Tales of the longest-staying Malacañang resident except for one
By Jose A. Carillo
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From its beginnings in 1802 as a Spanish aristocrat’s summer home, Malacañang Palace in Manila was to
become the prime seat of political power in the Philippines. It served as the official residence of the country’s
governors-general both during the Spanish colonial years until 1898 and during the American occupation
until the establishment of the Philippine Commonwealth in 1935. From then onwards it was to be the official
residence of 12 successive presidents of the Philippines1—Manuel Quezon, Sergio Osmeña, Manuel
Roxas, Elpidio Quirino, Ramon Magsaysay, Carlos Garcia, Diosdado Macapagal, Ferdinand Marcos,
Corazon Aquino, Fidel Ramos, Joseph Estrada, and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
My Malacanang
For all their political power, however, all 12 were simply short-term tenants of Malacañang under the country’
s democratic system. Each took residence there for at most a four-year or (later) six-year stay, and could look
forward to the possibility of staying longer only if reelected. Indeed, only two managed to to stay in
Malacañang for more than one term—Marcos, who won a second four-year term and managed to extend his
stay to a total of 21 years through the expedient of martial rule; and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, former
Malacañang tenant Diosdado Macapagal’s daughter, who succeeded Estrada as president when the latter
was ousted after only 30 months in residence, then managed to extend her own tenancy for another six
years—a term that, of course, brings us to the present day. (Three of the official Malacañang tenants died
during their tenancy: Quezon in 1944 and Roxas in 1948, both from illness, and Magsaysay in a plane crash
in 1957.)
Today, a total of nine presidential candidates want to become Malacañang’s official tenant for the next six
years—among them Joseph Estrada, the ousted Philippine president who wants to reclaim Malacañang to
vindicate his name; Senator Benigno Aquino III, son of previous Malacañang tenant Corazon Aquino; and
Senator Manuel Roxas II, grandson of former Malacañang tenant Manuel Roxas, who, as Noynoy Aquino’s
running mate, puts himself in a contingent position to be also a Malacañang tenant. How the political winds
will blow in the national elections this coming May will, of course, determine whether that tenancy would be
handed over and revert to any of the same families that had previously occupied Malacañang, or go to the
serious contenders for first-time occupancy—Senator Manuel Villar, Jr., Senator Richard Gordon, and former
Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro, Jr.
Longer-staying Malacañang tenant than most
Through all the often fierce jockeying for residence in Malacañang over the years, however, one man had
largely kept mum about the fact that that he had been a longer Malacañang resident than any of the
Philippine presidents—except one. This was until that former long-time resident, Raul S. Gonzalez, came
out last November with a superb memoir-cum-essay collection, My Malacañang: Essays on presidents,
people, places and politics, where he blithely asserts in the very first sentences of the very first chapter:
“Except for Ferdinand Marcos, no president of the Philippines lived in Malacañang longer than I did. You read
it right—‘than I.’ And yes—‘lived,’ as in resided, ate, drank, slept, wakened, thought, dreamt, fell ill, got well,
played, laughed, wept, prayed. And yes, yes—‘longer,’ 12 or 13 years.”
Raul Gonzales
Raul S. Gonzalez: Author of My Malacañang
Who, one may ask, is this Raul Gonzalez2 who can refer so familiarly and so nonchalantly to a stately place
of residence—a palace, in fact—that many an ambitious Filipino would fight for and die for and likely even lie
for just for a six-year stay?
To be sure, Gonzalez had actually been a non-elective Malacañang resident. He used to live in a chalet
within the Malacañang compound because his father, architect Arturo M. Gonzalez, was appointed by
Philippine Commonwealth President Manuel Quezon sometime after 1935 as Malacañang’s buildings and
grounds superintendent. Architect Gonzalez held the position until his violent death inside Malacañang
grounds in December of 1949.
Strong sense of ownership over the place
The younger Gonzalez himself sums up his strong sense of ownership over Malacañang in the first chapter
of his book: “Malacañang was where I took my first firm steps and uttered my first coherent words, where I
rode my first bike, read my first book, stole my first kiss, wrote my first poems. It was, I might add, also in
Malacañang where I saw what war did to men and what men did in war, in Malacañang where two sisters of
mine were conceived and [where] my father bled to death in my 15-year-old arms from a bullet fired from a
crazed soldier’s browning automatic rifle, Malacañang which shaped me into the person I am.”
This amazing facility with English prose is vintage Raul Gonzalez, a now-retired communications executive
and writer who’s an English-language wordsmith with few equals in the Philippines. His career, spanning
several decades until the late 1990s, included a stint in government as press secretary of the late President
Diosdado Macapagal and as senior vice president of the Government Service Insurance System; in
academe, as vice president of university relations of the University of the East; and in the mass media, as
beat reporter for the now-defunct Manila Chronicle in the 1950s and, in the 1990s, as opinion columnist for
the Philippine Star and The Daily Tribune. He had also served as public relations adviser and speechwriter
for some prominent public figures in the Philippine scene.
