A send-off fit for
a president

Filipinos yesterday found ourselves enthralled by the sight of a state funeral for DILG Secretary Jossie Robredo. It was an honor befitting a president.

The final days of his wake and the funeral were emotion-packed. But there were riotous scenes like women in a fainting spell. Even his widow, Leni, a lawyer, was most composed, although she did from time to time show her tearful reaction to the many scenes that were heart-tugging.

Not only was Robredo accorded the state funeral, the President also presented the Legion of Honor medal, the highest award that could be given to a Filipino without the concurrence of Congress.

During the heart-tugging state funeral, Leni pointed out that if Jessie were alive, he would have frowned at the pomp and pageantry he was accorded.

But this done, she said, this was something which the family had welcomed, if only because it was in recognition of Robredo and what he stood for.

The noon-day requiem mass ended with the remains of Robredo escorted from the Basilica Minore de Penafrancia to the Imperial Columbary and Crematorium. The streets were lined by both local residents and visitors. Most of the latter had to travel miles to be able to join the funeral.

It will be a difficult task for President Benigno Aquino III to find somebody to replace Robredo. Somebody with the same mindset as the former DILG Secretary.

Yes, this was the same secretary whom Aquino had initially given the cold-shoulder because Robredo apparently would not kowtow to his wishes. But Robredo, whom the Commission on Appointment had refused to confirm, just went ahead, had perfected the tasks assigned to him. In short, he acted as a confirmed secretary without a second glance on whether the Congress had affirmed his appointment.

But it was not the legislative confirmation that meant that much to Robredo, the hundreds of thousands of his co-Filipinos who paid Robredo the honors more than confirmed the fact that they believed that he was the symbol of good governance and had performed his job well.

So that, the semantics of whether to confirm him post facto, seems irrelevant at this time. The popular love lavished on him and the gratitude expressed by so many for his work is more than enough to settle the issue. He was the DILG secretary.

***

But while we joined the mourning for Robredo, we must not forget that on Friday we will be given the chance to honor an Ilonggo writer, Ramon Muzones.

The affair will be the book launching of the English translation by Ma. Cecilia Locsin Nava of Muzones' Margosatubig. This will be at 5:30 p.m.

Actually, Margosatubig is the Hiligaynon translation of Muzones' work, just one of many that had been published before in Hiligaynon.

Actually, the first Hiligaynon international bestseller had been previously launched by at the ALIWW Library in Loyala Heights.

Actually, it was Muzones who triggered a dramatic and most radical shift in the development of Hiligaynon from the Spanish tradition to the dramatic narrative technique associated with the America traditional.

He actually influenced a whole generation of writers who took him as their literary model.

Muzones, incidentally, also had a record of 63 novels from 1938 to his death in 1992.

But it must be remembered that most local writers remember Muzones as the author of the Hiligaynon dictionary and grammar.

He is also better known as the organizer of the vernacular writers who later were known as Sumakwelan. It registered a lot of members in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao.

The National Commission on Culture and Arts declared him in 1998 as the Most Outstanding Hiligayanon Writer of the Century.

Actually, it was Ms. Nava's documentation that won for Muzones the Gawad Balay Award by the Writers Union of the Philippines in 1988, the Gawad sa Sining Trophy Cultural Center of the Philippines in 1989.

Ms. Nava's translation was termed by national artist Virgilio Alamario was “a model of a good critic in regional literature. He also termed Ms. Nava, as an education translator.”

Another tribute to Nava's translation of Muzones came from Bienvenido Lumbera who called it “a wonder work in translation, literature and literary.”

Margosatubig, which was serialized in 1946, immediately triggered a revolution in the leadership of two local weeklies. When at that time, had a 2,500 circulation. This immediately jumped to 37,000 compared to Hiligaynon's which had only 12,000.

Later, an enterprising local publisher printed it in novel form and it immediately became a hit. He sold it abroad to Ilonggos at only one dollar a copy.

But one must also doff one's hat to Mrs. Ma. Cecilia Locsin Nava. Only a dedicated researcher could have come up with this sterling example of an English translation of Muzones' Margosatubig.*

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