Senators Bong Revilla and Jinggoy Estrada are No. 1 and 2 in the senatorial poll surveys. They are also among the biggest spenders of public money, as shown in the Commission on Audit report recently published in the Philippine Star, alongside Sen. Kiko Pangilinan. All three senators spent over P17 million each for their office expenses. The exception among show-biz people is Sen. Lito Lapid, who spent P15.3 million and was seventh thriftiest among the 23 senators.
Among the senators aspiring for the presidency, Sen. Nonoy Aquino spent P16.7 million compared to Sen. Manny Villar?s P15.7 million. Sen. Richard Gordon was the most frugal, spending P14.6 million, which put him at No. 4 in the overall thrifty list.
The shocker is Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, who does not and cannot move around because he is in a military stockade. He spent a whopping P17.2 million or P47,000 a day! Ironically, Trillanes receives that kind of money from the government he sought to topple.
But by far the biggest spender in the Senate is his fellow senator with a military background and who once also tried to topple the Aquino government, Gregorio Honasan, who ended up with P17.9 million in expenses.
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The thriftiest among them all is Sen. Joker Arroyo who spent only P12.6 million and retained for the 18th straight year the title of ?Scrooge of Congress? for being so kuripot since the time he entered the House. Arroyo is followed in the honor roll by Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr., with expenses at P14.3 million, and Sen. Edgardo Angara, with P14.5 million.
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This Thursday, Feb. 11, at 6 p.m., at the Philippine Columbian Club in Plaza Dilao, Paco, Manila, the book on the life and times of one of the most distinguished public servants, Don Antonio de las Alas, titled ?A Small Man with a Tall Shadow,? will be launched by his two daughters, Ching de las Alas Montinola and Menchu de las Alas Concepcion, in cooperation with Secretary Alfonso T. Yuchengco, in commemoration of Don Antonio?s 120th birth anniversary. The book launch will be complemented by an exhibit of memorabilia acquired in his distinguished and inspiring service to God and country in various government departments and in the business and civic sectors during the colonial era and the postwar decades, spanning over half a century, until his death in October 1983 in Chicago, USA.
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The long journey began when the 15-year-old barrio boy from Cubamba, Taal, Batangas took the exam for ?pensionados? in 1904 and qualified to enter Indiana University on probation, since he had only finished three years of grade school in the barrio and one year of high school at Batangas City National High School. Despite the brevity of his formal education in his native land, De las Alas topped his Indiana University class and was allowed to enroll as a regular student in law and economics, obtaining his bachelor of laws degree there. From there he went on to obtain his master?s in law from Yale University (cum laude), and was given the privilege of delivering the valedictory address. He passed the bar exams in 1913, when only 19 passed out of the 189 who took them.
From then on, Don Antonio?s long career saw him in politics. He served as speaker pro tempore in the first Independence Congress in Manila and head of various offices of the executive department under famed American governors-generals during the colonial period, among them Theodore Roosevelt who later became a US president, Leonard Wood and F. B. Harrison. Subsequently, he headed various departments in the administration of different Philippine presidents from Manuel L. Quezon to Ferdinand Marcos. He is probably the only Filipino to become a constitutional convention delegate in both the 1935 and the 1971 constitutional conventions (he was the oldest delegate in the latter). He was also involved in various civic organizations that have become household words today.
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Just as fascinating as the career of this barrio boy from Taal was the way his story was resurrected from dusty boxes in the family basement, after Ching and Menchu, the youngest girls in a brood of 14 children, began browsing through old family papers and photos. As they went through paper after paper and document after document, they found that they just couldn?t stop reading. After exhausting the boxes at his home, they went through museums, magazines, interviews, etc. and slowly their father?s exceptional life in public and private service unfolded before their eyes. It took a whole year to finally document all his achievements, and at the end the two sisters discovered a completely different man from the person they routinely knew as ?Papa.? As Ching Montinola put it, it?s their desire that this book inspire others as much as it did them about his legacy of ?righteousness, integrity and love of his country and his fellowmen.? Said she: ?It?s about our renewed belief that there are great men who exist and oftentimes one does not have to look far to find them. Often they are as close as those you would call Papa. The more we saw, the more we fell in love with our father.?
In telling their father?s story about how he seized the opportunity to get an excellent education in the US despite having finished just one year of high school in the province, Ching says, their special target are the poor but bright young people of this country. They hope that these youngsters would struggle to conquer their poverty, like their father did, by striving hard to acquire a good education through the many opportunities now available to the poorer sector, such as the scholarships offered by various universities and corporations here in the country or technical training at Tesda. I agree: Education is indeed the great leveler.
