vonjobi: wow, congratulations! kelan ang trip? i hope i'll be around when you come. had a good time with diosa last...
Keith Bacongco: Knowing Nograles and his Big Boss...garapalan na lang talaga.
Vinia Datinguinoo Mukherjee: Congratulations, PCIJ! Mabuhay kayo!
Lead Philippines: But without credible mass media there, what is left to protect the people..?
vonjobi: it's juned sOniDo.

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hopeless_race : Lets not just focus sa mga malversation of funds, sa mga overpricing..ating pagtuunan ng atensyon ang diskarte ng mga politiko na umuutang ng bilyon bilyon sa gobyerno."Small time" ang ibang pamamaraan ng pangungurakot kumpara sa pag-utang sa gobyerno ng bilyon na tunay ngang masasabing "pinaka big-time" at wala pang sabit.
hopeless_race : Mukhang tikom ang bibig ng lahat pagdating sa diskarte ng mga politiko sa pagutang ng mga bilyon bilyon sa gobyerno na tinatakbuhan. Itong pamamaraan na ito ang tunay na kumakain ng malaking porsyento ng ating national budget batay na din sa sinasabi ng world bank.
hopeless_race : Pakisilip naman po ang mga utang ni Villar sa BSP, ang mga utang nila RAMON JACINTO, RONNIE ZAMORA, JOE DE VENECIA at madami pang ibang mga pulitiko. Iilan lamang yan sa mga nababanggit sa balita na may mga malalaking utang sa gobyerno.
hopeless_race : Nagmimistulang "small time" lamang ang malversation of funds kumpara sa laki ng kinakamal ng mga umuutang sa gobyerno. At ito ay malinaw na natatakbuhan dahil hindi nga naman pwede makulong ang may-ari ng kumpanya sa pagkaka-utang lamang. Tunay na mga tuso at magagaling sa batas itong mga politiko natin. Masasabi ko na malamang lahat ng mga politiko ganito ang diskarte...wala pang kulong.
hopeless_race : PCIJ pkitingnan naman po ang mga gaya ni Villar na my malaking utang sa Gobyerno pero tinatakbuhan. Magtatayo ng kumpanya at uutang ng bilyon bilyon sa gobyerno ng walang balak bayaran. Tunay ngang walang nakukulong sa utang...ito ang prinsipyo ginagamit ng mga politiko ntin kaya nakakapagtaka kung san napupunta ang daang bilyong pera ng gobyerno.
hopeless_race : Sana itreat naman po ng media ang hacienda luisita at mendiola massacre na parang MAGUINADANAO MASSACRE. Ipublicized ang mga katotohanan at ipakita sa tao ang karumaldumal na pinaggagawa sa mga farmers dun. Untouchable po ba sila cory at danding at hindi magawang batikusin ng media about these two massacres?
hopeless_race : Kapag napaguusapan ang mendiola at hacienda luisita massacre ay parang walang nangyari at parang hindi big deal. Anu po ba ang pinagkaiba ng dalawang nabanggit na massacre sa maguindanao massacre?
hopeless_race : Its sad that we pinoys are blind to the fact of what had happened in mendiola and hacienda luisita. Ang tanong..bakit ang media ay hindi manlang matackle ang ganitong usapin? Takot ba sila kay cory at danding?
hopeless_race : Wilkins" brand, for P1.4 billion.-1999 Sugarland Multi-Food Corp. for P2.9 billion 2001- Purefoods Corp P7 billion P60 billion Coca-Cola ... See More 2002- Cosmos Bottling Corp. from RFM Corp. for P14.1 billion October 2008- GSIS' shares in Meralco worth PHP30 Billion. December 2008- country's biggest oil refiner, Petron Corporation. international company shopping spree: Australian boutique brewer J. Boag and Son for A$96 million in 2000. $97 million for Thai Amarit Brewery Ltd $35.5 mi
hopeless_race : Gud am..glad to be back.
jr_lad : rip mr. alecks pabico. you'll be greatly missed!
sevens21 : Dati input mo lng name at SSS ID makukuha mo agad STATIC INFO...
sevens21 : tawag ka sa HOTLINE nila walang ANSWER grrr we need pa namn ng static info SSS Gising!!!
sevens21 : Gawa naman po kayo ng article about SSS. Pangit ng site nila dali ma blocked ng account
guest_899 : we must check the background of each potential candidates to avoid having another big mistake like GMA
guest_899 : congratulations to PCIJ, more power and God Bless !
jazzymuver : how did Arroyo swallow that kind of things!! how come that she just spend the money our countrymen for her own sake!!
guest_3664 : i would be glad if u can include the investigation of the manner public officials announce infra projects as per COA regulation. It is frustrating to see their faces on the tarpaulin instead of the prescribed information like name of project, date of implementation,amount of contract, source/s of fund, among other things. This is very rampant here in Marikina. Thanks and more power on your noble endeavors. We need people like you to have make our country great again.
jhanz_08 : im making research on R.A 9136...with rgards to the privatization of NPC..could someone out there can let me understand more bout this matter?why was monopoly dismantled?email me..jhanycem@yahoo.com...thanks much
erika marie : P.S.:) my paper is due next week and i do hope someone could provide me these reports coming from reliable resources thank you ulit.
erika marie : P.S.
guest_4275 : i am currently doing a study regarding political killings in the philippines. could someone out there please send me human rights reports under Aquino and Ramos administration. you could send it at my email: erikamariet@yahoo.com your response would surely be very much appreciated. thank you everyone. god bless.
guest_4275 : i am currently doing a study for my paper regarding political killings in the philippines. i noted that there are no human rights reports during the Aquino and Ramos administration. could someone out there please send me reports regarding these matter? i do hope these reports came from reliable resources you could send it in my email; erikamariet@yahoo.comyour response would surely be appreciated. thanks everyone. god bless.
jayson bourne : gusto ko po maging member ng PCIJ, panu po ba? may application po ba? sana mapadalhan nyo ako ng info sa email ko... www.jboxpenshoppe@yahoo.com
jayson bourne : cory is OK, but kris & Noynoy sensationalize masyado...
guest_9891 : LABAN pa rin!
meow : boycotts worked during marcos years. how about doing it now against the businesses of the con-ass congressmen?
meow : aside from 168, what other establishments can we boycott that belong to the arroyos and their cronies?
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Telling the truth and getting away with it