In My Malacañang, Gonzalez writes with elegant, sometimes almost rhapsodic prose about life in the old
palace by the Pasig River, about Philippine society and politics in general, and about the movers and
shakers he had served or had met in the course of his career as communications executive and writer.
Listen to Gonzalez reminisce in My Malacañang about summer of ’45 at the end of the Japanese occupation
of the Philippines:
“MacArthur returned not a moment too soon, an eternity too late. Our fast had lasted three long years, almost
unto starvation, and turned us children in Malacañang into grotesqueries—looking like gnomes and
salamanders, eyes bulging out of their sockets and cheeks sunken and hollow, limbs without flesh and
stomachs bloated by hunger, some of us so ravaged by beri-beri that taking a single step was almost like
carrying the cross up Calvary.
“Yet we, starvelings all, found soon enough and quickly learned that we could only munch so many apples,
chew only so much gum, gulp down only so much Coke, gobble up only so many Babe Ruths and Tootsie
Rolls.”
A life-changing encounter with death
And here’s Gonzalez summoning from memory his terrible, life-changing encounter with death in
Malacañang:
“The soldier fires, and I see Father knocked off his feet and flung a yard away, a perplexed look on his face, a
half-smile playing on his lips. He has always been elegant—Father, that is—and he rights himself and like a
leaf whose autumn has come, falls slowly, gently, gracefully to the ground…
“I rush to where my Father is, cradle him in my arms, and he looks at me with those eyes of his that even in
anger never stop smiling, and I see a wet, red spot on his necktie getting larger and larger and larger. ‘Help
him,” I cry, “Help him.’
“Hands—I don’t know whose—pull Father out of my embrace but, to this day, I can feel his weight, his
warmth, and his blood oozing out of him as he lay dying in my arms on the earth of his Malacañang.”
Gonzales and Macapagal
Gonzalez as press secretary to Philippine President Diosdado Macapagal, early 1960s
Many years after his father’s death, Raul Gonzalez was to become a non-elective Malacañang resident
again—if only on a day-job basis—when he was appointed press secretary by President Diosdado
Macapagal. After Macapagal gave way to Ferdinand Marcos as the new official Malacañang tenant in 1965,
Gonzalez worked with the private sector and wrote off and on as an opinion columnist for some Metro Manila
broadsheets. In 1986, under the government of then Malacañang tenant President Corazon Aquino,
Gonzalez was named GSIS vice president for public relations, a position he held until 1998 under the
Malacañang tenancy of President Fidel Ramos.
Insights from the corridors of power
His having walked and worked in the corridors of political power gave Gonzales deep, unparalleled insights
about the workings of government. Listen to his philosophical rant in his newspaper column in 1995 about
the inefficiency of government:
“Indeed, a lean bureaucracy is a contradiction in terms, as oxymoronic as military intelligence…Thus, where
private industry, which is motivated 95 percent of the time by the desire for profit, tries to make do with as
small a complement of personnel as it can get by, the government, which is motivated 100 percent of the
time by the desire for power, tries to make out with as large a bureaucracy as it can get away with.
“Private industry will make one man perform 10 different tasks, but government will make 10 men perform
one and the same task. Put another way, private industry fills a job so that it may be done; government
creates a job so that it can be filled. Or better yet, private industry will fill a job only when it is necessary for
the purpose; whereas government will create a job because it is necessary to its purpose.”
A keen eye for high achievers
Gonzalez had a keen, discriminating eye for high achievers among people—particularly for young student
writers in that often awkward, self-conscious stage of growing their creative wings3, but even for the adult
high achievers who had already proven their executive and leadership mettle by winning the tenancy of
Malacañang itself. Here, for example, is his recollection of President Fidel Ramos in mid-1996 after the latter’
s round of golf at Malacañang Park:
“He still has a wide-eyed reverence for excellence, especially athletic excellence. He looked at [German ace
golfer Bernhard] Langer with a respect I hardly see him accord other men; the same look he gives Luisito
Espinosa, Elma Muros, Robert Jaworkski4.
“He takes a child-like delight in leaving things looking better than when he found them. He couldn’t stop
talking about the improvements he had worked in the park and the place itself. ‘You grew up here,’ he said.
‘Come more often and take a longer, closer look at what I have done.’”
