Malilong: ‘Little President’ and moving on
More Sections
MY FIRST encounter with a “Little President” did not go very well. Ronaldo Zamora, then president Joseph Estrada’s executive secretary, looked bored and disinterested, if not resentful of our presence. When he spoke, his eyes hardly left the screen of the laptop in front of him and his tone was dismissive.
I left with a resolve never to talk to him again even if it meant saving my life.
Updates on President Benigno Aquino III's presidency
Thus when a friend, Edwin Ortiz, told me he had set up an appointment for me with the new executive secretary, I steeled myself for another five-minute non-conversation with someone who wears the title “high and mighty” on his sleeve and thinks he is extremely privileged whom he favors with a few minutes of his time.
But Jojo Ochoa is refreshingly different and our meeting turned out to be a pleasant surprise. Where Zamora turned you off with his latent hostility, President Aquino’s alter ego effortlessly makes you feel at ease, much like a lawyer (which he is) making a client feel secure and comfortable during his visit to the office.
I prepared an opening statement (“Mr. Secretary, I’m not looking for a job; I just want to know you better than what I’ve read”) on my way to our meeting to set the record straight but never got to deliver it because he acted as if he already knew it.
He hates the trappings of power, he would later explain. “I don’t want people pulling a chair for me to sit on.” “I don’t need so many bodyguards because I don’t have enemies.
And the two that I allow to accompany me, I ask to stay as inconspicuously as possible.” Words that sounded like they were said by a regular guy.
Secretary Ochoa does look like a regular guy. He was in jeans and a shirt as were Tining Martinez and Junjun Davide during our meeting. (I felt hopelessly overdressed in my barong Tagalog).
And listening to him talk, it was easier to imagine him shooting pool or drinking beer or chilling out with colleagues after a grueling day of grappling with writs, contracts and disagreeable judges and colleagues than as a Palace functionary nailed to his desk overseeing the affairs of the state.
After my experience with Zamora, I had misgivings about meeting with another executive secretary. I was happy to know that my ill feelings were misplaced, happier still to discover that someone as powerful as the “Little President” need not have to be forbidding to earn our respect.
As a person, she’s real, Executive Secretary Ochoa said of Justice Secretary Leila de Lima. He could have very well been describing himself, too.
***
Yes, the Rolando Mendoza massacre was condemnable and the loss of eight Chinese lives, regrettable. We know that the authorities underestimated and mismanaged the crisis.
We saw how the poorly equipped and obviously ill-trained, though perhaps dedicated and courageous, policemen handled the assault on the hijacked bus and we all cringed in shame.
But how long shall we carry on our self-flagellation? How much longer do we have to hang our heads low and wear sad and long faces in order to appease the families of the victims and the people of Hong Kong? Our government already said we’re sorry.
Acts of derangement such as the one Mendoza pulled happened and can happen anywhere, in some cases with Filipinos as victims.
We did not coddle the killer; he was in fact swiftly punished when he was killed. There is an investigation going on (which is really unnecessary since what happened was shown on television in real time).
So what else do we have to do to be allowed to move on? Or is it we who refuse to move on for some perverse reason?
