Hope and a sense of history

Sometimes, we tend to measure the success of a public servant in terms of edifices and monuments. But history often has a different view. What has he done to promote a sense of community and fire up the enthusiasm of constituents for popular causes.

And that's how I would measure former Governor and City Mayor Alfredo Montelibano Jr. now that he has gone ahead of us into the Beyond.

For me, the most important contribution of Junior (that's how we used to call him) was that he instilled among Negrenses a sense of pride in their being Negrenses or Negrosanon. And the perpetuation of that byword – Paglaum. And also his obsessive focus on developing love for athletics among Negrenses which is epitomized in the Paglaum Sports Complex. Also the main slogan that galvanized Negrenses was Paglaum. Meaning Hope. It became a clarion call that spurred Negrenses to hitherto unknown heights during his term and transformed countryside budding athletes into national or world class athletes.

First, the term “Paglaum” had become a byword of his entire term. It was the élan vital of a dispirited population that seemed at time on the verge of despair that could rise beyond what they were when he took over as governor of the province.

It was not a slogan coined by one person. It was the product of a prolonged discussion among a group of his brain trusts. Many of them were journalists. Eddie La Gonzales, Ramonieto Padilla, Pert Toga, and myself among them. There was also the late engineer Eriberto Losaria and Roque Hofileña.

The result was electric. Once the word was bandied about, initially as a campaign slogan, it suddenly became a byword among Negrenses. And Junior became equated later with Paglaum sang Banwa. And he thrived on it. And most of his political and economic decisions centered on that was the liberating shibboleth for Negrenses.

Later, that was translated into the Paglaum Sports Complex. The stadium became the venue for the last Public Schools Interscholastic meet before Martial Law. And Paglaum gained the reputation as the first venue of the Private Schools Interscholastic meet when Martial Law had been declared.

Although today it plays a secondary role to the Panaad Sports Complex landmark, it remains standing – a tribute to the vision for sports which Montelibano had launched during his term as Negros governor.

That was the stadium where the Negros softball team, under Kulafu Posadas won the Southeast Asian Games championship. Kulafu was the discovery of the late Fernando Cuenca and Raming Kilayko, the two softball czars appointed by Montelibano.

Negros also earned its reputation as the boxing breeder of the country with Bago City as its main center. That was when former Mayor Tutay Torres took over the promotion of boxing. Again on instigation by Montelibano.

But the more important contribution by Junior was the sense of history and culture which he advocated during early in his term. This was through the go-signal given to us for the “Know Your Province” program. Before that, Negrense labored under the term Ilonggos.

When he gave his imprimatur to the launching of the program, Montelibano never had anticipated that it was going to fire among Negrenses a sense of their separate history from that of Iloilo .

That ended up by the perpetuation of the term Negrense or Negrosanon among local residents. There was now the awareness that we had a distinct history from Iloilo . And it embraced the multiple emigrants among us – Cebuanos, Aklanons, Ilocanos, Tagalogs, and others who had taken up residence in Negros .

Junior realized the importance of the thrust of our program. And he was enthusiastically involved in our tidbits which, released to the press daily, gradually changed the outlook of Negrenses and made them proud of their own history and culture.

Later, however, that also played a key role in galvanizing Negrense youth behind Montelibano's sports development program. By a dent of management know-how, he managed to convince prominent Negrenses to head the various sports events that enabled them to hone the talents of their youth athletes.

As I had already mentioned, this led to the practice of young promising sports figures to emerge from the various countrysides to join the ranks of national athletes. Among them, of course, was Rogelia Ferrer. Incentives were the ones that further propelled that sports development program. In the case of Rogie, as we used to call Ms. Ferrer, she never managed to gain the upper hand in the 100-meter dash against Inocencia Solis of Iloilo . But at the finish line, whether second or third, there was Junior handing out P300 as reward for Ferrer. At the time P300 was worth the money.

Later, the Negros governor also won over Solis to coach the track team of Negros Occidental. Thus, these are just among the many feats of Montelibano as governor of the province. But the most enduring was that sense of pride of being a separate community from the Ilonggos and their proclamation that they were Negrenses or Negrosanon. And “Paglaum” has withstood the test of time. It still remains today as a rallying call for Negrenses, the smile behind the MassKara masks.*

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