Posted by: Sheila Coronel | September 21, 2005 at 5:18 pm
Filed under: In the News

HAYDEE Yorac will be given a hero’s burial tomorrow at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. A resolution unanimously approved by the Senate yesterday paved the way for Yorac’s interment at the cemetery otherwise reserved for military personnel and government dignitaries. For years, the family of the disgraced former president Ferdinand Marcos has asked the government to allow his burial there. Up to now, 15 years after Marcos’s death, permission has not been given and the former president continues to lie in state in a mausoleum in Ilocos Norte.

In recognizing Yorac’s achievement as a public servant, the Senate resolution cited "her feisty conviction, high principles, and building confidence in government through service of exceptional integrity and rigor." For these, the Senate said, Yorac deserved the honor of being buried in the heroes’ cemetery.

Yorac died in Chicago on Sept. 13, after a lingering bout with cancer. Her burial will take place after a memorial service at the UP Chapel at 7:30 a.m. tomorrow.

The following is a tribute I delivered at a memorial service held for her last night:

Haydee Yorac told it like it is. This is about as rare in public life as a polar bear in Boracay. If it were more common, our country wouldn’t be in the fix it is in today. There would be no need for apologies, no crises triggered by “lapses in judgment.”

Haydee dazzled because she told the unvarnished truth.

“Truth, like light, blinds,” one of her favorite writers, the existentialist Albert Camus wrote. “Falsehood,” said Camus, “is a beautiful twilight that enhances every object.”

If there is anything that Haydee’s life has shown us, it is this: You can tell the truth and get away with it. You can tell the truth and still be so loved, so respected and so feared. Haydee knew, much more than anyone in public life today, the awesome power of truth, of honesty and of personal integrity.

Unfortunately, truth telling is uncommon these days, not just in politics but also in the profession to which I belong. I have been in journalism for over 20 years and I can tell you that the media often give more space to the “beautiful twilight” of falsehood, flattery and prevarication than to the glaring light of truth.

This is why we needed Haydee. She showed us glimpses of that light. She had a bullshit detector better than anyone of us had. I know this from personal experience because some years ago, I was asked to introduce her as the keynote speaker at a media conference. I, of course, went overboard. It is not difficult to be hyperbolic about Haydee.

