Jun ‘Bote’ Bautista, dean of Senate press; 74

Boracay, April 1993.

Jun “Bote” Bautista said the balmy weather was perfect for a boat ride around the island at sunset.

The suggestion reached Sen. Blas Ople who asked his staff to make the arrangements.

But no one predicted waves that are bigger than the boats would greet the party at the eastern side of Boracay that afternoon. One giant wave crashed into our boat and drenched Ople who, until that moment, looked regal in his barong Tagalog, beige slacks and brand new Bally leather shoes.

The boat returned to land. Ople, wet and obviously peeved, wondered aloud: “Sino bang nag-isip ng kagaguhang ito?”

Bautista pushed me toward the senator. “Sir, siya ho,” he said, pointing to me.

Bautista’s reputation as a deadpan joker and iconoclast was the stuff of legend in media circles.

When the land line in the Senate press office rang, he would say, “Kapag si Nikki Coseteng (former senator) ’yan, sabihin n’yo wala ako.”

‘Jun Travolta’

He once brought me along to interview an elderly senator with an equally geriatric staff.

Bote barged into the senator’s office and called out to everybody, “Nariyan ba ang boss n’yo?  Pakisabi nandito na si Jun Travolta.”

He addressed all lawyers as panyero, the term of endearment lawyers use to address one another. Many of them assumed he was also one.

We once went to a movie to kill time before meeting then Sen. Orlando Mercado. Leaving the movie house, we found Mercado waiting beside his car along the driveway.

“Sir, sorry I’m late,” Mercado said in jest in Filipino as he opened the rear door for Bautista.

“Don’t make me wait next time,” Bautista barked in mock anger.

He was known as the “dean of Senate reporters” and refused all attempts to form a press corps.

He once explained that organizing journalists through a press corps is an easy way of corrupting them. This is the reason there is no press corps in the Senate to this day.

It was Bautista’s protege, Arnold Clavio of GMA-7, who broke the news about Bautista’s passing as he opened his morning program Tuesday.

“He was my mentor,” Clavio said, his voice breaking as he played “Gone Too Soon” by Michael Jackson in the background.

Bote’s protege

Bautista had died of multiple organ failure as a result of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) Tuesday. He was 74.

Bautista’s career as a journalist spanned six presidents from Ferdinand Marcos to President Aquino.

Clavio was a fledgling radio reporter in dzBB when he first heard Bautista make it clear to everyone he wanted them to pronounce the word “Senate” correctly. “Not with a long A,” Clavio said on air.

Mercado believes his friendship with Bautista, that began during their stint on radio, lasted because of their similar backgrounds.

“We were both poor and products of Roxas High School in Paco near the railroad station. Before he was Jun Bautista, Bote was Augurio Bautista Camu Jr. of Bicol,” Mercado said.

Bautista went to UP Los Baños to take up agriculture. “I didn’t get to graduate because I got hitched,” he once volunteered. Bautista was very proud of being a member of Upsilon Sigma Phi.

Mercado said after their ABS-CBN stint, he and Bautista worked together anew as television reporters for GMA-7 during martial law.

Bautista was among the rare few journalists who insisted in 1983 that the newly widowed Corazon Aquino deserved to be known by the Filipino people despite government censorship of stories about the opposition.

“He was a good analyst of political history,” Clavio said in a text message.

“I will never forget when he said media must take an oppositionist stance because media’s role must always be the critic of the party in power. He also warned that if media would not guard against abuses committed by the government, it would find itself becoming propagandist,” he added.

Bautista always took pride in telling younger reporters that he was on first name basis with “Tita Cory.”

Cory’s bribe

Of his many encounters with Tita Cory, the one that Bote remembers well was when Ms. Aquino was on the stage waiting to speak during the snap election campaign and she gave Bote a menthol candy. “Tita Cory fixed me,” Bote would say, fix meaning bribe.

In 1987, GMA-7 gave Bautista the Senate beat when Ms. Aquino reopened Congress.

Then Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr.’s strongest recollection of Bautista, however, was not even about Senate coverage.

“Bote flew to Mindanao at the height of the coup d’etat staged by Col. (Alexander) Noble to cover first hand what the armed uprising was all about,” Pimentel said in a solicited

e-mail to the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

It was then that Pimentel learned first hand of Bautista’s “wickedly funny streak.”

“Bote was covering (my attempt) to persuade Noble and his cohorts to surrender to the government through my select mediators … I was on call at any time of the day or night at my residence in Cagayan de Oro,” he said.

It was just past witching hour when Pimentel was roused from sleep and told of the progress of negotiations with Noble.

As he stepped out of his bedroom, Pimentel got the shock of his life when he saw Bautista, cameraman in tow, with a microphone.

“Despite my plea not to videotape my disheveled appearance, especially my shoeless feet, I was later on told by some TV viewers that they saw me almost au naturel on TV newscasts,” Pimentel said.

Influence

ABS-CBN’s Lynda Jumilla, a former Inquirer reporter and desk editor, was not yet a television reporter when she first encountered Bautista.

“He was my biggest influence in broadcast, even before I had absolutely no plans of going into (it),” Jumilla said in a solicited text message.

She said Bautista “really hated (“ayaw na ayaw n’ya”) doing stand-uppers” where a reporter delivers his spiel within the frame of the camera “or making yourself very conspicuous in the story.”

Clavio was flattered when Bautista, a known perfectionist, introduced him to other people as “my son.”

Clavio also said Bautista’s reputation as a broadcaster respected by print media allowed him to enjoy the same level of respect from this sector.

“He is the only broadcaster I know whom print media respect. And I am glad that the same kind of respect rubbed off on me because of him,” Clavio said.

Bautista retired from broadcasting in 1999 but the humdrum of his new quiet life pushed him to look for a new job. Still, Bautista refused an offer to become the presidential spokesperson of then President Joseph Estrada.

He would rather write a column called “Usisero” in Abante Tonite.

Mercado said he learned so much from Bote. “Bote showed me how to carry myself through life,” Mercado said.

One lesson, though, that Mercado could not force Bautista to learn was stop smoking.

Bote suffered a mild stroke in the early 1990’s. In drinking sprees after that, he complained about being barred from beer and having to switch to more expensive brandy.