Gringo Honasan: Reluctant mate values loyalty

Sen. Gregorio Honasan FILE PHOTO

EDITOR’S NOTE:

 We are running the profiles of the presidential and vice presidential candidates to offer voters insights into their character, hoping these will help the electorate make an informed choice on May 9.

IN HIS two decades as a politician, Sen. Gregorio “Gringo” Honasan has won nearly every electoral bid, and  even managed to undo a defeat in 2001 by dint of circumstance. But his chances in this year’s election are clearly slim.

The decorated soldier, charismatic rebel leader and four-time senator may well be facing his biggest loss as the vice presidential candidate of the United Nationalist Alliance (UNA).

But the impending loss, Honasan’s closest friends revealed, may not be too bad as he’d still be in the Senate for the next three years.

Honasan did not want to run in the first place, his friends said. He agreed only because like a good soldier, he values the highest virtues among men in uniform: honor and loyalty. “He’s a reluctant candidate. He was forced to do it because as vice president of the party, he cannot turn his back on it,” said Honasan’s friend of 30 years, Sen. Vicente Sotto III.

The reluctance could explain his poor showing in the polls, Sotto said of Honasan’s usual place at the tail end of recent electoral surveys.

“[He’s lagging behind] because he’s reluctant. Second, he was late in coming in,” said the senator whom Honasan had consulted about UNA’s offer.

Riding on his stellar military record, Honasan was elected to the Senate in 1995 as an independent candidate. He nearly missed being reelected in 2001: He placed 13th but snagged the final slot in the Senate when Sen. Teofisto Guingona Jr. was appointed Vice President to replace Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Arroyo had moved up to the presidency following then President Joseph Estrada’s ouster in Edsa II over corruption charges.

Discipline

Honasan’s decision to abide by his party’s wishes, albeit reluctantly, could be traced to his background as a military man who did not shirk duty nor leave his men behind.

Born in Baguio City in 1948, Honasan was raised by an Army colonel father and a Bicolano teacher. Discipline, no doubt, was part of his upbringing.

Earlier biographies recount how Honasan had wanted to be a doctor, but that prohibitive fees prompted him to switch to Economics at the University of the Philippines. Two years later, he decided to follow in his father’s footsteps and transferred to a military school.

At the Philippine Military Academy (PMA), Honasan rose to become the baron or first captain of the Matatag Class of 1971 despite distraction from women swooning over his mestizo looks.

Retired Navy Capt. Felix Turingan, who was ahead of Honasan by six years in the military, recalled how the young lieutenant’s combat exploits became the subject of study in the military’s command staff course.

As part of the Army’s first airborne unit, Honasan was deployed in Mindanao from 1972 to 1974, at the height of the Moro uprising.

Gold Cross medals

Turingan remembered one particular battle in Lebak town, Sultan Kudarat, where Honasan nearly lost his life.

“There was a battalion of 1,500 MNLF (Moro National Liberation Front) rebels, while he led a battalion of only 350 soldiers,” Turingan recounted.

Honasan was among those wounded, but he “refused to be evacuated until all the other wounded had been evacuated,” Turingan added.

The Air Force had wanted to suspend extraction operations given the limitations of a night flight, but Honasan’s mistah, now retired Air Force Col. Eduardo “Red” Kapunan, defied orders and flew the helicopter to rescue the young officer.

It took a while for Honasan to recover, “but he wanted to go right back to action,” said retired Navy Commodore Rex Robles, Honasan’s senior in the military.

His daring in combat earned Honasan three Distinguished Conduct Stars as well as several Gold Cross medals and Wounded Personnel Medals.

Off field duty, Honasan later served as aide de camp for then Marcos Defense secretary Juan Ponce Enrile in 1974, two years into martial law.

The assignment led him to a turning point some 12 years later when, as Enrile’s security chief, he would support the military move to oust the strongman president in the 1986 Edsa People Power Revolution.

RAM leader

A few months into the newly installed government of President Corazon Aquino, Honasan led other military officers in a series of coups through the Reform the Armed Forces Movement (RAM).

“He was a hesitant leader of RAM. But all of us, even his seniors, knew of his leadership skills. We recognized him as our leader,” Turingan said.

As the face of RAM, Honasan became known as “Gringo,” the mustachioed rebel, rifle slung over his shoulder, a pistol in his vest, pockets full of munition, the image making him larger than life.

When the coup failed, Honasan was eventually captured and held in a Navy ship. But he managed to charm his own captors and escaped. The fugitive spent some six years underground, during which he would often meet with other soldiers or take up hobbies, like carpentry, Turingan said.

When former Constabulary chief and Edsa hero Fidel Ramos became President in 1992, Honasan and more than 3,700 officers involved in the coup were granted amnesty.

Personal pitch

But the former RAM officer had been implicated in subsequent rebellions by junior military officers: the Oakwood Mutiny in Makati City in 2003, and the coup attempt on Arroyo by Marine officers in 2006.

These days though, the 68-year-old, salt-and-pepper-hair Honasan, seems to dissociate himself from such plots, Robles said, adding that Honasan had brushed aside such requests for support among restive junior officers.

The change in the former gung-ho rebel leader was apparent during the Vice Presidential debate on April 10, where he sounded subdued compared to his other rivals. Even his pitch to voters was less political and more personal.

“As a soldier and rebel, I have risked my life several times. I am an honest, hardworking legislator. But my most important qualification is that I am a good padre de pamilya, husband and father. And if you ask my grandchildren, they’d say I am the best lolo,” said the father of five and grandfather of three.

He is likely to lose big time, Sotto said, adding that he was still voting for the friend he first met at the Edsa Revolution. “Win or lose, I’m for Honasan,” he said.

(Editor’s note: Gringo Honasan’s camp did not grant the Inquirer request for an interview with the senator or his family for this story)