by F. Sionil Jose
The late Senator Ed Angara and I began talking about setting up Akademyang Filipino some three years back. Its core members would be National Artists, National Scientists, Ramon Magsaysay awardees, plus some young and old Filipinos who have distinguished themselves in their particular professions. Its major purpose is to promote and protect Filipino culture as the bedrock of the Filipino nation.
I visited London for the first time in 1955 and I was brought to an old English Club by the English writer, David Carver, who was also the Secretary of International PEN, the association of Poets, Playwrights, Essayists, and Novelists. I expected to meet writers only but at our table that afternoon were a commander of a destroyer during World War II and a banker. I asked who were the others in the club and Mr. Carver said the couple at the next table were barristers. Upon returning to Manila, I immediately set up the Philippine Center of PEN which, up to this day, is functioning very well. The members are writers in English and the vernaculars.
Many years later, after that visit, I read an article by my favorite travel writer, James Morris, now Jan Morris. In that article, he traced the growth of the British Empire from those English clubs whose membership included officers of the Royal Navy, the Royalty, businessmen, Oxford and Cambridge scholars, and journalists from Fleet Street.
At one of the regional writers’ meetings in Taipei in the 1960s, I met Lin Yutang, the venerable writer from China. He said he was a member of Academia Sinica, the organization in Taiwan which sponsors research on Chinese culture.
Also in the 1960s, I went to Europe quite often for cultural meetings. I developed a friendship with the French poet, Pierre Emmanuel, who took me to a meeting of the French Academy. The Academy’s major function is the preservation and protection of the French language. I did not understand a word of the discussions but was very impressed by the passion with which they were conducted. The French Academy is very influential in France’s cultural life.
In the United States, it is widely recognized that the private Council on Foreign Relations is the unofficial Department of State. Its regional committees are composed of the elites and leaders, academics, journalists, doctors and other professionals and businessmen of that region. The committees are a forum on issues that impact American foreign policy.
In the late 1960s, Roland Bushner of the Council invited me twice to lecture before its committees in every major city in the country. I toured that vast continent by bus, train and plane, and reminded my audiences that had they remembered the Philippine-American war, they would have never gone to Vietnam. I also told them that our economic relationship was primarily based on the sugar quota that was exploited by the sugar bloc.
The Century Club in New York is a beehive of similar activity. It is also a social club dating back to the 1880s. It started with some hundred members, most of whom were writers and artists. I was brought there three times by the New Yorker writer, Robert Shaplen, the Executive Secretary of the Rockefeller Foundation, Lawrence Stifel, and my Random House editor, Samuel Vaughan. I hope that Akademyang Filipino will become like the Century Club.
I was invited to speak at the Tower Club in Makati shortly after it opened. The moment I arrived, I proceeded to its library. There was no book at all on the Philippines. I looked at the plaque with the name of its founding members. There were no political or military leaders, or representatives of other professions, least of all a writer, on the list. All were businessmen.
I hope that the membership of Akademyang Filipino will be diverse enough to start and sustain ongoing dialogue among our decision-makers in all aspects of national activity. I also hope that the diversity will help unite, not divide us. Among other things, Akademyang Filipino will promote research in the sciences and the humanities that will help build a free, just, and prosperous society.
When I think of what Akademyang Filipino can achieve, I draw a parallel to the Meiji Restoration – or Revolution. It led Japan’s modernization, the country’s response to the challenge of Western imperialism, and was masterminded by only a hundred purposeful leaders. Our biggest challenge is poverty, and we must build a just, sovereign and strong nation.
I have been asked, if I had thought of Akademyang Filipino from way, way back, why then am I setting it up only now.
In a much broader sense, it is an extension, an outgrowth, of the Solidaridad complex that I set up in 1965, with its roundtable discussions, its seminars on culture and national issues, and the journal Solidarity, which published articles by the most distinguished writers of the country and of Southeast Asia. However, Solidaridad did not really have an economic base for which reason it did not expand.
I am in my nineties now and although tired, I am sure my mind is still keen. I have seen fifteen Presidents preside, and lived through the Japanese Occupation and the Martial Law regime of Ferdinand Marcos. Through these years, I think I have also acquired enough gumption to talk with everyone and, most of all, with the country’s achievers who have done so much good for all of us. I hope we can all work together for a better future for our unhappy country.
I and Akademyang Filipino owe Senator Ed Angara for his enthusiasm in turning an idea into reality. He welcomed Akademyang Filipino as an opportunity to harness the power of our country’s elite to move our country forward.