Questionnaire/Guidelines: Carving a Career Path

1. When did you take the bar? What grade did you get? The
interim between taking the bar and waiting for the results (how
long was that?), you worked in the fiscal’s office in Camarines
Sur. What was your job description? Did you enjoy your work
despite it being temporary? Did you encounter problems due to
conflict of interest as your brother had cases with the fiscal’s
office? How long did you stay on the job? Was it productive? In
what sense?

2. After you were sworn in as a lawyer, you returned to San

Agustin to join your brother Vicente’s law office in Iriga. It was a
disappointment. There were several reasons: your mother,
because you were a neophyte doubted your capabilities and
tended to refer clients to Vicente; Vicente often sent you at the
last minute to the Naga courts to ask for postponement for his
cases. Sometimes the request was denied, forcing you to take
over arguing a case you were not familiar with. Were there
other reasons?
Also, much of your lawyering was pro bono. Yet it was during
this time that you began to show your mettle as a prosecuting
lawyer when you were involved in a celebrated case Australia
which led to the conviction of an influential trade commissioner
who murdered his Filipino housemaid for insurance money. Did
the case get some press in Manila? Did it make you realiaze you
had a future as a sharp trial lawyer, make a career out of it?
Was Vicente impressed?

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3. Apparently, despite your best effort, your career in law did not
pan out. Was it because people in Iriga had the impression that
you were simply riding on Vicente’s coattails? Frustrated, you
decided to return to Manila and build a career on your own. You
worked in the legal department of GSIS for five years. Was it a
satisfying experience? But then, you quit and decided to
immigrate to the US? What triggered this decision?
In New York City, were you absolutely on your own, no safety
net provided by relatives and friends? Where did you live?
Was it in a good neighborhood? Were you comfortable in your
new lifestyle or were you encumbered by culture shock? Did
you ever feel you were a stranger in a strange land?
You were hired by the New York Life Insurance Co.? What was
your job? Were you able to live well on you pay? An incident,
however, woke you up from your dream of living in the land of
milk and honey, Please recall in full what happened in the
Filipino restaurant that drove you back home.

4. When you arrived in the Philippines, the air was rife with calls
for a Constitutional Convention. What is the backstory behind
the clamor to change the 1935 Constitution?
Vicente considered running for convention delegate
representing the second district of Camarines Sur, but his
political party advised him not to relinquish his seat on the
provincial board. Why not field Lilia instead, the party
suggested. What was your reaction to the prodding? Did you
have second thoughts or did the idea appeal to you on as spot
on?
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 At any rate, you tossed yourself into the ConCon campaign.
Your first rally, however, was a disaster. Tell the reader the
hilarious and terrifying put downs in your candidacy. It did not
help that your brothers ganged up on you, urging you to shape
up. You had been away too long, too at home with speaking
English, too rusty in the Bicol languages. (Please elucidate how
and why the later created a complex problem.) Undaunted, you
mastered six Bicol languages? You were running against time.
How were you able to re-learn the languages in such a short
time? What were your other strong points?

5. To your family’s and party’s delight, you won as one of the five
Camarines Sur delegates to the ConCon. Compared with the
best (there were two former Philippine Presidents) and the
brightest in the august body, you were a greenhorn, in your
words, “a probinsiyana.” But you eventually made the delegates
notice you. Please relate in full how you made a name for
yourself in the ConCon, a turning point that did not escape the
eminent Jesuit writer Fr. Joaquin Bernas.

6. After the ConCon, you were a guest lecturer at the MLQ and
Lyceum of the Philippines. You also went back to Iriga to
practice law. Most of your clients were the poor and helpless—
indigents, political detainees, provincemates who ran afoul with
the law. “I owed them a debt of gratitude,” you said. Can you
cite a landmark case among the above clients?

