ELPIDIO QUIRINO’S 'GOLDEN ORINOLA'

By Philip M. Lustre Jr.

(Author's Note: This brief article is for the millennials, or people aged 15 to 35 years. They have been criticized for their lack of knowledge of our history. But I also believe that older people like me have their share for this malady. This article intends to cultivate our collective sense of history.)

ONE of the senior guys I met and befriended when I was an upstart in journalism was the late Ben Lara, a senior deskman of the Bulletin Today. The bespectacled and chubby  Manong Ben, as we fondly called him in those days, was a great storyteller.

Manong Ben never hesitated to tell stories to upstarts like me - all for the joy and fulfillment of imparting knowledge to the younger colleagues.

(Incidentally, the Manila Bulletin was renamed Bulletin Today during the martial law days. But it returned to its old name after dictator Ferdinand Marcos, his family and cronies fled in 1986. But that is another story.)

In one balmy afternoon in 1978, Manong Ben, who was already in his 60s those days, regaled a group of upstarts, including me, about the political issues that confronted the nation in the premartial law days.

Since discussions of martial law issues were strictly prohibited during the martial law days, Manong Ben chose to narrate the political environment during the incumbency of President Elpidio Quirino, the country's fifth president.

According to Manong Ben, Quirino was the postwar reconstruction president. When President Manuel Roxas died suddenly of a heart attack in 1948, the enormous task of postwar reconstruction fell squarely on the shoulders of Quirino, Roxas's vice president.

Quirino did well as president, as he set out and implemented an ambitious program for postwar rebuilding. But because Quirino was a widower, he became the butt of jokes among Palace journalists.

They created several urban legends about the man, whose only fault in life was that he was aloof to journalists. Naughty journalists spun yarns about his lifestyle, although they were not true.

One of the urban legends, which became a sensational news during those idyllic days, Quirino was that owned and used a bedpan made of gold.

Hence, the tall tale of Quirino's "golden orinola" was born to become the latest talk of the town.

According to the urban legend, Quirino would rise from his slumber deep in the night only to pee on his golden bedpan, which was his prized possession.

Strangely, the people took the yarn seriously. According to Manong Ben, Quirino's political enemies kept on spinning a tall tale until the people treated it as sort of a gospel truth.

The result was disastrous. Quirino's popularity plummeted. This tale was one of the reasons he lost to Ramon Magsaysay in the 1953 presidential elections.

According to Manong Ben, the "golden orinola" was totally untrue. 

It was never proven, although it was later told that he indeed owned and used a bedpan made of brass, not gold. It was much cheaper than the purported gold bedpan.

It was intended to be a dig on Quirino's sedentary lifestyle, but many people believed it to the extent of damaging his reputation. That thing became a fixture to his name.