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Honorable
Secretary of Commerce and Industry Rufino G. Hechanova, our American
friends, Mayor Tobias, ladies and gentlemen:
We are
gathered here today to pay tribute to the memory of the greatest man
that Cabatuan has ever produced. I see that many people in this banquet
are men who at one time or another were connected with or friends of the
late Honorable Tomas Confesor. There are also young men and women who
are eager to learn something from the life of their truly great
town-mate and draw inspiration from the example he set for us to follow.
Mayor
Tobias could not have invited a better guest of honor than the Honorable
Secretary of Commerce and Industry Rufino G. Hechanova, to grace this
occasion in honor of our beloved Tomas Confesor. Tomas Confesor’s life
was intertwined with the life of the people of Jaro. When he made an
appointment with love, he married a darlingest wife for a governor, the
late Rosalina Grecia Confesor.
When he
decided to stand against the Japanese, they went to the hills and the
mountains of Panay together. When they made a rendezvous with death,
they died within a few days of each other. When he was first sown in as
governor, he took his oat of office in the plaza of Cabatuan before
Secretary of Interior Elpidio Quirino. In his second inauguration, he
swore before Chief Justice Avanceña in the
plaza
of Jaro. Now that we hold the best celebration in honor of Tomas
Confesor in Cabatuan lasting for nine days, we have Secretary Hechanova
as our guest who is a Jareño. Whether this is just a coincidence or a
stroke of fate, we are happy that we could not have done better than we
are doing now in keeping alive our nostalgic memories of the late Tomas
Confesor.
I often
wonder why Tommy Confesor decided to run for governor of Iloilo even
before the expiration of his term as congressman of the third district
of Iloilo in 1937, yet I love to think that this was not mere accident
but rather an ingenious design of his Maker that he had to become the
governor of Iloilo at that time not only to administer the affairs of
the provincial government for the good and welfare of its people, but
also to prepare him for a bigger task while he was yet in the prime of
his life. Thus, he became the Island Governor of Panay during the
darkest hours of our history when the Japanese Imperial Forces overran
our country in order to keep our people united and to gear them to
withstand the perils of the atrocities of the Japanese Imperial Forces
which eventually came to pass.
No other
governor or resistance leader could have written that famous letter than
Tomas Confesor sent to Dr. Fermin Caram wherein he reflected his
sparkling thoughts on democracy and its corresponding principles, for
the preservation of which he and his followers were willing to pay the
supreme sacrifices even at the cost of their very lives. His was
patriotism of the first order. That letter alone, in going down the
Congressional Record of the United States, demonstrated that once
against the Filipinos had in their midst a leader who not only had the
willingness to fight for liberty and freedom during the night that has
befallen Panay but one who offered his all.
The
Americans were aware of his greatness and gave him that distinction.
Much as we are doing now for the observation of this day, yet it is a
pity that we leave the people of Cabatuan the burden of perpetuation his
name. The observance should have a wider coverage. Tommy Confesor was
not for Cabatuan alone. He was not for Iloilo entirely. He was for the
country but above all for posterity. Here again, Tomas Confesor
demonstrated his being at par with Graciano Lopez Jaena, again a man
from Jaro. Both were fighters for liberty and freedom of the people,
both abhorred tyranny and oppression.
If he
were alive today, he would have been very, very happy to see the
different exhibits in the fair put up in his own town and which could
have reminded him of his days while he was Director of Commerce. He well
knew that a fair like this, aside from being an important medium of
advertising, inspires people to produce not only more and more but
better products. Visitors in seeing the different exhibits gather
information on a variety of articles displayed, especially so when
demonstrations are conducted in connection with such exhibits. It would
have gladdened his hear to know that the Honorable Secretary of
Commerce, a Jareño for that matter, had taken a special interest in the
holding of this fair.
Tomas
Confesor was endowed with a wonderful mind and a very good memory. I
took notes of his speeches, letters and memoranda. There were times when
we were thus engaged, we would be interrupted by a visitor for something
that he would ask from the governor. He and that visitor would chat for
half or a quarter of an hour and when his visitor left, he would not ask
me to read what last I jotted down in my notes. He simply went ahead and
I think you would be surprised to know when I tell you that his next
words were continuation to the last word in the middle of the sentence
and life a master tailor, it was a perfect cut. The sequence was there.
