Apolinario Mabini’s childhood home was literally a nipa hut, three wooden steps leading up from the ground to the narrow entrance. In this thatched abode was born the Brains of the Revolution, to a peasant and a vendor.
Diffident yet brilliant, Mabini became house helper for the owner of the grade school where he walked six kilometers to and from home every day. He got scholarships to finish Latin at Colegio de San Juan de Letran and law at the University of Sto. Tomas. Afterward, he toiled as a notary public and served as adviser to the charismatic Emilio Aguinaldo in the fight for independence.
The nipa hut, with barely three rooms, was a far cry from Jose Rizal’s childhood house made of stone in Calamba, Laguna, or Aguinaldo’s stately home, with the balcony where national independence was first proclaimed, in Kawit, Cavite.
Some meters away, a modest bust of Mabini looked pensive, less than a third of the size of the grand statue of Aguinaldo on a steed, or the endearing figure of the boy Rizal with his dog, both shrines roped off, inaccessible at this time.
I thought of former President Benigno Aquino III, who died in his sleep.
On the surface, P-Noy and Mabini could not have been more different. Born to a landed clan, with a brilliant lawyer father and a homemaker-turned-president mother, P-Noy graduated with an economics degree from Ateneo de Manila University. His grades were, according to professors, “quite average.”
But P-Noy, like Mabini, was self-effacing. His ban on “wangwang,” his refusal to stamp his visage on tarps, his shunning of the spotlight (which during crises he was criticized for) showcased his humility and while I never met him personally, I saw this emulated by some of the members of his Cabinet.
Mario Montejo, Science and Technology secretary during the time of Aquino, asked me to head the Science Education Institute. Instead of summoning me to Bicutan, he visited me at Ateneo.
In the end, I decided to remain an adviser rather than take on an official position. I had been offered posts in government before but this was the closest I had been tempted to finally give in—because I respected Mario and also P-Noy, whom he represented.
I initially helped out in the K-12 program to support P-Noy’s education secretary, Armin Luistro, a friend whose heart is also in the right place. But I did not agree with the hurried implementation of reforms and the spiral approach for math and science, and in the end, I decided to instead train public school math and science teachers in content and pedagogy.
Fortunately, I met P-Noy’s mother Cory, who molded him into the man he would become after his father placed the burden of caring for the family on him. When I teared up at the end of my Metrobank Outstanding Teacher address, Cory hugged me, saying, “I hope my children love me in the end the way you did your mom.” (Tita Cory, they all did; P-Noy made you and Ninoy proud).
When my preschool son met Cory in a Multiple Intelligence awarding where we shared the stage, she graciously answered his queries. When she passed away, my son wordlessly tied yellow ribbons to our car. Even if he still could not vote, he campaigned for P-Noy in 2010, saying, “But my teachers and my friends’ parents can!”
P-Noy’s economic accomplishments (high gross domestic product growth, inflation slowdown, conditional cash transfer, high employment, increased investor confidence) were lauded by business groups. Friends with family businesses praised his transparent governance and stable policies.
But after his presidency, did we take P-Noy for granted? “Rarely in his retirement were his noble deeds recalled,” the Inquirer quoted journalist Vergel Santos and his wife Chit Roces-Santos, “because he cared absolutely nothing about himself and we cared little about proper praise and proper gratitude.”
The same is true of how we treat Mabini, whose shrine few people visit today, even if in the pandemic the gate remains open (Aguinaldo’s and Rizal’s shrines are closed to the public). Both Mabini and P-Noy deserve better. INQ
Queena N. Lee-Chua is with the board of directors of Ateneo’s Family Business Center. Get her printed book “All in the Family Business” via Lazada or the e-book version on Amazon, Google Play, Apple iBooks. Contact the author at blessbook.chua@gmail.com.