Our deepest condolences to the family of Dr. Corazon Erfe-Acebuque, former University Dentist, HSU. She passed away Aug. 14, 2021.
Source: UPV Office of Alumni Relations
Dr. Corazon Erfe-Acebuque
In Memoriam
Melinda Cadiz Sasana (1957-2021)
It is with great sadness that we inform the UP Visayas community of the passing of Melinda Sasana, our beloved Balay Madyaas Dormitory Manager, who passed away last Sunday, August 15, 2021.
The University extends its thoughts of comfort and condolences to the grieving family. She will be sorely missed.
For those who want to send their support, you may send them through Meryl C. Sasana. Details follow.
Account Name: Meryl C. Sasana
Bank Name: Landbank of the Philippines
Account Number: 3057023910
GCash Account: Meryl C. Sasana
Number: 09052187081
Retired SC Justice Jose Perez passes away
By CONSUELO MARQUEZ, GMA News
Former Supreme Court Associate Justice Jose Portugal Perez died on Thursday, the high court confirmed. He was 74 years old.
“The Judiciary mourns the passing today of its 167th Associate Justice, Hon. Jose Portugal Perez,” the Philippine SC Public Information Office said on Twitter.
Prior to becoming SC Justice, Perez was a court insider then turned Technical Assistant in 1971.
Perez, a University of the Philippines graduate, was promoted to court administrator in 2008.
He was designated by former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo as Associate Justice on December 26, 2009 and retired at the age of 70 on December 14, 2016.
Perez was also a member of the Philippine delegation to the Universal Periodic Review at the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland.—LDF, GMA News
Source: https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/news/nation/799127/retired-sc-justice-jose-perez-passes-away/story/
A “house of peace” in UP: UP President Jose V. Abueva’s legacy
Written by Celeste Ann Castillo Llaneta
The story of the man that Dr. Jose Veloso Abueva would become—political scientist and public administration scholar, founder, and President of Kalayaan College, and Professor Emeritus and 16th President of the University of the Philippines—began with the story of a boy who survived an untold tragedy and went on to live his life advocating for peace.
Overcoming tragedy
The story is recounted in One by One (2004) Daisaku Ikeda, Japanese Buddhist philosopher, educator, peace advocate, and honorary President of Soka Gakkai and founding President of the Soka Gakkai International. The book is a collection of essays. Ikeda reflects on his encounters with various world figures, scholars, and activists who have inspired him. The article, “Refusing to Hate”, tells of Dr. Abueva, then a teenaged boy during the last year of the Japanese occupation of the country in World War II. Their parents, Teodoro and Nena, known resistance fighters, were tortured and taken away from their children. While his brother Napoleon “Billy” stayed to look after their five other siblings, Jose, together with a cousin, set out in a boat to search for his parents. Eventually, he came upon the torn and bloodied remnants of their clothing near a hill, where Filipino resistance fighters had been reportedly executed. There, he gathered their remains and made the sad journey back to his orphaned siblings.
Others may have been consumed with anger and hate over the tragedy that had befallen their family. On the other hand, Dr. Abueva and his siblings rose above it, striving to support one another. In time, each Abueva sibling attained success and made their marks locally and internationally. For instance, his brother Napoleon became National Artist for Sculpture. Dr. Abueva excelled in the areas of education, development, and peace studies.
Rising from the ranks
Born on May 25, 1928, Abueva earned his Bachelor of Arts degree (Arts-Law), cum laude, from UP in 1951, his Master of Public Administration in 1954 and his doctorate degree in political science/sociology 1959 from the University of Michigan. He earned his UP Graduate Study Fellowships from the US Mutual Security Agency/Foreign Operations Administration, forerunners of USAID, the Agricultural Development Council, and the Rockefeller Foundation.
From 1950 to 1970, he crossed ranks from being graduate assistant and Instructor in Political Science and Sociology at the UP Diliman College of Liberal Arts to becoming Professor of Public Administration, serving as Assistant Dean for Academic Instruction and Research from 1963 to 1970 of the then UP College of Public Administration (UP CPA). He was founding editor of the UP CPA’s Philippine Journal of Public Administration, assisted UP President Carlos P. Romulo in the reorganization of UP as Faculty Coordinator, and became the first President of the UP Faculty Association and, later, Director of Local Government Research of the UP CPA. In the mid-1960s, he pioneered development-related studies in the University. He also established the Doctor of Public Administration Program at the UP CPA.
