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    A Man Called Tet: The Biography of Congressman Enrique “Tet” Garcia, Jr.
    A Man Called Tet: The Biography of Congressman Enrique “Tet” Garcia, Jr.
    A Man Called Tet: The Biography of Congressman Enrique “Tet” Garcia, Jr.
    Ebook178 pages2 hours

    A Man Called Tet: The Biography of Congressman Enrique “Tet” Garcia, Jr.

    By Jose Y. Dalisay Jr.

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    About this ebook

    His colleagues called him “the pitbull of Congress”—not without some affection—knowing that once he had latched on to a cause, Enrique “Tet” Garcia Jr. would not let go, no matter the political fallout.
    Serving both as congressman and governor of Bataan, Garcia transformed the province into a national model in such areas as health, education, and business development. He defended Bataan’s interests, threatened by opportunistic elements, arguing on Bataan’s behalf before the Supreme Court even if he had no law degree. But beyond Bataan, he has addressed national issues, uncovering a scam that has defrauded the government of untold billions of pesos, and leading a campaign to give local governments their due from national revenues.
    This book is the biography of an extraordinary public servant, living proof that right-minded, God-fearing leaders still exist among Filipinos today, who are passing on their values, experience, and hopes to a new generation.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAnvil Publishing, Inc.
    Release dateOct 10, 2017
    ISBN9789712731884
    A Man Called Tet: The Biography of Congressman Enrique “Tet” Garcia, Jr.

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      A Man Called Tet - Jose Y. Dalisay Jr.

      From the Cradle of Heroes

      For millions of Filipinos, September 30, 1997, a Tuesday, dawned like any other day. It would be a relatively quiet day, even in a country as fraught with natural disaster and political controversy as the Philippines. Just the day before, President Fidel V. Ramos had declared a state of calamity in Tangub City in Misamis Occidental province, although the flashfloods that had ravaged the city had occurred ten months earlier, and the proclamation seemed an administrative afterthought. Elsewhere in the world, nothing more spectacular had happened in the news than a NASA earth-imaging satellite burning up in the atmosphere and a 4.4 earthquake hitting Yucca Valley in California without causing any significant damage.

      But in the Philippines, another kind of earthquake was brewing underground, leading up to the steps of the country’s Supreme Court, on Padre Faura Street, in one of Manila’s oldest sections. There, at 10:30 a.m. that morning, would be heard two cases, separately filed earlier but subsequently consolidated by the Court, both involving the constitutionality of Republic Act No. 8180 or the Downstream Oil Industry Deregulation Act. It had been passed the year before, over strenuous objections by many quarters of Philippine society, who saw the act as a handout to the oligopoly of the big three oil firms, namely Caltex, Shell, and Petron. Those objections were now coming to a head at the Supreme Court, under two petitions, catalogued in the Court’s General Register as (1) GR No. 127867 and (2) GR No. 124360.

      Among the petitioners in the first case was the congressman from the second district of Bataan named Enrique T. Garcia, Jr. or Tet, as he was called by everyone close to him. Just two weeks earlier, Tet had turned 57; he was in fighting trim, and he had left his home in San Lorenzo Village, Makati, with his wife Vicky to make it to the Supreme Court’s oral arguments at 10:30 a.m.

      It was not the first time that Tet Garcia would be fighting a battle in the High Tribunal or against insuperable odds. A decade earlier, as a neophyte in politics and a first-termer in Congress, Garcia had battled no less than the forces of the widely popular President Corazon Aquino on a matter of principle, in a seemingly hopeless bid to keep the country’s first petrochemical complex project in Bataan, rather than move it to Batangas, where interests close to Malacañang Palace wanted it to be. While Garcia had lost in the Court’s initial resolution, he went over his lawyers’ heads and insisted that the case be refiled—an option widely held to be precluded by the legal principle of res judicata, a matter judged. Finding a significant loophole in the Court’s initial decision, he would ultimately succeed, to the amazement of both his enemies and allies.

