Memories

Flipping through the pages of Newsline, one wonders how time flew by.

Newsline was born in 1987, a year after the EDSA People Power Revolution. It was established during Cory Aquino’s ascension to power and under a revolutionary constitution.

Our sense of freedom then ran high, reeling as we were from the struggles that helped bring about a new government after decades of a dictatorship. (Kami ang mga aktibista ng panahon na yon but that is another column to write about.)

For now, allow me to be nostalgic not only about my years of being that young journalist who had the balls as they say to write a column entitled “Who’s Afraid of Danding Cojuangco” or who as the youngest member of the Tarlac Anti-Graft Council testified before Senator Bobby Tanada’s Blue Ribbon Commiittee about corruption issues in Tarlac at a time when Cory Aquino was President.

Newsline now is a repository of things past. One that remembered how Tarlac was before, both the good things and not so good especially that its writers not only lived the Cory era and beyond but also the pre-EDSA period when life was hard and there was no press freedom to speak of.

We also remember today the men and women who made the stories and filled up the pages of Newsline who are now gone. In the maiden issue of Newsline, all but one had already passed. Among them: Cong. Jose “Aping” V. Yap., SSS Commissioner and UNIDO Tarlac Head Ed Zaraga, Rep. Jose Feliciano, Human Settlements Chair Hermie Aquino, Gov. Candido “Amang” Guiam, Pres Cory Aquino and Capas OIC Mayor Arnaldo Dizon. Surviving the test of time, featured then is a young newly elected president of the Electrical Engineers Association in Tarlac by the name of Jojo Briones.

That issue was our rough draft in analyzing Tarlac Politics. Even as some issues about the province are on rebound, what could bring us a clearer perspective now is the very fact that we were there since day one as witness to the ever changing political landscape that is Tarlac. @