* Closing Remarks delivered by retired Chief Justice ARTEMIO V. PANGANIBAN, FLP Chairman, during the FLP Awards Ceremony held at the Manila Polo Club on September 2, 2024.
Distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.
My closing remarks consist of two parts. The first is to thank our esteemed guests seated around my table, and the second is to explain very briefly the aspirations and projects of FLP.
Special Guest FL LAM
On the first, I am utterly at a loss for words on how to thank our Special Guest, First Lady Louise Araneta-Marcos for gracing our Award Ceremony. When I first mentioned to her – via a text to my brilliant Compañero Mike Toledo, her Official Escort tonight – that our ceremony would be on August 19, she sent me a heartwarming video stating that she was delighted to have been invited but could not attend because the days around August 19 were sacred to her. She amiably asked whether it could be rescheduled to some other day. With her kind permission, let me show the video she kindly sent me.
(Play FL’s very brief video here.)
Thank you po. How truly sweet and charming our First Lady is. In return, the least we can all do is to stand up and sing to her, “Happy Birthday.”
(Play Happy Birthday tape here, Emcees to lead, I will go down from the rostrum, preparatory to the giving of the birthday cake. I will go to my seat when she blows the candle)
Thank you. Let us now present our special birthday cake to our special lady.
(Roll in the birthday cake for her to blow.)
Maraming salamat po muli sa ating mabait at magandang First Lady Louise Araneta-Marcos. A real charmer, she is.
The Other VIPs
Now, please let me continue my “Thank You,” to our guests seated counterclockwise on my table, this time, to our guest speaker and supportive friend, Manny Pangilinan or MVP, for taking time out to share with us his words of wisdom on our theme of liberty and prosperity under the rule of law. Maraming salamat po. Sana bigyan pa kayo ng mahaba at masaganang buhay ng Panginoon. May you overtake my age of 88. Kasi po halos pareho naman ang ating pangalan, Pangilinan at Panganiban; pareho tayong Kapampangan; parehong guapo, at parehong binata!
The next chair was occupied by our very supportive Chief Justice Alexander G. Gesmundo who annually chairs the Board of Judges for our Law Scholarship Program. He had been our guest speaker during our Award Ceremony during the last two years. For this year, we heeded his advice to replace him with a guest speaker who would symbolize the prosperity aspect of FLP’s philosophy, and we picked MVP. He had to leave for the airport earlier. Taking his place is Justice Ramon Paul L. Hernando, the youngest but now the third most senior associate justice who is officially assigned as the Working Chairman of the Court’s First Division. He does the work of its titular Chairman, CJ Gesmundo to enable him to perform his many administrative and leadership duties as head of the entire judiciary, not just of our Supreme Court.
To the right of Justice Mon is Lucio “Hun Hun” Tan III, the young summa cum laude graduate of Stanford University and dynamic President of PAL Holdings and the LT Group of Companies. He represents the Tan Yan Kee Foundation, our partner in our Law Scholarship Program.
On his right is the Chairman and President of the Chamber of Mines of the Philippines, handsome baritone and Metro Pacific executive Mike Toledo, who as I said earlier, is the Honorable Official Escort of our First Lady tonight. Guapo at magaling rin, pero may asawa na, si Connie Toledo.
Next to him is the Honorable Government Corporate Counsel Solomon Hermosura, former General Counsel of the Ayala Corporation, who has been requested by Ayala Chairman Jaime Augusto Zobel de Ayala to represent the Ayala Corporation, our partner in our Dissertation Writing Contest.
Next on his right is the formidable but low-profile Arthur Ty, chairman of Metrobank, the second biggest bank in our country, and chairman of Metrobank Foundation. On his right is Amando M. Tetangco Jr., the only two term governor of the Banko Sentral ng Pilipinas and now chairman of the largest conglomerate in our country, the SM Investments Corporation. He chairs our board of judges for our Esmel Fellowship Program and is a member of the FLP Board of Trustees.