He also served in various government posts, including as Executive Director of the Joint Executive-Legislative Local Government Reform Commission from 1970 to 1971; as Secretary of the Constitutional Convention (elected by the Convention Delegates) from 1971-1973; and as Executive Secretary of the Metro Manila Councilors’ Assembly in 1973.
Service to the UNU
In a curious twist, he was recruited in 1977 by the United Nations University (UNU) in Tokyo, Japan. He served from 1977 to 1987. His work with the UN also included as Secretary of the UN University Council (Governing Board of the University), as Director of the UN University Office for North America, UN Headquarters in New York City, and Director of Planning and Evaluation for the UN University. As Ikeda shares in his essay:
“At the UNU, Dr. Abueva worked with a team of talented, dedicated, and multicultural scholars to advance UNU’s mission of coordinating research on such global issues as eliminating hunger, managing natural resources, and promoting social development. Throughout their stay in Japan, Dr. Abueva and his family made a conscious effort to make friends and be ambassadors of goodwill, learning the Japanese language and culture. ‘By living, learning and working in Japan, by fate or accident, we’d like to feel that we helped to achieve on a limited scale a reconciliation between Filipinos and Japanese,’ [Abueva writes].”
Socialized tuition and a Filipino language policy
Equitable development, nationalism, and peace became the hallmarks of Abueva’s administration when he became President of the University of the Philippines from 1987 to 1993, serving concurrently as Chancellor of UP Diliman from 1990 to 1991. Following the observation that enrollment in UP was declining among students from marginalized communities, he introduced the Socialized Tuition Fee Assistance Program (STFAP) in 1987. The program bracketed UP students and ensured that wealthy students paid higher tuition to subsidize more underprivileged scholars. He also institutionalized a Filipino language policy within the University, for which he was recognized in 1994-1995 with the Gawad Sikolohiyang Pilipino from the Pambansang Samahan sa Sikolohiyang Pilipino, the Gawad Cecilio K. Lopez from the UP Sentro ng Wikang Filipino, and recognition from the UP Departmento ng Filipino at Panitikan ng Pilipinas. These two are among the cornerstones of his legacy as UP President.
As a dedicated educator, Abueva served the University as Professor of Political Science and Public Administration from 1993 to 1998 and Professor Emeritus of Public Administration and Political Science from 1998 onwards. In 2000, he and several other UP faculty members established the Kalayaan College, becoming its first President. Kalayaan College, a private, four-year college now located in Quezon City and accredited by the Philippine Commission on Higher Education, follows UP’s curriculum. UP faculty comprises most of its founders and professors. As a reflection of Abueva’s own commitment to national development and peace, Kalayaan College’s core values are anchored on the 1987 Constitution: helping build “a just and humane society…”; helping build “democracy under the rule of law and a regime of truth, justice, freedom, love, equality, and peace…”; learning for truth, professional competence, and leadership for the common good; and contributing to global peace and human development.
Advocating for federalism
As a political science and public administration scholar, Abueva remained in active service to the academe and the government, becoming a member of the Presidential Task Force on Education in 2007 under the Office of the Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. He advocated for federalism and parliamentary government in the country. He also served as Chair of the Committee on Constitutional Continuity and Change of the Philippine Political Science Association, as Trustee and Incorporator of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility, as Chair of the Board of Advisers of the Citizen’s Movement for a Federal Philippines (CMFP), and as a member of the Philippine Constitution Association (PHILCONSA).
He received numerous awards and citations, including The Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) Award in Political Science from the Philippine Junior Chamber of Commerce in 1962, the Most Outstanding Alumnus in the Social Sciences by the UP Alumni Association in 1976, the Award of Recognition by the US Big Ten Universities Alumni Associations, an honorary doctorate from the Soka University in Tokyo in 1991, and the Leadership Award from the UP National College of Public Administration and Governance during its 50th anniversary in 2002.
House of Peace at the heart of UP
For all his lifetime’s worth of stellar accomplishments as an academician, university administrator, and political scientist, one of Abueva’s most lasting legacies is the contributions he made for the cause of peace and global understanding. In May 1993, the UP Balay Internasyonal was inaugurated in UP Diliman—one of Abueva’s more significant projects. Among its facilities is the Balay Kalinaw (a Cebuano word meaning “peace”), also known as Ikeda Hall, designed by former UP Architecture Dean Mary Ann Arañas-Espina, in honor of Daisaku Ikeda.