She wasn’t pleased. She told me half-jokingly that she thought I was beyond sycophancy. Ok, maybe I was sucking up to her. After all, I am a big Haydee fan. Her law firm was also giving us free legal advice. And let’s admit it, we all have an inner Joe de Venecia in all of us. I thought I had restrained mine better than most. But Haydee was too sharp to let it pass. She knew that words come easily to us, smooth talk even easier.

The moral of the story is: You can’t get one over Haydee. You don’t even try. Ask her former law students. Ask Danding Cojuangco. Ask Imee Marcos and Ali Dimaporo. Ask RAM and the MNLF and the NDF. They will tell you that Haydee had uncommon wisdom and uncommon sense. She had a razor-sharp intellect. She had a mind that was so clear because it was uncluttered by ambition or by lust for wealth or power. It was a mind that was free because it was not shackled to a personal, political or ideological agenda.

Journalists don’t see such clarity very often. She told EVEN US the painful truth. At that media conference, she quoted Camus, who was both a novelist and a journalist. The French writer famously said: “A free press can be good or bad, but, most certainly without freedom, the press will never be anything but bad.”

Without missing a beat, and flashing that famous glare, Haydee then proceeded to tell the journalists present there that thus far, in the Philippines, Camus’ promise, that a free press can be good remained largely in the realm of existential possibility rather than reality.

This is why Haydee will be so sorely missed. Everyone sucks up to the media in this country, but not her. And yet, even if she didn’t wine or dine journalists or schmooze with editors or columnists, she had an enviably good press. Every journalist I know had real, not just grudging, respect for her. We were all in awe of her. It makes me wonder: if we had more public officials like Haydee Yorac, men and women who appeal to our nobler, rather than baser, instincts, would we also not have a better press? Or for that matter, a better society?

In the last few days, Haydee’s many achievements have been recalled. I will not repeat them. We remember also her warmth, her humanity, her deep and abiding faith. We miss the glee with which she lapped up jokes. She had a keen sense of the absurd and the ridiculous. She was sensitive to the power of humor: not only is it a weapon of the weak against the strong, it also helps keep us sane despite the madness of the times.

Through those times, Haydee had an unerring sense of what is important. Her career in as a lawyer and as a public official focused on the most elemental things that make a democracy work: clean elections, justice, accountability.

As head of the National Unification Commission, she went around the country to probe the roots of conflict. She saw that it was not ideology, but the hunger and thirst for justice that drove rebellion. As a human rights lawyer during the Marcos era, Haydee had already realized that people did not need law, they needed justice. Peace, she said, could be obtained only through a social contract for a just, humane and equitable society. “The peaceful resolutions of armed conflict,” she said then, meant “neither blame nor surrender, but dignity for all.”

Truth. Justice. Dignity for all. These are big words. We avoid them now because these are complicated times and these words have been much abused. Besides, we are being told that there are other things that are more important: terrorism, the economy, political stability. With the budget deficit and rising oil prices, these are not times for waxing philosophical or existential.

Tonight, I will dare to speak big words in memory of Haydee Yorac. Her greatness lay in believing in the possibility of truth, justice and human dignity. Even in the most faithless times, Haydee believed. She believed that the greatness of the human spirit lies in the struggle against the forces that overwhelm it. As her favorite, Camus, said: “It isn’t happiness we should seek, but much more than that, a kind of greatness-in-despair.”

Haydee had that kind of greatness that stood out in times of despair. We sorely need it now. But now that she is gone, we have to find that greatness in our own selves. “In the depth of winter,” Camus wrote, “I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.”

This is a winter as deep, as harsh as any. The best tribute we can pay to the great Filipina we are honoring tonight is to find the invincible Haydee within all of us.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 21st, 2005 and is filed under In the News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

11 people have left comments

That was a beautiful tribute. Hydee Yorac really inspires me.

josephdc wrote on September 21, 2005 - 7:52 pm | Visit Link

Haydee Yorac,

I’ve heard her name since I was a child, It was indeed a great honor that I will call her a “HERO” in the midst of what happened to my motherland…

I never dream of becoming a Rizal or other great novelist and writer…but what I adore most are Honest people…

Honest people who will sacrifice…

While the name “Hydee” creates the urge to be creative and original, we point out that it causes procrastination, lack of confidence, and the inability to realize your goals and ambitions. This name, when combined with the last name, can frustrate happiness, contentment, and success, as well as cause health weaknesses in the fluid systems, and tension or accidents to the head.