      Most remarkable of all was the fact that Tet Garcia was not even a lawyer, but an economist by training. And today, he would again be addressing the Court in a lawyer’s traditional robes, arguing against provisions in RA 8180 that he believed would give the oil industry giants a green light to raise their prices, to the detriment of the Filipino consumer. What was additionally ironic about the situation was that Garcia, for the longest time, had been himself an oil-company man, a high-ranking executive at Esso before he went into private business and politics. He knew the oil industry and how it operated in the Philippines from the inside, and he could very easily have carried the industry’s flag in Congress and profited from their support. But he had chosen to champion the cause of ordinary motorists, the consumers of petroleum products, instead. He had now ranged himself again against formidable foes, the respondents to the two petitions being the Executive Secretary, the Secretary of Energy, the Secretary of Justice, the Secretary of Finance, and the oligopoly of the big three oil firms operating in the Philippines: Caltex, Petron, and Shell.

      Hearing the case was the full Court headed by then Chief Justice Andres Narvasa. The Court had originally ruled against Garcia in the petrochemical case, and there was no way of telling how it would finally dispose of the case at bar.

      After preliminary arguments presented by the petitioners’ counsel, Atty. Theodore Te, Cong. Garcia took to the rostrum and began to address the Court:

      To set the proper perspective, may we make it known that all of the petitioners in the instant case are in favor of deregulating the oil industry. We believe that it should have been started years ago and if properly done would have been good for our country and our people. What we are against is the unconstitutional and pernicious manner through which the deregulation is being imposed by the law. Our objections, Your Honor, which we have raised from the very start in the halls of Congress are few yet substantial and fundamental. Our first objection is the hasty and premature implementation under Republic Act 8180 known as the Downstream Oil Deregulation Law. We were batting for a longer transition because once we fully deregulate, the Energy Regulatory Board would be taken out of the picture, price controls will be lifted, and the three oil companies that will enable themselves to set and fix prices. To fully deregulate and effect these things at this time when the oil industry is effectively controlled and dominated by just three companies—Petron, Shell, and Caltex—is ill-advised, hasty, and premature. Worse, this would play as it has indeed played right into the hands of the oil oligopoly instead of promoting free enterprise and competition….

      To those who knew Congressman Garcia and where he came from, Tet’s tenacity was no great surprise. After all, Bataan—the province he would eventually serve as a three-term governor later and as congressman of the second district—was known as the cradle of heroes, enshrined in Philippine history as the bastion of Filipino and American forces who held out for as valiantly and as long as they could against the invading Japanese in 1942. Bordered by the South China Sea to the west and Subic Bay to the north, the Bataan peninsula reached down into Manila Bay and guarded the strategic entrance to Manila, and from its mountaintops could be seen the wide expanse of the rest of Central Luzon. At one time, it had been part of Pampanga province, and reached across the mouth of the bay to portions of Cavite. But now Bataan was on its own, with a population of over half a million people organized into two congressional districts, composed of 11 municipalities, and one component city—the capital, Balanga, which was part of the 2nd district represented by Garcia.

      Balanga itself had grown tremendously; it had been Bataan’s capital since the province was founded in 1754, given its central location. Its name came from the Capampangan word balanga or the clay jar that its people were renowned for, but it had developed into a major agricultural, commercial, and educational center in the region.

      His family on his mother’s side had roots there going back to Spanish colonial times, and Balanga was where Tet grew up, and where he would return to serve in his golden years.

      A childhood in Balanga

      The eldest of ten children, Enrique Tuason Garcia, Jr. was born on September 13, 1940 at the Philippine General Hospital in Manila, although his family was and remains deeply rooted in Balanga, Bataan. His father Enrique Sr. had come from Taal, Batangas, while his mother Emiliana Tuason was from Balanga. Enrique Sr. had studied Commerce at the University of Sto. Tomas, and Emiliana at Holy Ghost College in Manila. After they got married, they settled in Balanga, Bataan.

      All their children’s names would begin with the letter E: Enrique, Eduardo, Ernesto, Emmanuel, Elena, Elisa, Edmundo, Edna, and Emily. Eduardo followed Enrique Jr. after two years, and then the rest were born one after the other year after year. All are still alive except Elena, who died in a freak car accident in the United States, and Eduardo, who died in 2007.

