wrong, a piece of narrative furniture awry in her story, singularly and clumsily out of place.
She couldn't be serious about retirement. More than anything else, Imelda loved power, regaled herself in it as a silver ball tossing incessantly in a miniature glass blower. Why was she now announcing to the bulk of the foreign press community that she was done as First Lady, would now bow gently into private existence?
And she wasn't even sad or misty-eyed at the prospect.
I suspected the whole thing was an act, a deliberate diversion invented by Mrs. Marcos. But why? Something, I told myself, was afoot. What could it be?
With a start, almost rude I thought at the time, I decided to bid goodbye ahead of everybody else. Others joined me. It was close to midnight. I was feeling very strange and I figured I was wasting my time. Besides I had had enough of Imelda regaling audiences, particularly the foreign press, when she didn't have much to do. This was a diva performance just like the rest. I also snorted. I didn't believe - not one whit - her "revelation" the Marcoses, husband and wife, would soon retire.
The idea was simply preposterous. And they would retire because they had had enough of power? Hello.
I found out soon enough after reaching home. The TV wasn't working. Images came in a continuing blur. I turned on our two radios. Only music came out. Every station was beamed to music. That was strange. I called up the Manila office of the Agence France-Presse. The editor-in-charge (I forget who) told me President Marcos had just declared martial rule. Unduly excited, he stammered that all over town, the military had seized strategic buildings and offices. The Post office and, of course, all the domestic media establishments. But not the foreign media. They couldn't do that.
I slumped in an easy chair. I was in a state of utter shock.
I knew, I instantly knew the world I had lived since childhood had disappeared, disintegrated. So I was right after all. Imelda Marcos had "shanghaied" the cream of the foreign press so we wouldn't be around when the military blitzed all over town to occupy strategic, buildings and offices. There would be no resistance. The whole thing was golpe, a karate chop on the nation's collective neck. The voice holding forth at the time with any kind of audacity or authority - with the foreign press as her audience - was that of Imelda at Nayong Pilipino. What suckers we all turned out to be! At the time, I was Manila bureau chief of the Agence France-Presse.
The chains had come down in a rattling clank. They bound me, emotionally and professionally from head to foot. Almost all my adult life, I had been a journalist, taking all my freedoms for granted, especially press freedom. Now I heard the bolting of iron doors, figuratively. And the poignant singing of the national anthem, figuratively. I was close to tears.
On the instant, I hated the president, and emitted a string of curses. Now he was playing God, and so were the generals around him, led by Gen. Fabian Ver. What the hell were they up to? A dictatorship that would only brutalize the republic? Maintain themselves in power?
I fell to thinking. I was - in a sense - in a unique position. I was a Filipino working for an internationally established and highly respected news agency. After 21 years working as a foreign correspondent in the vineyards of international journalism, I had earned the respect of my peers in the foreign and domestic press. I was not to be trifled with. Or treated brusquely. All around town, I learned later on, Senators Benigno Aqjuino Jr, Ramon Mitra, Jose Diokno, hundreds of others, largely belonging to the political opposition, had been arrested. Most were lodged in Fort Bonifacio.
But what could I do?
I knew our ranks in the foreign press community would be jeopardized. Or raided. We had to hold strong, solidify our ranks. After all, I told myself, we were the foreign press. But how? Already, information had seeped out from the grapevine that Malacañang would eventually establish its dominion over the Manila Overseas Press Club (MOPC). The MOPC was the legitimate habitat of the foreign press. The dictatorship could ill afford the existence of a foreign press corps that would operate and function independently.
The powers-that-be would endeavor to bend us to the dominion of the dictatorship. Failing that, there could be a charm offensive.
And so, the idea was to infiltrate the MOPC, penetrate it, fudge it and if possible corrupt it. The immediate target was - at the time - the alarmingly large number of Filipinos working for the foreign press who had gone up the journalistic ladder, now occupied senior, significant positions. Like me, for instance. While the non-Filipino segment could not be bullied and bamboozled, Malacañang presumed the Filipinos possibly could.
There was a difference though in my case. I had already been integrated into the professional corps of French journalists. I had studied in France, embraced French culture and civilization. To all intents and purposes, I was considered French, with almost all the rights and privileges of a French citizen. But I never ceded any right I had as a Filipino. I was still and remained a Filipino to the core. And the country I loved was now under martial rule.
What to do then? Although my foreign compeers in the international press agreed we had all to resign from the MOPC and organize our own press organization, I realized that even some whites, some Caucasian journalists who headed prestigious media establishments in Manila weren't ready yet to beard the lion in his den. They told me: "Teddy, we are with you, but this is not yet the time. It is too early. Let's move cautiously. How do we fight back if Marcos cracks down on us now, and has some of us deported with our families. How do we fight back?"
They were probably right, but I was not deterred. Marcos, certainly, was a genius at playing the power game.
But I knew he could not afford to antagonize America, whose major media groups were operating in Manila like The Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, Far Eastern Economic Review, ABC, CBS, NBC. If thrown against the wall, they would fight back and so would Japanese media like Asahi, Mainichi, Yomiuri, NHK. Japan too was in the American geo-political loop, extending a lot of foreign aid to the Philippines. They had a lot of political leverage in our country.
