It’s not your fault, Cerge!

Lord, thank You for Your infinite love that meets our every need and provides all the beautiful and wonderful things we experience in life. Release our hearts and minds from fear and worry, fill us with Your peace as we learn to fully trust in Your Providence. Help us to do all that we are capable of, and the rest, we entrust unto You. Amen.

These were the last words that a prayerful Press Secretary Cerge Remonde wrote in his Facebook and it indicated it was posted 18 hours before he was declared dead at 11:51 a.m. yesterday at the Makati Medical Center (MMC).

Cerge was on his way yesterday to his regular news briefing at 11 a.m. at the Office of the Press Secretary (OPS) in the New Executive Building in Malacañang Palace. The driver of the press secretary was getting worried that his boss was already running late for that morning’s regular activity. That prompted him to check why Cerge had not come out yet from the bathroom of his residence in Bel Air, Makati City. But apparently, the driver’s discovery of the body of Cerge was already too late when he was rushed to the MMC where the doctors tried but failed to revive him.

It was Cerge’s former boss, Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye who once said the “average shelf life of a press secretary is three years.” Bunye, who himself was also once a newsman, did not mean or refer to human life but alluded to the span or period within which a press secretary could remain effective in this Cabinet post. Bunye served as the longest press secretary and spokesperson of President Arroyo.

Unfortunately, a fatal heart attack cut short the “shelf life” of Cerge. By way of a footnote, Cerge became Press Secretary also because of a prayer, a very controversial one at that. Before the regular Cabinet meeting at the Palace, former Press Secretary Jesus Dureza, whom Cerge succeeded, made the mistake of trying to please the President with his prayer that she would serve longer than she ought to. Thus, Dureza ended as the Press Secretary with the shortest stint at the OPS.

One of the frustrations, if not disappointments in life that Cerge admitted, was his own failure as Press Secretary to lift the continued decline in the survey rating of President Arroyo. He was asking too much from himself. It’s not your fault, Cerge!

Cerge himself was also inconsolable and grief-stricken when he lost one of his OPS workhorses, the late Press Undersecretary Joe Capadocia who died with seven other Palace officials in a fatal presidential chopper crash in April last year. He now joins JoeCap with our Creator.

It was a week ago when STAR editors had a sit down lunch with him at Cocina ni Tita Monying, an ancestral house turned into specialty restaurant located near the Palace area. Cerge was invited in the post-birthday luncheon hosted by our editor-in-chief Isaac G. Belmonte. As always, the very pious Cerge asked us first to join him in saying the prayer before the meal.

Cerge was his usual bubbly self and even engaged a visiting woman-priest guest of Isaac about their common interest in religion. Before he took the post as Press Secretary on February 1 last year, Cerge previously served as President Arroyo’s link with the ecumenical community, especially with the Catholic Bishops. He was doing these errands concurrently as Press Secretary until he breathed his last. After all, Cerge was a former altar boy in his hometown in Argao, Cebu where he was born 51 years ago.

At the end of the meal, I mildly rebuked Cerge for not stopping from his heavy cigarette puffing. I could not blame him for smoking, considering the stressful job he had as Press Secretary and concurrent presidential spokesman. He was complaining in jest that smoking was one of the few things he can still do because of the very busy and hectic schedule he had to keep everyday. Cerge pointed to his arms to show his complexion turned fair because he was no longer able to play his favorite game of golf. Our sports editor Lito Tacujan invited Cerge to a round of golf as soon as the latter finds time for their favorite sports. But that promised golf game with Cerge will never take place, Tacujan rued yesterday.

His widow Marit Stinus-Remonde is also a good friend of ours. Cerge introduced his beloved wife to us while I was still covering the Palace beat. Marit writes a regular opinion column at The Manila Times and is based in Cebu where Cerge started his media career as a radio reporter/commentator in Cebu’s DyLA.

Cerge was not only once a broadcast journalist but was also a very active labor leader who took up the cause of lowly paid Filipino journalists at the Trade Union Congress of the Philippines (TUCP) where he served as a director in the 1990s. In fact, it was his active stint in the labor movement that led him to cross paths with his former Dutch girlfriend and now his grieving widow Marit. Cerge told me that he met Marit in one of the labor conferences that he attended at The Netherlands.

He first joined the Arroyo administration in 2001 as press undersecretary in charge of broadcast. When I first met him then while I was still pounding the Palace beat, Cerge came too strong for me as one of those over zealous Palace officials trying hard to please the Chief Executive by showing off how close he was with the reporters. I didn’t know him then from Adam. But as it turned out, it was Cerge’s nature to be overly indulgent to his fellow media workers.

When he rejoined the private media, Cerge distinguished himself having served as the longest chairman of the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster ng Pilipinas (KBP) for six terms. But President Arroyo brought him back to serve in her administration and was tasked to oversee various government-owned media entities, including state-owned NBN-4, RPN-9 and IBC-13. Mrs. Arroyo later named Cerge as director-general of the Presidential Management Staff in 2006 until he was moved to his new post as press secretary last year.

The President’s designation of Philippine Information Agency chief Conrado “Dodi” Limcaoco as “acting” Press Secretary would dishonor the service and memory of Cerge. Deputy presidential spokesperson Gary Olivar could very well take over in concurrent capacity as Press Secretary instead of Limcaoco who lacks the credibility, much less the respect of the media. –Marichu A. Villanueva (The Philippine Star)