Ikeda recounts the official opening of Balay Kalinaw in his essay, to which Abueva naturally invited him: “He [Abueva] also named the building the Ikeda Hall, saying he hoped it would be a symbol of friendship between the Philippines and Japan. In my remarks on that occasion… I declared my determination to devote my life, as an individual Japanese citizen, to the people of Asia… Dr. Abueva’s parents were among those who fell in the night without seeing the dawn of peace. I shared my belief that the same cry must have issued from his parents’ lives as they entrusted him with his mission.”
Abueva was moved by this—Ikeda recalls seeing him dabbing tears from his eyes. Then Abueva himself rose from his seat and quoted from a poem of his own:
“We want an end to killing and maiming
caused by greed or creed, class or tribe
because the poor are weak and the strong are unjust.”
“His voice rang through the House of Peace,” Ikeda wrote, “and it seemed to reach all the way to that hill he climbed so many years ago.”
Reference:
Dr. Jose V. Abueva on WordPress
https://joseabueva.wordpress.com/
Dr. Eufemia F. Octaviano (1939-2021)
The UP College of Nursing, UP College of Nursing Alumni Association Inc., and the UP College of Nursing Foundation Inc. mourn the passing of Dr. EUFEMIA F. OCTAVIANO – an alumna of the College, former President of the UPCN Alumni Association, and former chair of the Professional Regulatory Board of Nursing. She is also a current Trustee of the UPCN Foundation Inc.
Dr. Octaviano has lived a full life and will be remembered by the UPCN community as a nursing leader, a mentor, and a friend.
Ma’am Femy, you will be missed and you will always be in our hearts.
Source: UP College of Nursing FB
Veteran journalist Margot J. Baterina, press freedom advocate; 81
MANILA, Philippines — Margot J. Baterina, veteran journalist who passionately fought for press freedom throughout her career and firmly embraced the cause of workers’ rights and welfare as an inspiring union leader in a media industry then controlled by relatives and cronies of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, died on Sunday in Quezon City. She was 81.
She died from heart failure, according to her daughter, Shakira “Shari” Villa Symes.
Baterina, who retired as a senior editor of the Philippine Daily Inquirer in 2001, had written articles about Philippine arts and culture since she joined the staff of the Panorama, a weekly magazine of the Manila Bulletin (Bulletin Today during the Marcos regime) in 1972. She became president of the Bulletin Employees Union (BEU) in 1986 and was instrumental in the formation of an industrywide alliance of print and broadcast unions.
Workers’ rights
Along with other officers and front-liners of the BEU, Baterina was forced to resign after leading a strike at the newspaper in 1987 following a deadlock in collective bargaining negotiations. Her coworkers remembered how she had kept her gentle and calm demeanor despite the pressure at the height of the labor-management conflict, calling her “Mama,” “Madir” or “Mother” for her endearing role.
As the strike dragged for about two months and union funds were running out, Baterina sold some of her precious pieces from her collection of paintings by renowned contemporary artists, many of them her friends, to help finance their fight.
She struggled for workers’ rights until the very end, never giving up and abandoning her colleagues. The dispute was finally settled amicably in 1990.
Tired after a long and arduous labor conflict, Margot had said she would have wanted to retire from media work had not the late Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc, then the Inquirer’s editor in chief, persisted in recruiting her to join the newspaper as foreign news editor.
“Margot had a kind and pure heart, always looking out for those who needed help,” said Sheila Coronel, a Panorama colleague and now dean of academic affairs at Columbia University’s School of Journalism.
Baterina, a native of Santo Domingo, Ilocos Sur, graduated from the University of the Philippines Diliman with a bachelor of arts degree in English. She joined the media industry after graduation, but her stint was cut short when Marcos declared martial law and shut down most media outfits.
She taught journalism for a while at Lyceum of the Philippines and St. Theresa’s College for a few months and later resumed her journalism career in 1972 as a staff writer of Panorama, then led by Magsanoc, but under oppressive conditions.
“The restrictions on practicing journalism were awesome,” Baterina wrote in a souvenir program for the 2007 alumni homecoming of Class 1954 of her alma mater, Ilocos Sur High School.