Your name of “Hydee: gives you the ability to be creative along practical lines of endeavour. Your ideas can be very original and inventive. You enjoy being with people in a social environment. Your personal appearance is important to you, for you desire to make a good impression on others. Your pleasant manner attracts people to you with their problems and you are capable of offering practical advice, though you may not follow such advice yourself. This name causes you to be somewhat too concerned with the personalities, problems, and activities of other people.

Kudos Hydee: “Tell the Lord that our country Philippines is worth Dying for”

lethal_pointofview wrote on September 21, 2005 - 10:12 pm | Visit Link

Haydee Yorac,

I’ve heard her name since I was a child, It was indeed a great honor that I will call her a “HERO” in the midst of what happened to my motherland…

I never dream of becoming a Rizal or other great novelist and writer…but what I adore most are Honest people…

Honest people who will sacrifice…

Kudos Hydee: “Tell the Lord that our country Philippines is worth Dying for”

lethal_pointofview wrote on September 21, 2005 - 10:13 pm | Visit Link

If there is anyone in our current crop of leaders who deserve the honor. It’s Haydee Yorac. May there be more heroes like her.

AskDoc wrote on September 22, 2005 - 12:59 am | Visit Link

manawagan tayong lahat tularan sana siya ng mga tao sa gobyerno… at sa pribado nating pamumuhay ay magsilbi itong isang gabay..

paalam Prof. Haydee…

primo wrote on September 22, 2005 - 11:26 am | Visit Link

A great piece that was, Shiela. Good job. While you delivered such a fitting panegyric for someone so revered and admired even by her adversaries. I would’ve loved to be there, not to sulk in melancholia but to witness GMA’s wards squirm in their seats.

Truth, Justice, Dignity - yeah, real big words, and never before as imperative. Sadly these are not part of the official Malacañang vocabulary.

tongue in, anew wrote on September 23, 2005 - 5:38 am | Visit Link

Wow Sheila, that was breathtaking, and needed to be said. Now I’m dying to know: who was in the audience to hear those words?

hao-wei wrote on September 24, 2005 - 1:51 am | Visit Link

It was a friendly crowd, hao-wei, mainly Haydee’s friends (in government and out) and family. The audience seemed appreciative. None of them felt alluded to.

Sheila Coronel wrote on September 25, 2005 - 12:18 am | Visit Link

Sa susunod na labas ng Tinig.com ay ilalagay po namin ang mga tribute kay Atty. Yorac. Pwede po ba naming isama ito atsaka ‘yung kay Atty. Sanidad? Salamat po.

ederic wrote on September 25, 2005 - 12:47 am | Visit Link

i have to agree with josephdc, it was really a beautiful tribute. I first read the eulogy in another magazine.

Sayang, we need more Haydee Yoracs in our country today, in the world today.

omar wrote on October 19, 2005 - 4:38 pm | Visit Link

this maybe too post-height-of-sentiment; maybee too post-fitting-tribute - yet, yes, the Haydee of her and all more than deserve the Libingan ng mga Bayani and the Coronel piece….

Haydee joins the ranks of the so many more than palpable lives, meanings and legacies - from our jose rizal to their ghandi; from our lorenzo ruiz to their mothere teresa; from our bonifacio to their wallace - dead, buried, honored, remembered…..

but to just that - dead, buried, honored, remembered….

and will stay dead, buried, honored, remembered…..

to that point - who were listening, knowing, appreciating, mulling over the accolades and the palpability of Haydee’s and et al’s legacies……..what percentage of probability that it was heard, learned, appreciated, mulled?

i await either a Haydee memoir; a Haydee book; a Haydee movie; a Haydee monument; a Haydee Park; a Haydee street; a Haydee barangay; a Haydee; town; a Haydee city; a Haydee province

it is the next step…..

and then whatever comes, it adds up to the - “dead, buried, honored, remembered, bibliographed………”

mother wrote on October 30, 2005 - 10:12 pm | Visit Link