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 Trouble is, you also needed to help yourself financially as the
Concon campaign had drained all your resources. Fortunately,
one of the positive results of the ConCon was creating for you a
network that would later, on several times, give you a push up
your career ladder. In 1979, your fellow ConCon delegate
Edgardo Angara introduced you to the businessman Eduardo
Cojuangco who was then organizing the Philippine Racing
Commission. Cojuangco offered you the job of managing the
commission. Knowing nothing about horses and horse racing,
you opted for Commission Secretary. The position mentored
you on management. Did it come easy to you? You mentioned
earlier that you learned a lot about management from your
mother who, miraculously, kept a brood of 11 children well-fed
and well-educated on her husband’s public-school teacher’s
pay. What management lessons learned from your mother were
you able to apply to your job as Commission Secretary?

7. In 1980, another ConCon colleague, Deputy Prime Minister Jose

Leviste, referred you to Trade Minister Roberto Ongpin who
was looking for a director for the Bureau of Trade. Your CV and
impressed Mr. Ongpin; he hired you, with a running order:
Clean up the Bureau! Ongpin was known as a humorless
taskmaster who drove women employees to tears. You proved
to be the exemption. You not only did not shed a tear but
became as tough as him.
Because BDC was a viper’s nest of corruption, inefficiency,
overstaffing and other factors that give government a bad
image, you could not have got a closer view of the anomalies in
the government bureaucracy. To your credit, you dealt with
corruption, championed consumer protection, promoted and

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 regulated domestic trade. You went to the provinces to talk
directly with producers to assess their products for
marketability. At the same time you had to be in Manila to
promote select products and expedite the processing of the
producers papers for exporting their products. It was like being
in two places at the same time. How did you manage that?
As important, you reduced the staff by 80%, not an easy task in
the government which guaranteed workers lifetime
employment. In the process, you put your life on the line, being
the butt of death threats and other violent consequences.
Concurrently, you were executive director of the Price
Stabilization Council. And as such, you wrestled with hoarders
who capriciously raised the price of basic commodities. Ongpin
barked another marching order: “Close 10 stores a day!” And
with no exceptions, no matter how big a retail chain was.
Please articulate further on the above demands of your job.
How did you cope? You must have colorful anecdotes and deep
insights to share.

8. Impressed by your performance, you were retained by the

incoming Trade Secretary Jose Concepcion after the 1986 EDSA
Revolution. But you quit after a year to run for Congress
(representing the second district of Camarines Sur?) on a
platform of good governance and anti-corruption, not exactly
“pang masa” issues. Still, you lost by only some 1,000 votes, a
narrow margin. To what do you attribute your defeat? Was it
because you did not have the political machinery to back you

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 up? Or was it because you championed an unpopular platform?
Was your run for Congress another lesson learned? How so?

9. Your next stop was the World Trade Center as its Chief
Operating Officer under Guillermo Lauchengco. How did your
presence in WTC make an impact on operations and
accomplishments? What landmark polices did you introduce to
raise the center’s stature and importance?
That same year, 1986, President Fidel V. Ramos drafted you into
the National Amnesty Commission. You were considered a
perfect fit for the job as the President was looking for “a lady
lawyer who knew about trade,” to help generate jobs for rebel
returnees and create businesses for military putschists,
communist rebels, and Muslim separatists who availed of
amnesty offered by the government.
Did being a member of the National Amnesty Commission
appeal to you? It was a creature of a different stripe when put
side by side with international trade. What made you accept the
appointment? Was it Lauchengco’s opinion that it was “a good
entry point into government”? But you had already worked in
and for the government. Were there other reasons?
The stint, however, lasted less than a year. Whenever President
Ramos visited the Amnesty office, you were often absent. The
staff reported that you volunteered to go to Mindanao, a
hotspot, to meet with rebels or attend commission meetings.
FVR was very pleased. You were very brave. (He would later
refer to you “as the only lady general in my Cabinet.”) Courage,

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plus devotion to duty, he felt, qualified you for even greater
responsibilities in his administration.
True. You were brave, you were doing your duty. What the
President was unaware of was your impish hidden agenda. You
loved the fruits of Mindanao.
No matter. In 1995, FVR gave you PEZA on a silver platter.