(Cesar Virata was chairman of BusinessWorld the year I resigned. I admire him for trying to remain faithful to the ideals of Raul Locsin. Even if this conversation took place a month after I resigned from my corporate alma mater, I did not find it uncomfortable at all. In fact, this conversation was akin to walking down the pages of Philippine history for me. I do hope I could live up to my ideals of personal integrity the way Virata has.)
One man that many continue to look up to and see as the personification of integrity is Cesar Virata. Cesar Virata, 75, is still straight as an arrow, secure and complete in his knowledge and understanding of himself and of the world Filipinos continually lament the lack of role models that their children can look up to. For even in this age of shortcuts and instant gratification, Filipinos still maintain that idealism in their hearts.
No stranger to conflict, the Philippine prime minister from 1981 to 1986 and finance secretary/minister from 1970 to 1986 under President Ferdinand Marcos has had to defend what is right against the most formidable of influences and opponents, many times standing his ground in the face of bribes and death threats. Virata is still remembered for having fired 5,000 from the ranks of the Bureaus of Internal Revenue and Customs. President Marcos, known for his brilliance as well as his desire to surround himself with intelligent thinkers, somehow always found himself standing by the recommendations of his plucky finance minister.
Pofessional Relationship
Virata concedes that his relationship with Marcos was "very professional." Before he was called upon to join the government in 1967, he did not personally know the president. Virata, then in his late thirties, was a professor at the University of the Philippines and had been connected with the accounting firm SGV & Co. since 1956 when he was named to the Presidential Economic Staff. Apparently, former executive secretary Rafael Salas, who had worked with Virata at one point, had recommended him to Marcos.
Virata's first task as a member of the PES was to get the Exports Incentives Act passed in Congress. Having been instrumental in bringing Dole and United Fruit to the Philippines, he already recognized that businesses would need enormous support to be able to grow and compete in the world markets. He was eventually appointed undersecretary at the Department of Commerce and Industry, where he helped draw up the Investments Priority Plan. Virata was in the group that enabled the Philippines to take part in the Tokyo Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade after the country failed to gain admission to the Kennedy Round.
"He sized me up correctly," Virata says of Marcos. "He did not give me dirty assignments." In fact, he professes admiration for the former president's ability to listen to and understand issues. Ten days after Virata's appointment as finance secretary in February 1970, for instance, the Marcos administration was faced with the difficult decision whether to float the exchange rate. It was past five in the afternoon when he called the president, aware that the political situation was highly volatile. "Shall we go ahead (and float the rate)?" Virata asked Marcos. The International Monetary Fund needed an answer within the next 12 hours and the president had to make a decision. For Marcos, it would have been convenient to keep the exchange rate fixed, despite its debilitating effect on the economy. But as Virata would recall, Marcos instructed him to "go ahead, if it's the right thing to do."
Straight Shooter
A number of times, Marcos even reversed his decisions after hearing the opinions of his finance minister. In February 1986, for instance, Virata and Central Bank Governor Jose Fernandez got word that the government would make good on the losses sustained by the United Coconut Planters Bank because of the boycott instigated by then-opposition presidential candidate Corazon Aquino. Based on the information Virata and Fernandez received, Marcos had already signed the decree dictating the terms of this agreement.
Virata recalls going to Malacañang ready to tender his resignation if the president did not change his decision. Marcos, however, readily accommodated them to a meeting, and Virata and Fernandez requested that he repeal the decree "as this was not in accord with international practice." Marcos listened, and then instructed an assistant not to release the signed decree.
"That was our relationship," recalls Virata. "He knew I was ready to resign anytime there were disagreements." But somehow, Marcos saw the value of having a man of Virata's caliber in his Cabinet, and Virata never lost faith in working with the Philippine government.
It would be wrong to conclude, however, that Virata was blind to the Marcos government's failings. He was quite vocal in his observations. In the aftermath of the assassination of former senator Benigno Aquino Jr. in 1983, he told a Financial Times reporter he met at a UN meeting in Istanbul that he "would not discount that some elements in government had a hand" in it. His statement, of course, drew an uproar. Government representatives tried to persuade Virata to retract the statement or to say he was misquoted. "But I said no, I will not retract it, in fact, I will repeat it," recounts Virata. When he reached Philippine shores, this was exactly what he did.
Moving On
It has been almost two decades since Virata vacated his government post in 1986, but there has been no let-up in his daily activities. After the first EDSA Revolution, he went into private consultancy. "I had so many cases, who would want to employ me?" he laughs in recollection. But even if he had all sorts of hold orders and court appearances to contend with, the stigma of being Marcos's prime minister did not last very long. In fact, his first client was the World Bank, which sent him on a three-month assignment abroad focusing on highly indebted countries.
Not long after, he was advising companies on their acquisitions, among them, the National Steel Corporation and Petron. In 1987, he became a member of the advisory board of Metrobank. The following year, Ambassador Alfonso Yuchengco asked him to join Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation, where Virata still sits as corporate vice chairman.
Today, Virata brings the same ideals that saw him through those tumultuous years of government service in his dealings in RCBC, with the Bankers Association of the Philippines, and with all other organizations he is involved with. Corporate governance is his advocacy, and one that he desires to bring to as many Philippine companies as possible. His private consultancy continues to do well, and his Quezon City office remains where it used to be. Virata is still straight as an arrow, secure and complete in his knowledge and understanding of himself and of the world.
Virata is not one to talk of personal legacies, but his work will surely define this for him. He admits he is proud of the work he has done for Philippine business, counting the Tax Code, Tariff Code, Insurance Code, and the development of export processing zones among his accomplishments. He is also pleased to have helped increase the country's budget considerably, from P4 billion when he started in the 1970s to P99 billion in 1986.
Of course, he accedes that there are still so many areas to which he would have wanted to make a contribution, especially environmental protection and population control, his biggest frustrations to date. "In the position I achieved accidentally, the horizon is so broad," Virata says. That he managed to focus on what counts the most is something that Filipinos will always thank him for.
Close window
