Philippine Political Science Journal, 2013 Vol. 34, No. 2, 131–133, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01154451.2013.851487

OBITUARY

Professor O.D. Corpuz, 1926–2013

We honor and bid farewell to a long-time colleague at the University of the Philippines (UP): our 13th president, a distinguished scholar in Philippine political economy and government, and duly recognized as a National Scientist. Under President Ferdinand Marcos, O.D. was Secretary of Education and founder of the Development Academy of the Philippines. During the Marcos dictatorship, O.D. served as Minister of Education in the Batasang Pambansa with Prime Minister Cesar E.A. Virata. O.D. returned to UP as professor of political science and economics. After he retired, UP awarded him the Doctor of Laws honoris causa. I have known O.D. Corpuz personally since 1950. I was glad to manage the publication of his doctoral dissertation, entitled Public Administration in the Philippines, and proudly wrote the foreword to it as a monograph of our UP Institute of Public Administration in 1957. Each of the four works by O.D. is a magnum opus. Public Administration in the Philippines was followed by the two volumes of The Roots of the Filipino Nation (1989), then An Economic History of the Philippines (1992), and finally Saga and Triumph: The

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Filipino Revolution against Spain (1999). These books would rightfully earn him the distinction of National Scientist. In 1965, O.D. and I took different paths in our political activism. By then I had become a consultant of Vice-President Emmanuel Pelaez, whom I greatly admired as a principled and transforming leader. He and Senate President Ferdinand Marcos were rival presidential candidates of the opposition Nacionalista Party. Paeng Salas and O.D. were supporting Marcos. Soon after Marcos won the election against President Diosdado Macapagal, O.D. kindly came to my home at UP Diliman to ask me to join Paeng Salas’s group in working with the new Philippine president. But I could not work with President Marcos, whom I deeply distrusted and disliked. After Marcos declared martial law and commenced his dictatorship, which he sugar-coated as “constitutional authoritarianism,” I exiled myself abroad, working with the Ford Foundation and then with the United Nations University, from 1973 to 1987. Let me point out O.D.’s deep feelings of nationalism that inspired his scholarship. In his preface to Saga and Triumph: The Filipino Revolution against Spain (1999), O.D. wrote: “The decade 1896–1906 [the Filipino Revolution against Spain and the Filipino war against the imperialist Americans] marked out the watershed of Filipino nationalism” (xii) In his epilogue to The Roots of the Filipino Nation (1989, Vol. 2, 568), O.D. lamented: “The fading away of nationalism as the guiding spirit and paramount value in Filipino politics might be said to have begun with the founding of the Nacionalista Party of 1907.” For the most part, in his view, the Filipino campaign for independence from the United States was motivated more by the selfish interests of our leaders from Quezon and Osmen˜a onward, and this went on even through the post-Marcos years. In Dr. Corpuz’s view, “[t]he decade 1896–1906 [the period of the Filipino Revolution against Spain and the Filipino war against the imperialist Americans] marked out the watershed of Filipino nationalism” (1999, xii). For the most part, in his view, the Filipino campaign for independence from the United States was motivated more by the selfish interests of our leaders from Quezon and Osmen˜a onward. O.D. Corpuz discussed the consequences of our leaders’ lack of nationalism on our politics, party system, governance, and people. He lamented the Filipinos’ dependence on, and subservience to, the United States. And yet even as dictator, President Marcos depended on the support of United States, whose presidents backed him until the Epifanio de los Reyes (EDSA) revolution forced his exile to Hawaii, as arranged by the Reagan administration. In truth O.D. was biased in favor of President Marcos’s destructive and plundering leadership. Neither did O.D. mention that Marcos was all the while subservient to the United States, who supported his prolonged dictatorship until it became impossible to do so. In my honest view, the political culture and behavior of President Marcos exploited the frailties of democracy and our people’s vulnerability to deceit and manipulation. It defiled and destroyed life in the pursuit of personal aggrandizement. It rejected public accountability in favor of self-enrichment and personal glory. And it suppressed the practice of democracy and human rights and basic reforms that would empower our people and reform our society and politics. As a strong supporter of Marcos’ campaign for the presidency in 1965 and as his Secretary of Education O.D. was soft on Marcos’s declaration of authoritarian rule. “The escalation of violence in the vocabulary of politics was a reflection of the violence in the streets of Manila and in the countryside and in Marcos’ relations with his political enemies