Eraño Manalo, the head of the politically influential, vernacular-speaking, and home-grown Iglesia ni Cristo, passed away Monday afternoon, an INC official said.
In a recorded announcement aired on dzBB radio, INC spokesperson Bienvenido Santiago confirmed Manalo's death at 3:53 p.m. Monday, August 31, 2009. Manalo was officially the Executive Minister of the INC, but he was also its supreme, charismatic leader who took over the church upon the death in 1963 of the founder, his father Felix Manalo.
"Ikinalulungkot naming ipabatid sa buong Iglesia at sa buong sambayanan na ang tagapamahalang pangkalahatan ng Iglesia ni Cristo, ang kapatid na Eraño G. Manalo ay pinagpahinga na ng Diyos. Pumanaw siya sa kanyang tahanan sa ganap na 3:53 kahapon Agosto 31, 2009, sa gulang na 84 taon," Santiago said.
(We are sad to announce to the Iglesia and to the whole nation that the Executive Minister of Iglesia ni Cristo, our brother Eraño G. Manalo, joined our Creator. He passed away at his home 3:53 p.m. on August 31, 2009. He was 84 years old.)
Santiago said that according to Dr. Ray Melchor Santos, Manalo died due to cardiopulmonary arrest.
According to Santiago, Manalo's remains will lie in state at INC's Central Temple in Quezon City. Further details will be announced, Santiago added.
Manalo was born on Jan. 2, 1925. He was INC founder Felix Manalo's fifth child.
Manalo's flock and influence
Manalo had guided his religious group through a long period of national and global expansion, and in the last decade had thrown his church's clout behind former president Joseph Estrada. The PCIJ has described the INC as "a secretive, tightly organized church composed mainly of poor members."
Its membership has been estimated at between two and eight million members concentrated in Tagalog-speaking regions of Luzon. But its churches are reportedly located in over 60 countries.
The INC's influence on state affairs can be traced back to its founding in 1914, when Manuel L. Quezon, Commonwealth president and a mason, cultivated a relationship with the then-obscure church as a foil to the Roman Catholic church. Its sway reached a new peak during the regime of Ferdinand Marcos, who rarely failed to attend important INC events, including "Ka Erdy" Manalo's birthday, and gave an INC-affiliated company major Land Transportation Office contracts.
It is widely known that the INC's power lies in the tagubilin emanating from Manalo and other church leaders, orders that cannot be disputed by members and can be used to command voting blocs around the country.
While Manalo often used his power to support certain candidates in the past - aside from Marcos and Estrada, he also backed Eduardo Cojuangco in 1992 - he famously wielded his clout during the EDSA Tres demonstrations that reached the gates of Malacañang, arguably still the most serious threat the Arroyo administration has faced. Three out of four of the demonstrators were reportedly INC members.
But President Arroyo eventually won Manalo to her side. When she ran in 2004, the Iglesia ni Cristo threw its support behind her. Pollster Mahar Mangahas told GMANews.TV that he estimates that the INC actually can command only about 75 percent of its members to vote for a particular candidate. But in a closely fought contest, that could be the margin of victory.
With Manalo now dead, it remains to be seen how his successor will use the church's influence in the coming elections. But if history is any indication, the INC will certainly play a role.
Arroyo, Estrada mourn
On Tuesday, Malacañang, through deputy presidential spokesperson Anthony Golez Jr., extended its sympathies to Manalo’s family and to the INC community.
“Nakikiramay po ang First Family at administrasyon sa pagpanaw ni Ka Erdy Manalo. He has been very instrumental sa simbahan, sa pagiging charismatic at pag-unite ng mga tagapagsunod. At nakikriamay po kaming lubos sa pamilya," Golez told dzBB radio in an interview.
(The First Family and the administration condole with Ka Erdy Manalo’s family. He has been very instrumental in the church, in his being charismatic, and in uniting his followers.)
Estrada also expressed his sadness over Manalo’s death.
“President Estrada joins the nation in mourning the loss of one of the nations’ greatest religious leaders," Estrada’s spokesperson Margaux Salcedo told GMANews.TV in a phone interview.
In February 2006, while Estrada was facing trial for plunder, presidential chief of staff Mike Defensor disclosed that three religious leaders, including Manalo, had expressed their willingness to serve as Estrada's guarantors if he applied for his release on recognizance.
