Cocofed scholars
One of the greatest achievements of the Philippine Coconut Producers Federation Inc. (COCOFED) at the height of its glory in the 1970s was its scholarship program for the brilliant children of indigent coconut farmers nationwide. If I am not mistaken, it had funded more than 20,000 scholars from 1975 to 1986. The program stopped in 1986, after the Edsa I Revolution, which saw the sequestration of all assets funded by the controversial coconut levy collections under the Marcos administration.
In 1975, at 21, I was appointed manager of the Visayas chapter affairs department (VCAD) at the Cocofed central office in Manila. I took charge of more than 500,000 coconut farmers and 5,000 Cocofed chapter leaders in the entire Visayas (central Philippines). Initially, from 1975 to 1976, I enrolled the scholars in the region in their respective universities. In 1977, a separate human resource department was created to manage the program.
I am especially proud of the first batch of scholars that I enrolled in 1976 at the Divine Word University (DWU) in Tacloban City because Leyte, as a province, was close to my heart. My mother, Paulita Laserna, is a native of Palompon, Leyte (western part of the island province). Moreover, I first met Leida Bautista, Ph.D., in May 1976 in the course of my work at DWU. She was the chief guidance counselor of the university who took care of the scholars. Thirty-four years later, after a 15-year period of single parenthood, I married her in Tacloban City on April 28, 2010 (civil) and on June 29, 2010 (church).
On January 8 and 9, 2011, we reunited with the scholars, who are now in their 50s, in a reunion held in atDWU in Tacloban City and in an exclusive tourist resort in Macrohon, Southern Leyte, 200 kilometers south of Tacloban City. The scholars are all doing very well in their respective careers, as top managers, deans, scientists, auditors, engineers, lawyers, prosecutors, and civil servants. I am proud of them. Leida, who guided them as young college students, is most appreciative of their credentials and achievements, knowing that she had helped mold their minds and spirits.
I thank the 1976 batch of Cocofed scholars for the honor and manifestations of appreciation and support that they gave Leida and me during their reunion.
May they continue to meet yearly, to expand their group, and to evolve into a regional entity that will serve the indigent coconut farmers, who funded their education.
PS:
I was a Cocofed scholar myself, having been sent by it to a world-class Makati management school in 1978, to various foreign study and observation tours in 1977 and 1979 in Western Europe and Southeast Asia, to a United Nations world conference in 1977 In Spain, and to a leading Manila law school from 1980 to 1984. I served Cocofed as a department manager from 1975 to 1994 (when I opted for early retirement to focus on my private law practice). I was also its lead in-house defense litigator in connection with the sequestration of the shares, rights and interests of the coconut farmers in the United Coconut Planters Bank, San Miguel Corp., United Coconut Planters Life Assurance corp., Coconut Investment Co., Inc. , Cocofed Marketing Corp., and other huge corporations, oil mills, and other enterprises set up by the multi-billion coconut levy collections from mid-1970s to early 1980s.
Atty. Manuel J. Laserna Jr. January 9, 2011 Tacloban City
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