Faces of the news

ILLUSTRATION BY RENE ELEVERA

Henry Sy

With an estimated fortune of $20 billion, or around 6.4 percent of the country’s gross domestic product, Henry Sy Sr., founder of the iconic SM group, is among the wealthiest people on the planet. There are 2,208 billionaires in the world, and Sy, who turns 94 this year, ranks the 52nd richest, based on the 2018 Forbes World’s Billionaires list. His family now controls three of the most valuable companies in the Philippines: SM Investments Corp. (the biggest conglomerate), SM Prime Holdings (the biggest property developer) and BDO Unibank (the biggest bank). SMIC and SM Prime are the first two local companies to reach a stock market valuation of P1 trillion.

Jay Batongbacal

Alarmed by President Duterte’s openness to a joint development project with China in the West Philippine Sea, Jay Batongbacal, director of the University of the Philippines Institute for Maritime Affairs and Law of the Sea, began a series of Facebook posts discussing its implications and risks. He’s had three posts in less than a week. The public posts are no easy reads, but the law professor tries to be as straightforward as possible so that readers can understand this complex issue. Batongbacal is one of the very few Filipino lawyers specializing in the law of the sea and natural resources, so the administration can’t just dismiss this expert as “mediocre.”

Martin Diño

Months after his involvement in a leadership dispute that led to his removal from the Subic Bay Metropolitan Authority, Interior Undersecretary Martin Diño again found himself in the limelight for the wrong reason. Netizens recently called him out for his Facebook post showing him as a rear admiral wearing a Philippine Coast Guard Auxiliary (PCGA) uniform given by the Manila Yacht Club Squadron. The Philippine Coast Guard (PCG) itself questioned this conferment, saying that Diño was not a member of the PCGA. He must have been recruited by a bogus group, the PCG said of the former Quezon City barangay captain.

Marvic Leonen

The Supreme Court associate justice was the only dissenter among the magistrates who compelled Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno to answer within 10 days a quo warranto petition to unseat her. The petition, filed by Solicitor General Jose Calida as a House panel deliberated on an impeachment complaint against Sereno, challenges an official’s right to hold a government position. Leonen said the petition should be “dismissed outright.” According to sources, Leonen argued against 13 other justices that Sereno, like the rest of the magistrates, could only be removed from office through impeachment proceedings in Congress.

Robert ‘Bobby’ Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez

To be an Egot (Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony) winner is no mean feat. But Filipino-American songwriter Robert “Bobby” Lopez, known for creating the stage musicals “The Book of Mormon” and “Avenue Q,” upped the ante at the 90th edition of the Academy Awards on March 4. Bobby, along with his wife, Kristen Anderson-Lopez, won the award for best original song (“Remember Me,” from the animation movie “Coco”) and became the only artist to have won all four major entertainment awards more than once. Lopez won his first best song Oscar for “Let It Go” (from “Frozen”) in 2014. He is the youngest of only 12 Egot winners, which include Audrey Hepburn, Whoopi Goldberg and Rita Moreno. The Fil-Am songwriter was also the youngest to ever manage the quadruple feat—he was only 39 when he won the “Frozen” Oscar, which completed his original Egot. “I know that examples play a huge role,” he told Inquirer Entertainment columnist Ruben Nepales at the Oscars backstage. “I want to encourage every brown kid to pursue his dream, just like my mom did to me.” Kristen, meanwhile, described the song “Remember Me” as “a message of goodbye at its core.” The couple had wanted two versions of the song—one grand and upbeat, the other a lullaby, a plaintive song in the style of the Beatles’ “Yesterday.” The latter will definitely have moviegoers reaching for their box of tissue.