The dictator knew where and how his palms were greased. In the weeks and months to come, he and Imelda would mount a charm offensive - with candle-lit dinners - to woo the American press. Only one caved in, but for obvious reasons, I cannot mention his name.
At this juncture, I must mention the names of of Filipino foreign news correspondents, who stood by me almost throughout, among them Gabby Tabuñar of CBS, Mike Marabut of Reuters, Vic Maliwanag of UPI. When finally, we had all closed ranks, our new organization had to have a name.
The MOPC was kaput. Most of its associate members were mollycoddles of the dictatorship, if not outright lapdogs and toadies. It was easy. The name Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) just breezed through. And FOCAP, it remains till today, 30 years after, still as prestigious, still as relevant, the only foreign media group functioning in the Philippines. As its founder, I am overly proud of FOCAP.
And so we beat the dictator to the punch.
Malacañang tried its best to divide us. There was, initially, the proposal to merge the ranks of FOCAP and the MOPC. Substantial financial help was intimated. When this didn't work, the succeeding proposal was even more ingenious. The Palace tried to set up Filipino against non-Filipino. ("After all, we Filipinos always stick together and who are these foreigners anyway to lord it over us?" a top Palace aide told me.) The Pinoys would get preferential treatment. I rejected this on its very face. I told the presidential press secretary at the time the whole thing was absurd.
He was taking us for fools, rejecting long respected canons of journalism, and I deeply resented it.
Another tack. Only Filipinos would be allowed to attend and cover presidential press conferences. The white man would be barred from entry to Malacañang. This was so preposterous that when it was proposed to me by a Malacañang biggie, I told him to shove it. I almost lost my temper. The whole thing was getting to be insulting. Everybody has his price, they figured. After all I was a Pinoy. And I had mine. Or so they thought.
When all of this didn't work, they played rough.
Time came when the gorillas of Col. Rolando Abadilla, the big boss of Metrocom, set up a quadrille in Ferguson Plaza, just beside the VIP Bldg. housing the AFP. They came in military jeeps. They made themselves visible, reckoning probably their presence would scare the by golly out of us in the AFP Manila Bueau. They would harass us by telephone and ask - in ominous tones - whether Batman (myelf) or Robin (Bobby Coloma, who was my senior editor) were around. And when we answered, we were told to be very careful, "Some of you may get hurt."
This was too much. I decided to call their bluff. Our group went down, confronted the Metrocom driver of one jeep, and told him bluntly: "You better tell your boss, Colonel Abadilla, to stop all this nonsense. He doesn't scare us at all. Where is he? Is he here? We'd like to talk to him right now." They all left in a hurry, wondering possibly where we got our gall. Filipinos then were supposed to cower.
As all this was happening, the FOCAP decided to set up social shop. After several way stops, we lighted upon the mezzanine floor of the Hyatt Regency Hotel along Roxas Boulevard. Very accommodating in this regard, very gracious, was Ms. Cory Quirino, then Hyatt's top public affairs officer. She was the daughter of Tommy Quirino, former President Elpidio Quirino's son.
By this time, our reputation had grown and spread. FOCAP became a byword for those who knew what press freedom was. And wanted to hear the truth.
In all the media darkness at the time, FOCAP held court under full lights. The few leaders of the anti-Marcos opposition who had any guts, often joined our weekly Friday whoop-de-do at the Hyatt. Anybody could speak his mind out. Frequent t guests were Doy and Pepito Laurel, S. P. Lopez and Homobono Adaza. Some foreign ambassadors and diplomats came, but they were careful not to say anything negative about the Marcoses.
The Laurels startled everybody within earshot at the Hyatt by calling Marcos all the dirtiest, lustiest, and filthiest names in the book.
The Marcoses knew this, but couldn't do anything. The young Marcos, just convicted by a lower court of murdering former Ilocos Norte governor Julio Nalundasan - a bitter political foe of his father - escaped a long jail sentence. The old man Jose P. Laurel, then associate justice of the Supreme Court, took pity upon the bedimpled youth, figured at the time he could still be of service to his country, and redeem the evil he had done.
Justice Laurel, who eventually became president of the Philippines during the Japanese occupation, eventually realized his blunder.
I cannot remember all of them, the illustrious roster of FOCAP over the years. They were amongst the best journalists in the world at the time, and they did us proud. The dictator may have hated their guts, but he gave them a long leash to report as they pleased. Anyway, he couldn't stop their often critical reportage of social, political and economic conditions in the Philippines. At times, Mr. Marcos relished crossing intellectual swords with them. At one time, he and I discussed and discoursed on Napoleon Bonaparte, and he bounced off quotations on me with the greatest of ease.
What a pity. The man was erudite, at times likeable and charming. He could have taken on another direction. But he preferred to be a dictator, often revolting and execrable, even murderous in his ways. Who can ever condone the assassination of Ninoy Aquino? The killing of thousands in prisons? The wholesale graft and corruption by family and cronies?
And thus it was, the many years I spent with the FOCAP and the Agence France-Presse. They were memorable years, exciting years, challenging years, dangerous years, daunting years. These were also the years when a native, a Filipino, was able to prove he could compete with the best of foreign media, and still not stain or sully his noble metal as a Filipino.
This is the story of FOCAP. And I am unduly proud to narrate it.
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