Manuel L. Quezon III

THE day of his twenty seventh wedding anniversary, April 14, 1948, was also the day before his death.
It began, like all his days, with visitors, and ended, like all his days, with even more visitors. He was, after all, Manuel Roxas and he was President of the Philippines.  His close friend and adviser, slim, slight, bespectacled and loyal Marcial Lichauco, would later reminisce that that as early as that morning, he had remarked to the President that he looked pale and haggard; Roxas diplomatically dodged the remark, smiling and nodding …

Chapter 12: The End of the Beginning
Manila awaited anxiously  as the coast guard cutter Anemone, steaming at full speed from the Visayas, made its way to the capital. The two days of a nation deprived of a president were about to end. The man who thought he was in danger of succumbing to heart disease was now disembarking as the successor of Manuel A. Roxas, dead of a heart attack two days previously.
At last, on April 17, 1948, the Anemone docked at Pier 13, and Elpidio Quirino, in white sharkskin …

Chapter 2: The coming man (1892-1922)
On the first of January 1892, in the town of Capiz in the province of the same name, a posthumous child was born. The child’s mother was Rosario Acuna vda. De Roxas, a widow only 22 years of age, her giving birth shrouded by two tragedies. Her husband, Gerardo, had been assassinated eight months before by guardia civiles whom he had humiliated after they tried to pick a fight with his brothers; her father-in-law, Don Antonio Roxas, died of grief three months after the death …

Chapter 1
The End of the Beginning
IN the year of our lord 1948, in the hot summer month of July,  the Philippines could look forward to celebrating its second birthday as an independent state. But that wasn’t what really interested people. Then, as now, what was on people’s minds was the coming election. It was a long way away –scheduled for November, 1949- but nothing is ever too far away for a nation that made, then, as now, the greatest topic of interest among the haves and have nots the all-consuming …

Revised Outline and Chapter Summaries (7/13/01)
(Please note that the chapters are highly compressed as they are only 20 pages each. Further 2 pages each for foreword, preface; 4-6 pages for introduction/prologue)
i. Foreword: to be decided by the Roxas Foundation
ii. Preface: To be decided by the Roxas Foundation
iii. Author’s introduction/prologue
This is meant to be a political, not personal biography; it will show the reasons why Manuel Roxas rose to be the First President of the Republic; how he fought politically, and on the field, with courage and conviction; how he should …

Prologue: the Rizalian approach to political action
Rizal, the Philosophy of nation-building; Mabini’s call for restoring freedom under the Americans; the assumptions of RSM’s formative years
Chapter I Blue Eagle, The King 1917-1939
RSM in the context of his times, his family, his schooling, the conscious nation-building of his generation and the emergence of political and social consciousness.

Chapter II Land of bondage, land of the Free 1939-1945
The role in the public arena RSM’s generation was expected to assume; how they assumed it, in terms of Catholic-centered social involvement; debates on reform; the call …

I will present my conference notes in my next entry, but first, here are the remarks I delivered during my portion of the Asian Thoughts Leaders Forum held under the auspices of the Arts House of Singapore. The forum, the first of its kind held by the Arts House as part of its Asia-on-the-edge Festival, had the theme, “The Asian – Past, Present & Future.”
The opening forum was held on Friday, November 28, in The Arts House, located in the Old Parliament of that City-State. I had the delicious good …