Juan L. Mercado
HE started as a reporter in a Cebu daily, Southern Star, in the early 1950s. Juan L. Mercado, known to colleagues as Johnny, joined the Evening News in Manila, covering the Senate and later becoming its associate editor. He covered the United Nations (UN) in New York and served as a correspondent for foreign publications that included London’s Financial Times and Honolulu’s Star Bulletin.
Johnny is the Philippine Press Institute’s founding director. He also edited DepthNews, published by the Magsaysay Award-winning Press Foundation of Asia. Along with 21 other journalists, he was detained during Martial Law. Still under city arrest, he edited “underground newspapers” that evaded censors and reported on the dictatorship. The UN later posted him in Thailand, then in Italy.
Following the “People Power Uprising” and UN retirement, he returned to journalism work in the Philippines. He writes columns for Philippine Daily Inquirer, Cebu Daily News, and Sun.Star Cebu.
The Department of Science & Technology honored him as one of “50 Men of Science” in 2008. For his weekly Sun.Star columns, he was awarded as best columnist during the 13th Cebu Archdiocesan Mass Media Awards in 2007. In 2005, he was among the Cebuano achievers cited in the “Garbo sa Sugbo (Pride of Cebu).” Rotary Club of Manila named him “Journalist of the Year” in 1968 and “Opinion Writer of the Year” in 2004. The University of San Carlos selected him as an outstanding alumnus in journalism in 1971.
Columns
Letter to his honor
WE VOTED for you Monday as the “lesser evil.” Thus, congratulations still stick in our craw. Sorry. One hosanna less shouldn’t matter when cheers hem you in.
“Victory has a thousand fathers,” John Kennedy noted after the Bay of Pigs fiasco. “But defeat is an orphan.” Rep. Tomas Osmeña reels from the trouncing you gave. He never lost an election since 1988. Now, he’s discovering that the sun rises without fail, even if he is not mayor.
Barrabas or barrabas?
IN tomorrow’s elections, will we be strait-jacketed into choosing the between “Barrabas” (capital B) or “barrabas” (lower case)?
Mayor Mike Rama and Rep. Tomas Osmeña present us with who-is-the-lesser-jerk issue. Their camp followers’ line of sight is boxed within a 291.2 square kilometer slab whose borders were set Feb. 24, 1937.
The barrel’s bottom
ELECTIONS are just around bend. Do we Cebuanos see the bottom of the scandal barrel finally?
Rep. Tomas Osmeña unveiled what he claims is a psychiatrist’s report, written for a court, on annulment of his political rival’s marriage. In July 2000, Regional Trial Court Branch 22 ruled on a petition for declaration of nullity of marriage against Mayor Mike Rama filed by Araceli Francisco.
Yesterday’s men
CANDIDATES pledge to grapple with yesterday’s problems in a Cebu where people and livelihoods have long smudged narrow political borders. Ready or not, Cebuanos are discovering that tomorrow’s problems are uncoiling today.
This impression emerges from efforts, by six Liberal Party candidates, to answer all right, try to answer.a relevant question: “What is your vision for Metro Cebu?”
Two families
THERE are only two families in the world,” “Don Quijote” author Miguel de Cervantes stressed. “The haves and the have-nots.” Asian Development Bank (ADB) has published a study showing that water can split communities into “haves” and “have-nots.”
"Asian Water Development Outlook 2013” focuses on water security. It uses five prisms: from household taps, slumping water tables to disease.
Gray hair and bifocals
I’VE reached the point in my life when, if somebody tells me to wear socks, I don’t have to.” Scientist Albert Einstein’s comment is relevant to Cebu’s conference on “Ageing in Asia Pacific: Balancing the State and the Family.”
Convened this month, the Association of Asian Social Science Research Councils’ 20th biennial conference of considered “myths about the elderly” to new scientific tools, like “ALE.” ALE--what?
Laid back Ombudsman
AL tonto, tonearlo, a Chavacano proverb says. “A fool deserves to be fooled.” Does that underpin serial contortions of Deputy Ombudsman for the Visayas over Rep. Tomas Osmeña’s bogus police cars?
Lazarus moment
EASTER 2013 and that of two millennia ago are about radical change. “You’re very another na, as today’s youngsters quip in “Taglish.”
After the crucifixion’s trauma, the scared disciples locked doors. Time and space no longer constrain Jesus, Luke and John recount.
Jesuit jokes
(Election of the first Jesuit pope shoved the Society of Jesus into the headlines. Founded in 1543 by St. Ignatius of Loyola, St. Francis Xavier and four others, Jesuits today work in Cebu. They’re in 111 countries, serving as educators to scientists.
(Padre Federico Faura, SJ, organized the first Philippine weather observatory. Joaquin Villalonga, SJ, served lepers in Culion and was a Ramon Magsaysay Awardee. Filipino historian Horacio de la Costa, SJ, became the first Filipino superior of Jesuits in the Philippines. These uncorked a torrent of “Jesuit jokes.” Read on-–JLM)
‘Wandering fire’
CONTRAST Rep. Tomas Osmena and the new Pope Francis,” this friend suggested urgently. What contrast, we asked. And why?
“Your congressman toddled all over Cebu in a bogus Cebu City police car,” he replied. But Pope Francis waved aside the papal Mercedes-Benz armor-plated limousine with an SCV1 number. Instead, he hitched a ride on the bus, with the cardinals to his temporary residence.”
