March 05, 2010

GEORGE Soros has poured a philanthropic fortune battling Marxist ideologues and state apparatchiks in what used to be Iron Curtain countries.

Here in the Philippines, the occasional grants from the billionaire investing icon have ironically been funneled to a group whose leading officer remains to this day not only an unrepentant Marcos propagandist but a Marxist dinosaur.

The Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility will today conduct another whole-day session at the Asian Institute of Management chattering about how to enlarge democratic space and protect journalists, with former UP Dean Luis Teodoro as one of the panelists.

Soros’ Open Society Foundation has, over the years, extended undisclosed amounts to the CMFR, the self-elected watch dog of the local media, to hold similar fora and to publish the

Philippine Journalism Review, edited by Teodoro.

Melinda Quintos de Jesus

A check with the CMFR Web site showed that Teodoro, an academician from the University of the Philippines, has eradicated from his brief career write-up his martial law stint with the Presidential Center for Advanced Studies, in contrast with CMFR executive director Melinda Quintos de Jesus’ glowing account of her abbreviated anti-Marcos press activism.

Don’t take Cocktales’ word for it. In digging up Teodoro’s background, Cocktales stumbled into the following account from the blog of anti-Arroyo columnist Manuel Quezon III: “Teodoro was part of a small group of ex-leftists and pseudo-leftists that Adrian Cristobal recruited to the Presidential Center for Advanced Studies (PCAS) in 1972.

PCAS’s function was to be the think tank group of the Marcos dictatorship, to write about and refine the dictator’s “democratic revolution from the center,” using words, phrases and arguments liberally looted from the CPP (Communist Party of the Philippines) publications.

PCAS became more notorious when it was placed at UP Diliman, in clear violation of the UP’s academic freedom. It was attacked by faculty and students at that time as a blot on the university (together with the UP Islamic Center, by the way). Not a whimper or signs of solidarity from Cristobal’s radicals.

Teodoro never renounced PCAS (it later became the Presidential Center for Strategic Studies, which was housed in this huge building near Cubao) and continues to be proud of what he did there: being a mercenary of the dictatorship. When Cory (Aquino) came to power, and a bunch of us from UP led by Randy David were asked by then Assistant Executive Secretary (Fulgencio) Factoran Jr. to take over and evaluate PSSC, we entered the place and saw the sullen faces of Teodoro and a couple of other people. It was a strange sight: there were everybody else, laughing and crying that Marcos was gone. There was only mourning among the members of that group. Double mourning on Teodoro part, I presume, for having his Maoist and Marcosian patrons eased out of power.”