Estrada was later convicted of plunder in September 2007, but President Arroyo granted him executive clemency a month later.
Religious leaders sympathize
Meanwhile, other religious groups also extended their sympathies to those left behind by Manalo.
Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Oscar Cruz said that despite differences in their religious views, Manalo was a good man.
“Masasabi natin na mabuting tao po yan, bagaman, magkaiba kami ng pananampalataya (I can say that he is a good man even if we differ in religious beliefs)," Cruz said in an interview on dzBB.
Another religious leader, Bro. Eddie Villanueva of the Jesus Is Lord Movement, also expressed sadness.
“Ang aming buong pamilya at Jesus is Lord (members) worldwide ay buong pusong nakikiramay at nakikidalamhati sa pamilya ni Ka Erdie at sa ating kaibigan sa INC. Nawa’y maramdaman ng pamilya ni Ka Erdie at lahat ng INC ang kapayapaan ng ating buhay na Diyos," Villanueva said.
(My family and the Jesus is Lord worldwide wholeheartedly extends our condolences to Ka Erdie’s family and our friends at the INC. I hope they feel the Lord’s peace.)
Corazon Aquino, an Intimate Portrait and Motrher of Democracy
History isn’t just penned by researchers, scholars and professional biographers. Often, the best accounts of history are told by those who witnessed it as they were having coffee, shuffling papers at a desk, or on a leisurely stroll. These people who were on the same orbit as the future historical figure don’t have to go to a library to do research or interview a source to write their story.
But too often, those who have had a ringside view of history don’t have their story on paper. Their stories are simply locked up in their memory, which inevitably fades.
So Margie Penson-Juico did the right thing by asking those who had a ringside view of the historic presidency of Cory Aquino to get their slices of history down in paper.
Without a doubt, Cory will go down in history for our future grandchildren and great grandchildren to read about. What was she really like? How did she govern? How did she stare down seven coup attempts? Whose version of Cory will future generations read?
It is best that they read about the many facets of Cory from those who saw and worked with her up close — in the midst of triumph, tragedy, laughter and hard work.
That is what sets the book Cory, An Intimate Portrait (edited by Margie, Cory’s appointments secretary when she was president and still her assistant at the Benigno Aquino Foundation, and published by Anvil Publishing, Inc.) apart. The book is not just a collection of tributes and anecdotes about the country’s first woman president written by those who know her well (though in varying degrees of closeness). It is prism, a kaleidoscope — for no one person’s account of Cory dominates.
In his foreword to the book, STAR columnist and Margie’s husband Popoy Juico writes: “The book’s strength and charm lie in its very form; firsthand stories by friends of President Cory’s for many years, by men and women who served in government, and by others whose lives she touched in countless ways.”
Among those in the powerhouse list of contributors are Sen. Ed Angara, Sen. Joker Arroyo, Rep. Joe and Gina de Venecia, Sen. Loren Legarda, Rep. Teddy Locsin Jr., Miguel Perez Rubio (who would like to point out that the cancer-stricken sister-in-law he was referring to in his piece is Lily Matute, not Mercy Tuason, who does not have cancer!), former President Fidel Ramos, Lovely Romulo, Rene Saguisag (who, though still emotionally scarred from the death of his beloved wife Dulce over a year ago, bravely attended the book launching the other night), Deedee Siytangco, Sen. Manny Villar and Bea Zobel.
* * *
I myself particularly enjoyed the piece in the book written by Gen. (then Colonel) Voltaire “Volts” Gazmin, who was the chief of the Presidential Security Group during the Aquino administration. I read somewhere that Gazmin started out as one of the jailers of Ninoy. But he was so fair and humane to his prisoner (one account goes that he even fed sugared water to Ninoy during his hunger strike) that after EDSA, Cory had ordered her generals to find Gazmin because she wanted to entrust the security of her presidency, her very life, to him.
While covering Cory for the Office of the Press Secretary, I, together with the Malacañang Press Corps, encountered a PSG chief who didn’t smile, didn’t eat, didn’t talk. Gazmin always seemed to be on duty, on red-alert status. Unbeknownst to us then, he had every reason to be praning. He protected Cory through seven coup attempts, and once, I remember my boss, the late Press Secretary Teddyman Benigno telling me, “Magpapakamatay talaga si Volts para kay Cory.”