“Military censors sat with us in the newsroom as we wrote our stories. Travel abroad for news gathering meant facing interrogators for hours at the intelligence agency of the government. Many of my colleagues were detained in military camps as ‘political prisoners’ for ‘subversive writings’ or were simply jobless,” she said.
Cats and plants
Aside from her arts and culture pieces, Baterina covered the 1981 papal visit and the trial of foreign and Filipino priests charged with murder by the military.
After quitting the Bulletin, she joined the editing staff of the Inquirer in 1991 and became its foreign news editor until her retirement in 2001.
Aside from her professional pursuits and advocacies, Baterina, though asthmatic, was a “cat person,” who at one point had as many as 30 cats in her house in San Juan City in the ’80s.
“She was fiercely protective of her friends, her daughters and her collection of stray cats. She would go out of her way to show care and compassion,” Coronel said.
At a time when being a “plantita” was not yet in vogue, she was already one, keeping a sprawling garden.
“She once advised me to make and style my own garden and not avail myself of professional landscape services that create what she called ‘a manicured look’ instead of what to her was the ‘more beautiful natural look,’” said Jennifer Santillan-Santiago, who shared with Baterina her editorial days in both the Bulletin and the Inquirer.
Shari said her mother “loved the Philippine arts and culture, and lived her life with integrity, tenacity and principles as a journalist. … Her remaining years were lived with peace, contentment and love.”
Baterina is survived by her daughters, Karisse, a communications designer, and Shari, a stage lighting director; son-in-law Michael; and siblings, Salacnib, Benjamin, Vida, Ceres, Raul, Andy and Martha.
Her remains were cremated on Monday. Masses via Zoom will be held up to Aug. 23, 8:30 p.m. (Manila time). (https:/bit.ly/Prayersfor MargotBaterina and passcode: MJB)
Source: https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1474528/veteran-journalist-margot-j-baterina-press-freedom-advocate-81
Late journo still coming up with gripping tales – for kids
MANILA, Philippines — She was best known for her “Pinoy Times” investigative pieces that exposed the excesses of then-President Joseph Estrada, scandals that led to his ouster in 2001. Now, 10 years after her death in a road accident, journalist and professor Chit Estella’s lighter side comes to light with the children’s book, “Tatlong Kuwento Para sa Batang Pilipino.”
The book will be launched online on Aug. 19, when Estella would have turned 64, according to her husband, University of the Philippines (UP) professor Roland Simbulan.
“I thought of commemorating her untimely demise by having her stories published in a book,” Simbulan said. The stories actually have “very timely lessons even for us adults.”
But Simbulan and Estella’s close friends and former colleagues at the media group Vera Files thought it would be “more appropriate to launch the book on a happy occasion” — on her birthday instead of on her death anniversary on May 13.
“The Chit I knew would have preferred it that way,” he said.
Lockdown surprises
He didn’t get to read the stories which were written in the late 1990s and were given as individual gifts to two of Estella’s nephews and a niece, Simbulan said. But last year’s long lockdown brought a few surprises, including a hard copy of the stories that he discovered among Estella’s papers.
The three stories — “Ang Batang Matapang at ang Multong Duwag,” “Ang mga Mandirigma,” and “The Invisible Boy” — take young readers to a fantastical world, where ghosts mix freely with children, “manananggal” (ghouls), otherworldly creatures, and bird warriors defending their turf. The characters include Mona Nanggal, whose stench drives away fireflies, the cowardly ghost Igmo, and four school friends with unusual gifts.
“I think she chose the underworld and mythical creatures in her stories because these are very much a part of who we are as Filipinos and as human beings. We are deeply in our folk culture and a deep spirituality that we impart to our children,” Simbulan said.
Guile, grit, goodness
The heroes and role models in the stories show how “Filipino children must be nurtured with basic values that make us more humane and compassionate. These values include truth-seeking and truth-telling,” Simbulan said. And while stories like these “keep us believing in mythical creatures that may guide our lives for better or for worse, our liberation from any oppression is really in our hands,” he said.
The stories, with their young characters resolving conflicts using guile, grit, and goodness, “run deep [but are told] in a calm and deliberate manner. They make you think,” Vera Files president and fellow journalist Ellen Tordesillas said in her foreword. So while she was surprised by Estella’s distinctly different output, “I realized that was Chit all over again,” she added.