On her right is Justice Angelina Sandoval Gutierrez, President of the FLP and head of the Supreme Court’s Integrity Board that investigates and sanctions members and employees of the judiciary. Next to him is the handsome (but married) Alfred Ty, the boss of the nonfinancial parts of the Ty Group of Companies including Toyota Motor Philippines, Federal Land, and Grand Hyatt, etc. Beside him is his lovely wife Cherry who is also my daughter by my choice. You know, we have relatives by blood, by affinity, by legal adoption and by choice, and Cherry is my daughter by my active choice.
The Ty brothers represent Metrobank Foundation, our partner in the FLP Professorial Chair Program which now has 18 eminent chair holders.
The Libertarian Constitutions
Now, let me proceed to my second topic, a short discussion of the philosophy of liberty and prosperity. All our Constitutions – starting from our 1897 Biak na Bato Constitution to the 1898 Malolos Constitution, the 1935, 1973 and 1987 Constitutions – were born amid our people’s struggle for political independence. Understandably, the Bills of Rights in all of them contain our people’s aspirations to be free of external or internal forces that stifle our freedom to think, to speak and to act. Thus, they auspiciously begin with the right to due process and the equal protection of the law, to the rights against unreasonable searches and seizures, to be presumed innocent till proven guilty, to the freedoms of privacy, religion, free expression, free assembly, and so on and so forth, all addressed to fulfill our people’s libertarian ambitions.
But I have always thought that libertarianism of the mind, though extremely important, is not enough, we must also have liberation from extreme poverty; we must have both freedom for the spirit and food for the body, freedom from fear and freedom from want. We need and deserve justice and jobs, ethics and economics, peace and development, nay, liberty and prosperity under the rule of law, not under the rule of dictators or authoritarians.
Programs for Liberty
To substantiate this philosophy. FLP initially sponsored programs aimed at safeguarding liberty like our Professorial Chairs; Law Scholarships; and Dissertation Writing Contests.
Then, we included in our focus to the prosperity side of our philosophy by creating five ESMEL Fellowships which we plan to increase to ten as soon as the program gathers momentum. We likewise opened the Dissertation Writing Contests to students of MBA or equivalent degrees.
You will note that all the above programs are merit-based. Only when the applicants tie in their merit scores do the social or financial biases for the poor come in. This is because we believe in meritocracy, hard work, honesty and trustworthiness as the aspirational standards for our people. However, to attend to the needs of the poor, we started the Panganiban Educational Assistance Program, where social status is the principal standard and passing grades, the only educational requirement.
FLP’S Ultimate Projects
To mark the second decade of the FLP’s (2021-2031) existence, we embarked on two “ultimate” projects, the Center for Liberty and Prosperity in line with FLP’s liberty identity, and the Prosperity Fund in line with its prosperity persona. To build more meat to these barebone conceptual projects, FLP created a Task Force co-chaired by Governor Say Tetangco and recently retired Senior Associate Justice Telly Perlas-Bernabe.
Ladies and gentlemen, so as not to bore you with my hoarse voice, let us watch two separate short videos on these two ultimate projects of the FLP.
(After the videos are played, continue as follows:)
Friends, to kick start the campaign to implement these projects informally in 2021, my late wife, my five children and I, though of modest means, donated our 357 square meter lot in Paseo de Magallanes in Makati worth at least P100 million at that time. The Torrens Certificate of Title was registered in FLP’s name two years ago. This real estate could be sold in the future and the proceeds used exclusively for these two ultimate projects. By that time, its value would have incrementally increased. Several friends, who I will not identify in the meantime, have expressed interest. One has offered in writing to donate a 2,500 square meter commercial lot in a southern suburb of Manila, others verbally committed financial and other resources, and some have volunteered to join our task force.
Our esteemed First Lady, my dear friends, ladies and gentlemen, let me end my talk with a fervent call for assistance and cooperation in attaining these two ultimate projects. Maraming salamat po.
The Personal Website of Retired Chief Justice Panganiban 