Typical of the man of few words that he was during our Palace days, Gazmin’s piece on Cory, the calmest soul around, is short, one of the shortest in the book — but it hits the bullseye. Excerpts:
I vividly remember the coup attempt of August 1987.
I was out supervising the placement of armor around the palace when bursts of gunfire rang out. I rushed to the president’s official residence in Arlegui St., across from Malacañang, and found the president and her family upstairs. I asked them to go downstairs and turn off all lights, and instructed my guards to stand mattresses against the windows,
I then made a head count and found one missing. I went back upstairs and noticed light coming through the open bathroom door. It was the president combing her hair.
“Ma’am,” I begged, “please go to the ground floor, it’s not safe here,” to which she calmly replied she needed to look presidentially presentable when she met the media.
As her life hung in the balance and gunfire surrounded her home, Cory Aquino, in Gazmin’s own words, “was the calmest soul around.”
* * *
A funny, but also revealing vignette about Cory Aquino is told by her friend Bea Zobel. Bea Zobel’s family is one of the richest in Asia, but when Cory asked her to go on humanitarian missions on her behalf (as Cory had no first lady) Bea was a real trouper. I covered Bea on two such humanitarian missions: one to Lupao, Nueva Ecija, where she was asked to give comfort to a family caught in the crossfire between soldiers and alleged rebels. I saw her cradle in the helicopter a baby (I remember the baby’s surname was “Gante”) that had no right hand. A handkerchief covered the stump that was left of her hand. But Bea carried the baby like she was her own apo. And at the Tala leprosarium, Bea would visit the different pavilions with no trace of “diri” on her face. She had no rubbing alcohol-toting alalay, either. Later on, we had lunch with the nuns in Tala, who were not expecting us, and we all feasted on a combo of rice and tuna spread.
Her piece on Cory, “Shoeless in Paris,” shows how much of a trouper Bea really is and what a disciplined person Cory is.
One of the things I admired most of Cory was her discipline when attending functions — her punctuality. For those of us who were accompanying her, it was always a bit of an ordeal to try to anticipate when she would be at our door checking if we were ready to go, because usually this happened too early for us.
On this particular occasion, we were in Paris with her on the eve of our departure to London. We were to leave the hotel very early in the morning. Mercy Tuason and I, who were sharing a room, chatted till the wee hours, but did not forget to do as told: before retiring, we put our luggage outside the door. When we woke up to dress, I realized I had put in my suitcase more things that I would have wanted — for one thing, all my underwear and the shoes I had intended to wear on the trip. In fact, I only had my hotel slippers, and at that hour, no shop was open.
I went down and offered to any of the ladies at the front desk who wore size 29 enough money to buy a brand-new pair of Ferragamos. You can imagine the look I got, but upon frantic insistence, I was taken seriously. One lady disappeared and came back with the ugliest and dirtiest pair of rain shoes, wet yet since it had been pouring all night. They were a bit big for me, but I was desperate. So, floating in them, off I followed Cory to the airport.
In London, all eyes from the group of Filipino ladies who met us were on my shoes and between two of them the following exchange supposedly transpired.
“What’s with Bea’s shoes?”
“I have no clue... it must be the latest in Paris.”
Cory herself was quite amused at how I had solved the problem.
UAAP Season 72 - Schedules, Statistics, Updates and Highlights
UAAP Season 72 is the 2009–2010 season of the University Athletic Association of the Philippines. It will be hosted by Far Eastern University, with opening rites on July 11 at the Araneta Coliseum. The men's basketball tournament and the women's volleyball tournament will be aired by ABS-CBN's UHF Studio 23 for the tenth consecutive year.
(UAAP Update - End of 1st) Ateneo 16, La Salle 10
ANILA, Philippines - Ateneo took a 16-10 lead over De La Salle at the end of the first quarter despite two fouls slapped early on Rabeh al-Hussaini in Game Two of the UAAP finals Thursday.
Al-Hussaini, the league MVP, was forced to go to the bench at the 7:45 mark of the period after he incurred his second foul.
Al-Hussaini, the league MVP, was forced to go to the bench at the 7:45 mark of the period after he incurred his second foul.
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