Gonzales and Ramos
Gonzalez with former Philippine President Fidel Ramos during
the launching of My Malacañang in Manila, November 5, 2009
But the usually mild and soft-spoken Gonzalez could also be savagely indignant and bitingly sarcastic with
his prose, although often in high magisterial style. Here’s what he wrote in his 1995 newspaper opinion
column about popular Philippine comedian Dolphy’s response to his fans who were then egging him to take
a stab at high public office:
“Paano kung manalo ako? [What if I win the election?]
“The question Dolphy asked himself is a question no one who aspires to an elective office should fail to ask
himself, preferably as soon as the political bug bites and even before the itch to run develops: Paano kung
manalo ako? It is not that an honest reply to this question may ensure that our government will not be run by
dogs—worse yet, by curs—that got lucky and caught a car. That is simply being patriotic. It is, rather, that
Dolphy’s question may stop people less knowledgeable or less honest about themselves than Dolphy from
spending the next six years of their lives scurrying from one rat hole to another in the effort to keep their
nincompoopery concealed, private, and known only to their mothers. That is surely being kind to oneself.”
When giving vent to his opinions, Gonzalez could throw caution to the winds, too—even get stylishly snarky or
snarkily stylish—as in this passage from his August 1990 newspaper column defending President Cory
Aquino when the media tide began to wash against her:
“…it takes only one word to explain…why a media contract is out on Cory, why there’s a policy of
againstness on her, why the tales against her are bound to grow taller, wilder, dirtier. The word is: Fear. Fear
that she just might run. And if she does, paano naman kami?
“There’s no one in the Opposition now who can beat Cory—and all the polls show it; this despite the ravings
and rantings dutifully, and sometimes gratuitously, reported by media about how uninspired her leadership
is, how inept her Cabinet members are, how gosh-awful her giggling last July 16 was…”
Flesh-and-blood sketches of people in power
Except for a few touching, sometimes overly sentimental vignettes about Gonzalez’s personal and family life
in the latter part of the essay collection, My Malacañang largely devotes itself to perceptive, flesh-and-blood
sketches of the men and women—and their surrogates as well—who had tenanted Malacanang over the
past 74 years. He weaves quick, arresting tapestries of their virtues, foibles, and quirks: the imperious
Manuel Quezon, “with his short fuse and low boiling point,” unleashing his trademark “puñetas” on those
who dared cross him; Carlos Garcia, “the most placid and serene president,” who was probably made so
“by composing ‘balak,’ Boholano poetry, and playing chess to the exclusion of anything else”; Diosdado
Macapagal, with his almost mystical respect for the Filipino, but who “lacked the charm to convince the
people of the sincerity of his intentions,” thus leading to his political undoing; Ferdinand Marcos, “too
calculating to allow himself the luxury of genuine anger” and one who “never uttered any word, made any
gesture, showed any expression that had no conscious purpose”; Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, possessing
“considerable charms,” but with a temper “hair-trigger in its sensitivity and thermonuclear in its
explosiveness”; Cory Aquino with her Noah-nesque kind of political leadership, “unshakable in her faith that
everything depends on God”; and Joseph Estrada, whom he likened to the Biblical Samson, “a huge man
with a big heart and no guile at all, [who] preferred the simple pleasures and the merry company of
commoners.”
Here, indeed, is the essential Raul Gonzalez, an astute observer writing with the confident, sure-footed voice
of a consummate English-language stylist. His singular experience of having been the longest-staying non-
elective resident of Malacañang had given him a ringside seat to recent Philippine history and contemporary
events. And many of his essays in My Malacañang sparkle in his highly engaging narrative and expository
style, some even rising to the level of great, unforgettable prose, as in this vaulting passage about the
Filipino mentality of “puede na”:
“Name me, show me any bug in the systems we employ, any defect in the goods we produce, any deficiency
in the service we render, any blemish in the leaders we choose, any kink in the armor we don, any fly in the
ointment we prepare, any flaw in the way we think, comprehend, decide, act—and, believe you me once
more, it can be traced to how easily either these two phrases—puede na or puede pa—comes to the Pinoy
lips and moves the Pinoy mind…
“Puede na I blame as the culprit for the mediocrity that the Filipino has become. It is what has held us back
as a people despite the agility of our mind, its inventiveness, its thrusting nature; despite the beauty and
bounty of our land; despite so many good starts; despite the fact that we have always been pathfinders and
trailblazers, first in many things—to drive out our colonizers, to gain political independence, to absorb the
ways of the West.”
Truly, Raul Gonzalez’s 65 essays in the 320-page book make My Malacañang not only a highly evocative and
compelling set of cautionary tales about life and politics in the Philippines but also superb, instructive
reading for students of style and rhetoric in English.
Copyright © 2010 by Jose A. Carillo. All rights reserved. No part of this article may be used or reproduced in
any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical
articles or reviews. For information on reprints, please send e-mail to the author at
josecarillo@skybroadband.com.ph.
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