Simbulan, who is vice chair of the Center for People Empowerment in Governance, a public policy think tank, continues to teach and do research and scholarly work, while also giving lectures in national and international webinars organized by the government, the academe, and civil society. He has since remarried.
“Chit’s sudden departure was life-changing for me,” he said. “We had so many plans considering that we were about to celebrate our 30th wedding anniversary in 2011. At first, there was a sense of denial in me, but a psychic whom a friend of Chit’s brought to me said I had to move on, be productive again. This is how Chit would have wanted it.”
For Simbulan, Estella’s greatest legacy is “the benchmark and standard in media ethics and professionalism that she set out for herself. She truly belonged to that rare breed of writers who lived by their progressive principles and who stood for truth and social transformation. Always inquisitive and with a critical mind, she was receptive to new ideas. An investigative sense truly molded her writings.”
Estella died instantly when the cab she was riding was rammed by two buses racing along Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City. She was then on her way to meet friends at the Technohub just across UP Diliman, where she taught journalism at the College of Mass Communication. Ten years after the fatal accident, no one has yet been held accountable. The pandemic has shut down the courts and delayed the hearings further, according to the family counsel, Arno Sanidad.
Greatest legacy
In 2012, the first Chit Estella Journalism Awards and Memorial Lecture was established. It aims to honor significant journalism on human rights, both in print and online publications. In 2015, Vera Files launched the Chit Estella Road Safety Journalism Award given to journalism or communication students with outstanding research papers or reports on road safety.
Estella-Simbulan’s name was also inscribed in November 2016 on the Bantayog ng Mga Bayani Memorial Wall, a shrine that celebrates individuals who “defied risks and dedicated their life for the cause of truth, justice, peace and freedom for the Filipino people” during the Marcos dictatorship.
“Tatlong Kuwento Para sa Batang Pilipino” will be launched at 2 p.m. via Zoom on Aug. 19. The book is now available at Popular Bookstore on Morato Avenue in Quezon City (tel. 83722162) and the PGX Free Trade Market on Anonas Extension, Sikatuna Village, Quezon City (tel. 85160324).
—CONTRIBUTED
Source: https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1473731/late-journo-still-coming-up-with-gripping-tales-for-kids
Virginia Moreno, Palanca award-winning Filipino writer and poet, passes away
by John Legaspi
Virginia Moreno, noted Filipino writer and poet and sister of the late Filipino fashion designer Pitoy Moreno, passed away on the morning of Aug. 14, 2021. News about her death was announced on social media through multiple tribute posts by friends and loved ones.
Born in Tondo, Manila, Virginia was installed as the “High Priestess and The Empress Dowager of Philippine poetry” among poets, writers, and friends. Her work spanned across poetry, theater, and cinema. But it was her book “Batik Maker and Other Poems” that was among the most coveted ones. Through it, she won First Prize for the Carlos Palanca Memorial Award for Poetry in 1972.
Prior to that, in 1969, she produced a play titled “The Onyx Wolf,” also known as “La Loba Negra” and “Itim Asu,” which earned her a win in the National Historical Playwriting Contest. A year later, it was turned into a ballet performance with National Artist Alice Reyes as the show’s lead.
Virginia was also among the Filipinos literary icons with a Southeast Asia Write award, which she took home in 1984. She also served as chairman of the UNESCO Culture Committee of the Philippines.
Apart from her accolades, her legacy also lives on the students she nurtured as an educator in her alma mater, the University of the Philippines (UP) Diliman. There she taught lessons on Humanities and became the first executive director of UPFI Film Center.
Some sources claim that Virginia passed away at 96, while a few others say was 98. But whatever the case may be, whether she was born in 1923 or in 1925, the fact remains: Virginia Moreno, once a living legend, continues to be an iconic writer that has been revered across the ages.
Rest in power, Virginia!
Donna Rose I. Ojeda-Ratilla (BSBA’75, UPCI)
Our deepest sympathies to the family of Donna Rose I. Ojeda-Ratilla (BSBA’75, UPCI).
Dr. Antonio M. Montalban (1944-2021)
The officials, faculty, alumni, staff, and students of the UP Manila community extend condolences and sympathies to the family of Dr. Antonio M. Montalban (UPCM Class 1969) who passed away on 7 July 2021.