Angara to launch biography

Former Senator Edgardo Angara. INQUIRER file photo

MANILA, Philippines—Lawyer, educator, legislator, cultural champion and statesman, all the varied facets of former Senator Edgardo J. Angara emerge in a new biography, “Edgardo J. Angara: In the Grand Manner,” written by Univesity of the Philippines (UP) professor and prize-winning author Dr. Jose Dalisay Jr. and published by the University of the Philippines Press.

The book launch is on April 29 at 3 p.m. at the Manila Polo Club, Makati City.

The biography tracks Angara’s ascent to public leadership from his boyhood in Baler, Aurora, to law studies at the University of the Philippines and the University of Michigan, then to opening what would become one of the country’s leading law firms, ACCRA Law.

It follows his career in public service as Constitutional Convention delegate, UP president, senator and Senate President, agriculture secretary and Executive Secretary.

“A senator’s senator,” as former Senate President Jovito R. Salonga described him, Angara was considered the country’s best presidential hope by the late National Artist Nick Joaquin.

As a senator, he authored landmark bills that made a difference in the lives of Filipinos—the Senior Citizens Act, PhilHealth, the Generics Act, Agricultural and Fisheries Modernization, Free High School Act, the creation of Commission on Higher Education, Technical Education and Skills Development Authority and the National Commission for Culture and the Arts, and on financial and educational reforms.

“It’s been a far from perfect life, fraught with accident—sometimes happily so—and misadventure. But it has also been a grand opportunity and privilege to serve the Filipino people as lawyer, lawmaker and educator,” said Angara, who is better known as SEJA.

His biographer, Dalisay, teaches English at UP and has written the life stories of Washington SyCip and the Lava brothers, among others. More recently, he was a Pacific Leadership Fellow at the University of California, San Diego.

For more information, call Baby Palmerola at 0917-9807800.