This belied the belief of the audience that when Tommy, on delivering
his speech would appear stuck up, he did not know the next word to say.
This was his technique to let the audience fill up the gap, to keep them
from being bored or to arouse their interest in what he was saying. Did
I say the “audience from being bored?” I think I told you a big lie.
Tommy was a forceful speaker. His dynamic personality commanded
attention. Whatever he said was interesting. He enjoyed good jokes and
injected them into his speeches. Like President Lincoln, he liked to
hear good ones from his friends just as Lincoln did from Orlando
Kellogg.
Some of
our friends in those days wondered why Tommy Confesor had to deliver his
speeches and public addresses reading them. Some of our younger
generations may be surprised to know this and they may ask, “If Tommy
was such a great man with a wonderful mind and a good memory, how come
he had to read his speeches?” I will give you the answer. Because Tommy
Confesor, in all his public speeches and addresses, had always a point
to drive, some concrete suggestions to make, some constructive
criticisms of the President or of other public officials. Tomas Confesor
had to prepare his speeches and I took stenographic notes of them. After
that, I transcribed his speeches and addresses, gave them to him and
would read those speeches during the occasion.
Besides
being his secretary, I had to be a really good stenographer and a fast
one to make an accurate transcription of my notes as oftentimes when he
was hard pressed for time, he had to read those speeches and address
without reviewing or correcting them. No press correspondent or reporter
would dare to publish his speeches and addresses without written press
release from him. They were afraid to misquote Tommy Confesor. If ever
he had to deliver his speeches extemporaneously, he had to take me along
with him to take stenographic notes in the process of delivery so that
these reporters could get from me a copy of his speeches. He was
sympathetic to the press people, almost very fond of them. He used the
press for the expression of his ideas and also to crystallize his
opinions. Thus, you will see why Tomas Confesor wrote his own speeches.
He never employed any ghost writer. That would be an insult to his
intellect.
There was
only one instance wherein he required assistance in connection with his
public addresses. That was when he was preparing his speech to be
delivered in his second inaugural address in the plaza of Jaro. It was
late in the afternoon of December 31, 1940. After I transcribed the
speech that he was to deliver that same afternoon at the University of
San Agustin, then a college, he dictated his inaugural speech. After I
took down the last stroke, he told me “Pelay, you transcribed my speech
now. Send Imoy to Cabatuan to fetch Toto. Both of you go over my
speech.” Pat came and we went over the speech together. We finished it
just on time for delivery in the plaza of Jaro at
midnight on
December
31, 1940. That was the only instance wherein Tommy had asked for help. He
was confident it would be in proper shape when we got it done. Another
Confesor brother was taking over.
He was a
champion of the masses, common tao as he called them. He learned to love
them. And when he needed their support, in fighting his bitterest
political battles against a combination of formidable forces, they
responded to his call by giving an overwhelming majority for his
reelection. Tomas Confesor was imbued with a high sense of
responsibility as governor of Iloilo. He held his office with dignity,
lofty ideals and high standards of moral conduct. He know the defects in
the organic act of the provincial government during the transition
period of our Commonwealth, knowing that the existing laws then were
outmoded and no longer applicable to conditions at that time. He was
asked by President Quezon to head a committee on local governments so
that revisions of our laws might be made, basing on the recommendation
of that committee which was to work for the betterment of our people. He
was a living symbol of democratic ways of life and processes attendants
thereto.
When our
young people today could speak their minds and discuss public questions
as intelligently as did Tomas Confesor, when they live with kind regard
for each other, making themselves serviceable to the best interest of
the community, when they behave as good citizens and do to other way
they would expect others to do unto them, when they shall have learned
to stand up for the right and fight the principles and processes of
democracy in order to have freedom from want and freedom from fear to
make this country really the land of the free and a happy place to live
in, then and only then can we say that we are glad that Tomas Confesor
once passed on earth this way and that he had not died in vain.
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