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
Troubled future
TROUNCED candidate Annabelle Rama’s demand for campaign contribution refund won’t affect our grandchildren’s future. But an assertive China will.
Cebuanos can glimpse that troubled future in a new book: “The Grand Master's Insights on China, US and the World” (MIT Press, 2013).
Unpayable ‘IOUs’
(A twin book launch Saturday night honored an outstanding Cebuano editor and his daughter-author. “Canto Voice” compresses, into one volume, columns written by the late Cornelio Faigao for two Cebu dailies, before they were suppressed. “FeMale Heart” is a book by his daughter Linda-Faigao Hall. Here are excerpts from our paper–JLM)
This IOU has been outstanding for over half a century.
Navel-gazing stage
CEBUANA “Norma” lives in Los Angeles. She travels often and writes for Asian papers. Doesn’t her letter hold up a mirror for us? JLM.
Am in Cebu a couple of days. Then I’ll visit my sister in Iligan City. Just wanted to tell you that in the cab from Mactan airport, my still-fluent Cebuano jolted the driver. Taga-diin man diay ka Day?
Rarest of grace
IN post-election Cebu City, the rarest grace is “delicadeza.” Look at how trounced Bando Osmeña-Pundok Kauswagan (BOPK) officials, like Joy Augustus Young, lob monkey wrenches as they skid towards the exit.
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?
