A noble man

OVER A hearty breakfast with the Society of Pampanga Columnists last week at Cong Tarzan Lazatin’s jungle base, the talk revolved around the host’s long years of service to the people of Pampanga, staring as representative of the first district in 1987 until 1998, moving to Angeles City hall until 2007, back to the House in 2010 and now looking at the city hall anew.

Talk of legacy here, the astute Ashley Manabat commented, heartily seconded by the fully-fed Macky Pangan.

Thought I of another Lazatin legacy that preceded, aye, that birthed this one. Perfect coincidence too that rummaging through my files later, I found this Zona Libre column in The Voice published in its November 21-27, 1993 issue – 19 years to the day of the breakfast. Is there some message from the beyond here?        

A noble man

AN ANOMALY in the Philippine political setting: the absolute antithesis to the patented Filipino politico. He abhorred pomposity, shunned power, disdained aggrandizement.

He was fiercely loyal to his God; staunchly defended, cared for his people; loved deeply his city.

He was a patrician in every sense of the word. Born to the local aristocracy and bred in that class that gave the world the despised caciques, the heartless hacienderos and the vainglorious bourgeoisie. In that world, yet he was never of that world.

He loved the soil and its tiller, carrying on a lifetime affair with the grains, the beasts of burden, and the trees. Marxist or otherwise, he was a “traitor” to his class.

His ultimate “betrayal” monumentalized with the foundation of his school that catered to the bright and promising sons and daughters of the dispossessed, empowering them with respect, the dignity and the means with which to rise from the curse of want to which the feudal system condemned their forebears.

It was not a stroke of gimmickry that his election token came to be a big red heart. It came from a grateful people who swept him to the Pampanga Capitol in the ‘50s, to the Angeles City hall in the ‘70s and the halls of the Batasang Pambansa – even as a septuagenarian bagets – in the ‘80s.

This is not to say that he never lost a battle. Magnanimous in victory, he was also most gracious in his political defeats.

But the principles by which he lived were unbending. As ramrod-straight as his posture. As hard as the kamagong cane which he periodically wielded to assert hizzoner’s authority over recalcitrant lawbreakers and recidivists.

A man of peace, he did not find any need for even a single guard. Moving around, even at the height of the Huk movement, by his lonesome. Why, he was said to have routinely taken public transport going to his office at the Capitol.

An administration devoid of the crudest plan to rehabilitate a devastated constituency and self-satisfied with empty mouthings of Philippines 2000 ought to be shamed by the reality of an Angeles Year 2000 Plan, crafted at the behest of this visionary in the mid-‘70s. (I should know, being a representative of a national government agency at the Regional Development Council then, where the plan was presented, approved and incorporated to the Central Luzon Medium Term or 25-Year Plan).

The pettiness and inanities of local officials in their vain efforts to exude power find glaring magnification when ranged against the simplicity of this man.

He was a millionaire many times over, but on his induction as director of the Philippine Air Lines in 1987, he promptly took the bus to Manila after finding his old reliable car had broken down.

While the crop of local raiders, er, leaders, would rather die than get caught riding in something less than a Galant Super Saloon or a Vanette, he regularly made the rounds in a battered pick-up truck. Sic transit Gloria mundi?

 It is often said, and said so rightly, that a tribute is always inadequate. It can never encompass the true greatness of the man. It can only focus on what was in the man and his deed that touched the tribute-giver deeply.

Many men, even the few good ones, enter politics, get enmeshed in its corrupting power, and leave maculated beyond moral recognition. His was a perversion of that routine.

Don Rafael Lazatin entered politics and ennobled it. Only goodness followed his  long political trail. There impacts Apung Feleng’s greatness.

At his burial, I, who have met him less than ten times, and perhaps one he would not even remember, was moved to shed a tear or two.

Not so much for one man’s passing, but for the extinction of a most noble breed. Of whom, this city, this province, and this country are forever deprived.

 Xxxxx

FOR THE record, I know of no other elected official ever to achieve the triple crown in local politics – governor, congressman/assemblyman, city mayor – than Don Rafael Lazatin.