Remembering Jesse

It’s been exactly 3 weeks since the plane carrying Local Government Secretary Jesse Robredo crashed off the waters of Masbate on August 18. A friend of Robredo from his corporate days, Jojo Canlas, writes about how he remembers the former mayor of Naga City.

Jesse would have loved the Inquirer editorial that mentioned his name alongside Ninoy’s.

I was privileged to have worked with Jesse Robredo for 5 years before he went into government service. Blessed with a brilliant intellect, he had a prodigious work output at San Miguel Corporation. 

Starting as a distribution analyst, his job was to look for ways to make the company’s logistics systems better. He could break down an issue and put it together again in a way that one is able to see with clarity the path to improvement. Jesse was well on his way to being a successful executive in one of the country’s premier companies, until the snap elections of 1986 came.

Having read Nick Joaquin’s book about the Aquinos of Tarlac, he was inspired by Ninoy’s life and so decided to support the candidacy of Cory Aquino as a plain citizen with no political affiliation at all. 

When San Miguel made the un-businesslike decision to take sides in the presidential campaign, Jesse’s fate changed as well. His beat up light-green Toyota Corolla stood out in our Plant as one advocating “Cory Aquino for President,” while around it were company cars and trucks sporting “Marcos Pa Rin” stickers. Whatever the outcome of the snap elections, his chosen career path would take a different turn.

As now, you would have liked Jesse then. His sense of humor was like every common Filipino’s — sometimes funny, sometimes really funny and sometimes so-so. He would tease an officemate, for example, and ask if her new boyfriend had a good “car-acter” too. 

A multi-sport athlete himself, he beamed with nationalist pride when in the 1985 Jones Cup championships, the Philippine team upset the American team composed then of future NBA players. 

At the same time while earning an MBA, he had finished with the highest grade point average of any graduate student in the University of the Philippines that school year. Put in his love for music (Frank Sinatra was a favorite) and I could be describing a universal man much respected by management, his peers, and subordinates.

Shift to politics

But over coffee at the Plant cafeteria, we would talk politics. He was proud of the fact that his uncle Luis Villafuerte, in an act of dissent against the Marcos dictatorship, spoke against the “technoquacks” among the nation’s economic leaders back then. 

Jesse would say that if he did go into politics, he would like to run for city council in his beloved Naga. In Ninoy, I believe he saw glimpses of what our leaders should be: sincere in their faith in the Filipino and in their desire to serve, and capable of running government in a truly rational manner using all scientific management tools available.

Jesse was at the gates of Malacañang the night Marcos fled the country and was so eager to share the news, he called friends from the first phone he could find, inside the Palace. In the aftermath of the People Power revolution, Jesse crossed over into government service as director of the Bicol River Basin Development project. Not long after that, he ran and won as the mayor of the city he grew up in.

The last time I saw Jesse was during his second term as mayor. I was visiting one of San Miguel Corporation’s warehouses in Naga and called on him at his office eager to see him in action. 

I do believe every word written about how simple yet effective Jesse was as mayor, for I had seen him in his favored setting with my own eyes. On his way home to lunch he hitched a ride and stood at the back of a pick-up truck, seemingly unmindful of his city-mates, who rightfully feared for his safety. They knew he had political enemies in the city. 

A security detail recounted how he once spoke with the mayor about a numbers game similar to jueteng. After listening to the man, Jesse took a sip from a drinking fountain nearby and walked back and simply said, “Hindi ba bawal din iyon?” (Isn’t that illegal?) And that was the end of it. Naga to this day is free of all illegal numbers games.

That night, I had dinner with Jesse and Leni at a restaurant that had a lounge singer as its featured entertainer. It must have been a rare night off for the couple as our conversation drifted towards music. Sinatra’s first “Duets” album had been out some months before and the couple had not heard of it then. I was just glad to see both of them relaxed and just enjoying the show. 

Jesse did manage to talk about his early victories at the council such as how local traffic had vastly improved after successfully moving the bus terminals away from the city center and how his team fought the renewal of a local telecom franchise that was aggressively applying for a new long-term agreement. 

Why, he said, should the city grant another multi-decade exclusive right to a company that had nothing to show but shared telephone lines and long service wait periods?

It is a testament to Jesse’s greatness that after 25 years, no one could ever call him traditional. The gift he leaves to the Filipino people is a legacy of what “Kaya Natin” describes as “ethical, effective and empowering” political leadership. It is one that enables government to deliver to the poor and disenfranchised in society:  the handicapped, children who labor, and indigenous peoples. 

At a time when even some Catholic bishops are cynical that Philippine good governance is attainable, he and his constituents in Naga have quietly put it in place. I lost faith in 1998 and now live in Whitby Ontario but over the past two years, I have watched Jesse quietly put in place his visionary programs on a national scale. By the people’s reactions to his death, I can feel inspired new voices emerging in government. We may yet see the day when good governance becomes the norm in Philippine politics.

I write this piece as a way of saying farewell and thank you to an old friend. – Rappler.com