Best wishes, my new President; happy birthday, my darling

Reflections from Paseo de Coro

Congratulations my newly elected President. To you I give my full respect and support as the new President of our land. I did not vote for you but the plurality of our people voted for you. Since we live in a democracy, you are my president too. Ours is a representative government too.

This means that as the president of our land, you represent me in dealing with all the issues that affect me in particular and all our people in general. Which is to say, to protect the weak among us in preserving our rights to live a secure and abundant life and away from the clutches of the mighty and the greedy. This I hope you would also do.

That was a hard-fought battle you had for the hearts and minds of our people. You came out on top. I was not on your side but I have nothing more to complain now. You are the winner. The winner takes all, myself included, as your new supporter. I have no other recourse because your failure is my failure and your success my success. I wish you then, my new president, the best there is to come in the next six years. You have my full support and cooperation.

How do I support you, my new president? I have been in government before. At my present age, I don’t expect to return there to serve you. I will support you not directly but indirectly by simply doing the best I could and no matter how little to help improve further the well-being of our people which, as you yourself admitted indirectly, had shown some improvement under the outgoing administration.

You said somewhat that maganda naman ang takbo ng ekonomiya natin, why fix it? Let’s just improve them further or something like that. That I believe is also the reason why your eight-point economic agenda look like a repeat of Daang Matuwid with improvement in some areas as you emphasized. For continuing to do what is good of the outgoing government, I respect you more, my new president.

Outside of government what can I do to help you, my new president? I help you by simply doing my best in all my work in the remaining days of my life.

As part time professor, I help my students in school and others who listen to my talks outside and read my writings here to understand better how the economy works and how we can respond when something goes wrong.

In doing so, I make them understand the economic policies that guide the nation and how each of us can help in achieving our national development objectives.

As a consultant, I help local government units see where they are and why and what can be done to improve their situations through good planning and project preparation.

And last, as an ordinary law-abiding citizen, I help you by serving as good example to all my neighbors and friends including all those who I do not personally know but see me all the time at work, at play and at home.

It’s my late wife’s birthday today, her second since she went away for good into the next life. To her I open up my heart again today to say that I have not forgotten you. You were, you are, and you will always be in my heart and mind. Until I die.

How can I forget you when even until now, just seeing your image in my mind would already make my heart beat fast again as if it were already its last? To you, my love, I have dedicated my life since we met in that unforgettable and beautiful summer of 1969 during the fiesta of Santa Monica.

Before that I only saw you once walking in the street as a small girl holding the skirt of your childless aunt who adopted you. Like many crazy young boys, I and my friends taunted you. “Hoy, dili man na imong mama ba.”

Taunting you was fun then but seeing you again many years later in that summer of 1969, I knew our act was that of a fool that I regretted so much. For before me in that unforgettable summer was a young lady who was just beginning to bloom, about to face the real world of make believe of the young at heart.

Seeing you again then was like being hit by a thunderbolt. I never knew what was coming. I closed my eyes. When I opened them again, I knew then what was the real meaning of the word “love” that I read or heard so often in a song. It was unexplainable, unfathomable. I could not believe what I felt. For as new college graduate before that summer, I’ve seen so many faces already and been close to so many young ladies in many place. But never did I felt the same thing I did when I saw you again in that summer and fiesta of Santa Monica.

We talked when I visited you few days later in the house of your real mother where you stayed for a while after the fiesta. Right then and there, we knew we were meant for each other. Two years later we got married, had four kids, and lived happily as if there was no hereafter. In 2007, we discovered you had the most dreaded disease. Cancer.

By March of 2012 your illness was already beyond the point of no return. Three weeks or three months more, that was all that we could hope for, we were told. With God’s love and grace and the miracle drug so called, we managed to make you live for almost three years more. I lost you eventually but let it not be said that I lost you in vain.

For in the whole period that you had cancer, I knew we had the happiest times of our life, caring for each other and savoring all the love that we could take and give to each other. Till we meet again, may darling Ale.