A remembering of the Knights of Rizal
RIZAL
our national hero is larger than life. He is honored at home and abroad. Our wedding sponsor, ninong Consul General Pete Dulay, recalled how Filipinos in the USA observe Rizal Day every December 30. We celebrate Rizal’s day of martyrdom. Once he found an old timer who withdrew at one corner, apparently fighting back tears. Pete asked what was the matter, and the old timer replied, “Patay na pala si Rizal!”
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Our foreign service extols the life and example of Rizal as our man for all seasons.
In her first incarnation as our envoy to France, Ambassador Rora Navarro Tolentino secured from the mayor of the 9th Arrondissement of Paris a Place Rizal (Rizal Corner) in honor of our national hero Dr. Jose Protacio Rizal. A Philippine Senate resolution cited this corner in Paris... manifesting how a small gesture resonates in our government and people.
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Dr. Rizal was a man before his time. Executed for protecting abuses by the colonial government against the Filipino people, he firmly professed loyalty to Mother Spain. His novels “Noli Me Tangere” and “El Filibusterismo” became social reacts which fired the Philippine Revolution and ushered in the First Republic in Asia. Like the Filipino Indios Bravos inspired by the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, Dr. Rizal – humanist, philosopher, scientist, lover, martyr – imbibed the ferment in Paris. His experience in Europe began and ended in France, disembarking at Marseilles and returning to the Philippines from the same port.
Ambassador Gregorio G. Abad and former Chief Justice Claudio Teehankee established the fraternity of the Order of the Knights of Rizal (KoR) in Bonn (the once-upon-a-time capital of Germany) and in Heidelberg in 1982. The ambassador used the KoR as an instrument of diplomacy, enrolling men of consequence into the brotherhood.
In the sincerest form of flattery, I would follow Ambassador Abad’s example, and set up the KoR fraternity in Vienna and in Berlin.
When Asia Magazine came out with a series on men who moved Asia, all Asian greats were written about by relations. The Mahatma by a Gandhi, Sun Yat Sen by a descendent, etc. The paean to Rizal was not penned by a relation, not even by a Filipino. It was written by Anwar Ibrahim, who was then the deputy prime minister of Malaysia. This was not surprising, because when we inducted the Malaysian Ambassador Dato Kadir Deen as a Knight of Rizal in the Berlin chapter of the fraternity, he said, “Rizal does not belong only to the Philippines. He is a Malay hero!”
The fraternity of the Order of the Knights of Rizal proposed a statue at the Rizal Place. They went from pillar to post to get the permit of the 9th arrondissement. (I wrote the mayor to bless this noble initiative on the 60th anniversary of the opening of diplomatic relations between France and the Philippines.) The fraternity was finally able to pin down the responsible bureaucrat, who admitted that the long delay owed to the fact that the file could not be found. With Job-like patience, the fraternity reconstructed the application. After four months, they resubmitted the documents to the mayor, together with plans for the bust of Rizal. The next step is for the application to go up to the mayor’s committee, which now required a finished bust for inspection.
“But what if the committee does not approve?” I asked, accustomed to surprises in Paris.
“That, Monsieur, is your problem,” was the Gallic insouciant repartee.
Rizal must have faced bureaucratic challenges like this, which could have been one of the inspirations for Noli and Fili.