The Duque brothers
 By Jun Velasco

 

 

 

During our elementary school years, we would walk from our home in Barangay Malued to the public plaza almost every Saturday to bike around the well-paved square. There were rows of bicycles for rent, which thrilled us to no end. It was in that regular Saturday activity that we met a cute, probably 5-year old Gonzalo Duque who, we learned, was the son of a famous man, who would later turn out to be a friend, Governor Paco.

Gonzalo was a natural go-getter as it was he who would follow us wherever we moved around the plaza, pleading that we guide or help him bike, too. The bike-for-rent manager would scratch his head because Gons was too small, and there was no bike for his size.

But the future Lyceum Northwestern University president would scream in tears if he would not have a bike to use, and we had to cajole the bike-for-rent man to accommodate the little boy. He was given what was the smallest bike, but still his feet couldn’t reach the pedals, and so he devised a system in which he would put his right leg through an opening that would allow one leg to reach the pedal and ride it. And so round and round the plaza until he biked and biked until he got tired.

How much l0-centavo-per hour debt we’d owed the bike-for-rent man for Gons’ whole day biking we could not remember, which remained unpaid. The little boy lived just across the plaza, and everyday the little one became a regular “client” of the bike-for-rent. He was not charged because the bike manager became fond of him, being Governor Paco’s son.                

In the late 60’s, Gons and we met again, this time as political activists, spiritedly talking about Joe Ma Sison, Mao Tse Tung and Che Guevarra. He brought us to the Polyclinic’s inner sanctum to allow the use of a memeograping machine to print political manifestoes. Our “secret” meetings didn’t last because Governor Paco got wind of it and scolded us for “recruiting my son to the subversive movement.”  When we were detained in the first days of martial law rule, former Gov. Paco looked for our parents and handed them P500 as “abuloy.”  No one really had any idea what was happening to the country then. Maybe, not even Speaker Joe de V, then a greenhorn congressman, who visited us at Camp Aquino, knew. JdV grimly told us he had to face the consequences if the Marcos government found out he was having dalliances with boy communists.

Back to Gonzalo, the man of the hour this PRISAA week. He skippered a successful marathon. He was a good, super manager of the national games.

At the height of PRISAA, the University of Pangasinan was also in a festive frenzy celebrating its 8lst founding anniversary, which couldn’t be reset at any other time because the yearly event had been fixed in UPANG’s calendar, university president Li Rivera told us over a cup of brewed coffee.

Everybody knows that UPANG’s overlord is Gons’ elder brother, business tycoon Cesar whose grade in English at the Ateneo was the highest yet (but tied with our late friend, Eman Lacaba, younger brother of literary genius Pete, our buddy at The Other Office in Malate). It might interest Pangasinan readers that Cesar was former editor of the Harvard Review, a paper of the world’s number one university.

The Duques are known for their “perspicacious brains” and workaholicism. Even youngest brother, Dr. Pingkoy, health secretary, is GMA’s workingest Cabinet member (and also the “honestest” making the DOH the least corrupt government agency, according to SWS). Of course,  Pangasinenses consider as the mostest genius of the Duque brothers, Dr. Salvador or  Ado,” who, were it not for his  “domestication”  by  beauteous wife,  writer non pareil  Mita Sison-Duque, would have been a senator or president of the Philipines. Kuya Ado (we hope we’re not over-praising lest he’d hand down a “penalty”) was medical director of the US Air Force, whom we had a chance to visit in l980 as a Rotary scholar.

Congratulations to Gons Duque and his lean-and-mean task force that made Pangasinan’s PRISAA hosting very successful.

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Mayor Nani Braganza told us at Speaker Joe de V’s home the other week that the national government’s turn-over of the fabled Hundred Islands would increase the city’s income beyond  everyone’s dreams, citing  world observers’ very high ratings of the isles’ tourism appeal.

Colonel Wilmer Panabang, a graduate of top management schools in Manila, confided that behind Alaminos’ overnight success is a top world urban planner who had carved his city into what Singapore and Ayala Alabang are now. Panabang told us Alaminos is not even competing with Dagupan in its drive to upgrade itself; not even Manila, but Singapore and Malaysia. Big dreams! Well, how else shall we move up of if not by starting to dream.

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In the run-up to the ballyhooed 2007 elections, one man who should not be ignored in the local scene is Councilor Teofilo “Jojo” Guadiz III, heir to a great name particularly in Dagupan’s political circles.  When he was a high school editor, Jojo already showed a keen political insight which we predicted would come to full fruition in time. We’ve not seen him for months, but his text messages to us said he has started to revive old political allies in preparation for a big fight.” Example: “If my mayor is moving up, I won’t be far behind.”

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