      Balanga was very rural back then, Tet recalls, "and our house in the poblacion was big. We had a big yard with star apple trees and cashew trees, among others, and my siblings and I would help ourselves to the fruits. Our house was right beside the church so when it was time to go to Mass, we just went over the fence. We also just walked to school. All ten of us slept on the floor on a very big mat. Sadly, the house isn’t there anymore, but my father’s house in Taal is still standing, and we’d like to preserve that place." Tet’s family had owned as much as 20 hectares in Balanga, much of it planted to rice, but that, too, was lost to land reform.

      Tet grew up in Balanga. The Second World War broke out right after he was born, and Tet retains vague memories of that frightful period, during which Bataan figured as the location of some of the war’s most pivotal campaigns and battles, culminating in the infamous Death March of April 1942.

      With the war over and the return of normalcy, the young Enrique could look forward to a regular and indeed a happy childhood. I had a pretty good childhood, he says. I studied in Balanga Elementary School and then in Cayetano Arellano Memorial High School, both in Balanga. Mama was very industrious. She ran her own gravel-and-sand business. The family also ran a Shell gasoline station in Balanga. Still, I’d say we were rather well off because of my grandfather, who owned some property. He also briefly served as mayor of Balanga in 1928. My grandmother died early, followed by my grandfather in 1961, when I was only 21 years old. My father died in 1984, while my mother died in 2009, when she was almost 90.

      It was a prayerful family, and Tet remembers praying with his parents every night, going to Mass with them, and singing hymns in church.

      As a boy, Tet was clearly bright, but he had interests other than his books in mind. "I wasn’t one who studied regularly. I got fond of going to the movies because homes had no television those days, and I would cut classes to watch movies. I remember that my favorite radio program at that time was ‘Mga Kwento ni Lola Basyang.’ The cinema I went to was Cine Fiesta, one of three in Balanga then and which was farthest from our home. I would sit at the back so if anyone would come in, I would see who they were. My mother by that time had made an arrangement with my teachers that they inform her if I cut classes, and she would look for me at the movie houses and make me attend my classes. Even during my high school days, I went to Manila just to watch movies. In those days, it took around three or four hours by bus, so I made sure to leave early, so I could go back at home on the same day. After the movie, I treated myself to mami and siopao at Hen Wah along Avenida, Rizal."

      Despite these escapades, Tet graduated as fourth honorable mention from Balanga Elementary School, and was class salutatorian in Arellano Memorial High School, now known as Bataan National High School. His favorite subject in high school was Biology, and his teachers urged him to take up Medicine in college, but he discovered that he had a knack for numbers. One of his earliest influences was his bosom buddy, a slightly older man named Arsenio ‘Seniong’ Dizon, a family friend who patiently helped Tet out with all subjects having to do with numbers: Math, Algebra, Trigonometry, and Geometry. An electrical engineer who had studied in Mapua in Manila, Arsenio Dizon still remembers how he would spend evenings during his semestral breaks at the Balanga town plaza. They lived next to the school, and in the mornings, I’d see Tet studying. I was around 17 or 18 then, and he was maybe 12. When he had a problem he couldn’t solve, he’d turn to me, and I’d help him. Later, one of Tet’s classmates in high school, Sonia Ongkingco, would become my wife. But now, we just see each other at class reunions.

      While in high school, Tet was elected vice-president of the Student Council in his third year and president in his fourth year, presaging his later forays into politics. His siblings went to the same elementary and high school that he attended, and many would later do well in their professional careers. Elena would go on to finish college and take an Accounting degree at Holy Spirit and become a CPA in Seattle, Washington, USA. At one time, she was the top financial officer of the four biggest hospitals in Washington, USA. Elvie took up chemical engineering at UST in Manila and passed the board on her first try.

      After finishing high school in 1957, Tet would have enrolled at the University of the Philippines, but his parents dissuaded him because they considered it a hotbed of radicalism at that time. So I enrolled at De La Salle College, and took up a five-year course that led to bachelor’s degrees in Liberal Arts and Accounting.

      College would be largely uneventful for Tet, who describes himself then as a homebody. He had acquired a girlfriend by then, but it was nothing more serious than puppy love, and

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