The Punos: of Lubao-guagua, Tarlac and the Methodist branch
THERE was one area where President Aquino 3rd acted in a more banal way than former President Arroyo. That was in the appointment of a Puno to his official family. Mrs. Arroyo did that too, appoint a Puno. But Mrs. Arroyo’s decision to name a Puno to her official family was more solidly grounded than PNoy’s own appointment of a Puno. Let us go to particulars. PNoy’s appointee, Rico E. Puno, the just-replaced undersecretary of the Department of Interior and Local Government, was named to that sensitive post because of two things. He comes from Tarlac and he is a shooting buddy cum consultant and gofer. A close association formed not in the professional or intellectual heaven but at the shooting range.
Former President Arroyo named Ronaldo “Ronnie” Puno as his DILG secretary because of three things. She appreciated the likes of Puno, ultra- confident, capable of executing all sorts of operations and equipped with a very impressive Rolodex. Second, his roots are LubaoGuagua. Third, the grandfather of Ronnie Puno, a family physician who practiced in the LubaoGuagua area, saved the life of a young and very sick Diosdado Macapagal, the father of Mrs. Arroyo. It is said that without the intervention of Dr. Puno, the young Diosdado Macapagal, could have been a statistic and not a Philippine president. And there would have been no President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo without that prompt medical attention on the young and sick Dadong Macapagal.
And Ronnie Puno did not come from nowhere, as did Rico Puno. He had been a fixture of governments since Mr. Marcos. In fact, that branch of the Puno family, the one with Lubao-Guagua roots, had been a fixture in all administrations except the two Aquino administrations.
During the Estrada administration, there were two members of that family who served in the official family of Estrada, Ronnie Puno and his brother, broadcast-journalist and lawyer Ricardo “Dong” Puno Jr., who served as press secretary.
Indeed, you can write a short pamphlet on The Ever- Present Punos. Throughout our contemporary history, personalities with the surname Puno had been prominent in our national life.
The father of Ronnie and Dong Puno, Ricardo Sr., was a justice minister of Mr. Marcos. Marcos grudgingly accepted his resignation as justice minister after his loss in the 1984 Batasan elections, the parliamentary mongrel that required all Cabinet members to be members of parliament. During that time, Ronnie Puno was either serving Jose Roño or the embassy in Washington DC.
Two years later, Marcos was out. And for six straight years under Cory Aquino, the Punos were also out. Fidel V. Ramos, Cory’s anointed candidate, asked Ronnie Puno to oversee one of the most sensitive and secretive components of his campaign operations, which helped make Ramos president and Miriam Defensor Santiago forever mad at Ronnie Puno. This, however, brought back Puno into the power mainstream.
Ronnie Puno, for a time, served as DILG secretary under Ramos.
Having a full sense where the political wind would blow next, Ronnie Puno again got into the thick of the Estrada presidential campaign in 1998, a pollster and strategist all at once. He severed ties with Mr. Ramos, who supported Jose de Venecia’s presidential campaign. He was Estrada’s trouble shooter at the DILG with the rank of undersecretary.
From 2006 to 2010, Puno was back to his old post as DILG secretary, courtesy of Mrs. Arroyo, the daughter of a former president whose life was saved by Puno’s grandfather.
That Tarlac ( the Pampango side) has a branch of the Puno family is something totally expected. Some of the oldest families in Tarlac City such as the Tanedos were originally from Pampanga. They came mostly from Bacolor town, dropped their original surnames in favor of Kastilaloy-sounding surnames such as Tanedo, then moved on to become the new aristocracy in their adopted towns. Ninoy Aquino’s hometown of Concepcion used to be part of the old Magalang township.
Are the Punos of Tarlac that mostly congregated in the La Paz area related to the Punos of Lubao and Guagua? Is Rico E. Puno a blood relation of Ronnie and Dong Puno? According to Kapampangans who know their past, Puno is a Lubao surname just like Vitug and Barin. Anyone with that surname, they claim, definitely has Lubao roots. Somehow, they must be related.
There is a low-key branch of the Puno family, which like the family of Ricardo Puno Sr., got prominent in law and other professional fields. This is the Puno family of former Chief Justice Reynato Puno. The Kapampangan Punos call them the “Methodist branch” of the Punos.
The “Methodist branch” has been stripped of the provincial association. Just like the sons and daughters of Methodist pastors who moved to Manila to succeed professionally – never to return to the barrio again. The former editor of the Manila Times, the late Jose Luna Castro, whose first ambition was to be a pastor like many members of his immediate family, left the poorest of Lubao— Sta. Teresita— never to return again.
The “Methodist branch,” unlike the other Punos who have been dragged into controversies, has been low-key even with the overachieving ways of some members. It has contributed a chief justice to the High Court, a university president who later joined CHED and scores of lawyers and lower court justices.
Oh, there is a singing Puno, who is also a politician wannabe. But his is an entirely different story.