Bonifacio descendant vows no ‘Tejeros Convention’

HAVING Andres Bonifacio in his family tree, a recently appointed election officer in Manila is warning those harboring shady schemes for the 2016 polls, saying he owes it to his great-great granduncle whom history books also depict as someone insulted and outmaneuvered in a controversial vote.

Lawyer Gregorio Bonifacio is the great-great grandson of Procopio, the younger brother of the Katipunan Supremo. The Commission on Elections (Comelec) assigned him last month to Manila’s third district.

Procopio, who used the nom de guerre “Pisaw,” is credited with the establishment of a Katipunan chapter in Mindoro province. On May 10, 1897, he and Andres were executed on charges of committing treason against Gen. Emilio Aguinaldo who, two months earlier in the infamous Tejeros Convention, was elected in absentia as President of the First Philippine Republic.

The event is now several generations behind him, but the 42-year-old Bonifacio made it sound like a fresh assault on the family honor as he gave his own take on what happened at Tejeros: “The first elections that made Aguinaldo President were marred by corruption. There were more votes counted than the actual registered voters.”

“Up to now, Filipinos have never gotten hold of or seen a copy of the election records,” he told the Inquirer in an interview last week. “The election of Andres as director of the Interior was contested simply because he was not a lawyer and he did not receive a good education.”

But having a good education does not always translate into a visionary and moral leadership, he said. “Andres may not have finished school but he was able to unite the nation. Long before we had our Constitution, he already had the concept of Filipino citizenship. He called all Filipinos Tagalog (from Taga-ilog or riverside dweller). Everybody is a Tagalog whether he or she is from Luzon, Visayas or Mindanao.”

Under Andres’ leadership, the Katipunan secret society prepared for the revolution against Spain not only militarily but also morally, he stressed.

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Many descendants of the Supremo’s clan have since worked in the government—but not as politicians—“perhaps because the passion to serve is in our blood.”

Prior to his Comelec job, Gregorio Bonifacio, a University of the Philippines philosophy major who finished law in San Sebastian College, spent 14 years handling either criminal or election-related cases. His father, who is also named Andres, was a Comelec clerk who inspired him to apply for a job with the poll body.

“It’s high time I gave back to the government,” he said, noting that his salary now is but a fraction of his income as a private counsel. “Some people join the government to get rich. In my case, I tried to be financially secure first before becoming a government official.”

“As a descendant of the Bonifacios, I will not allow cheating in my district,” said the election officer, who is in charge of polling centers in Binondo, Quiapo, San Nicolas and Sta. Cruz. (Andres was born in Tondo, now under Manila’s District 1.)

The Supremo, he noted, chose a Katipunan code name for himself that should still resonate among voters come 2016: “May Pagasa (There is Hope).”