Divine humor favors Erwin

Veteran journalist Mon Tulfo must be scratching his head while grinning at what seems like somebody from High Heavens playing a prank on him.

The alpha of the famed hard-hitting brothers of the broadcast industry was adamant against Erwin Tulfo, the second youngest of 10 siblings, following his footsteps knowing the perils of the trade as he was constantly threatened as Mon went after the high and the mighty.

House deputy majority leader ACT-CIS Rep. Erwin Tulfo in an interview with Daily Tribune’s online program Straight Talk said Mon was firm about his desire to keep any member of the family from being part of the media that he got a whipping when Mon found out that he joined the campus news organ at the University of the East.

Tulfo was born in Tacloban, Leyte. His devil-may-care demeanor came from his military officer dad, Colonel Ramon Silvestre Tulfo Sr. while his heart for the disadvantaged came from his religious mom, Caridad Teshiba-Tulfo.

“So we moved from one place to another, then there’s 10 of us. My mother wanted all of his boys to become a priest and I was her last chance, and she was so sad after I did not become a priest,” he related.

“So, Mon sent me to college in Manila. He was already a journalist, then,” Tulfo said.

He enrolled at the University of East (UE), which did not have a journalism course. Tulfo took up accounting, which is a field that UE was famous for.

Mon gave an almost daily reminder to Erwin to dispel thoughts about taking up the pen just like he did.

As fate would have it, however, Tulfo was drawn to the campus newspaper, The Dawn, which was then coming out with a weekly issue, honing aspiring journalists who are its members, guided then by the former press secretary of President Diosdado Macapagal, Raul Gonzalez as adviser.

Tulfo belongs to the so-called Ninoy batch of The Dawn composed of the staff that produced the school publication identified, by intelligence agents, as among the alternative newspapers after the assassination of Senator Ninoy Aquino in 1983.

The batch produced a string of journalists spread across many newspapers, some of whom moved on to the political field including the late Communications Undersecretary Roberto Capco and Eastern Samar Governor and former Rep. Ben Evardone.

Tulfo joined the key opposition paper during the administration of former President Ferdinand Marcos Sr., Malaya, and later moved to ABS-CBN as a broadcast reporter and eventually one of its news anchors.

His most frightening moment as a broadcast journalist was not in his entanglement with crooks in and out of government but when typhoon “Yolanda” struck in 2013. Tulfo was then with TV 5.

Hazards of the trade

“We almost died. We were outside the building when ‘Yolanda’ came. We had our backs against the wall, literally. We were sent there for the typhoon coverage. When we arrived, everything was very calm at around eight o’clock (in the morning).”

He recalled: “Then the strong winds came, so we sought cover in an old building. Me, my producer cameraman, assistant cameraman, four of us.”

“We have to run, we really forced ourselves to be in that building to seek cover. By 10 a.m. or 11 a.m., we got out. What we saw were dead bodies floating around,” Tulfo said.

The “Yolanda” experience engendered in him the difficult situations that most Filipinos face which was what encouraged Tulfo to accept the top post in the Department of Social Welfare and Development (DSWD) when President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. offered it to him.

“The President called me, and asked if I wanted to be a secretary of DSWD? to which came my snap answer, Yes sir,” according to Tulfo.

In his first interview as Social Welfare Secretary, he said “Why don’t you give me about three months and if I cannot perform then I will step down.”

During those three months, typhoons came and the earthquake in Abra happened.

“And I think that’s what people remember since I am now landing on top of the surveys because of that even though it was a short stint,” the front-runner in the recent senatorial surveys said.

Unfortunately for Tulfo, he did not make it through the Commission on Appointments due to questions about a libel conviction which is common among journalists.

A win in the Senate in May next year will have Tulfo advocating social issues that are rarely addressed in Congress such as child support which he said is “a problem that a lot of solo parents are faced with and was brought to my attention when I was Secretary of DSWD.”

“If you have a law then the father who refuses to provide support can go to jail,” he added.

On the strong chance of three Tulfos in the Senate, along with brothers Senator Raffy and Ben, a candidate who is tallying close behind him in the surveys, Erwin said it would be up to voters to decide.

“Whatever your decision, if T3 (three Tulfos) makes it, it’s up to you the voters. If you want one Tulfo, if you want two, so that somebody will help Raffy, that’s fine. If you want three, we’ll leave that to you. If you believe in us and what we have done, what our parents taught us, then we will do that,” Erwin indicated.

Watch Erwin Tulfo’s Straight Talk interview that will be aired on Wednesday, 6 November, at 10 a.m. on Daily Tribune’s Facebook and YouTube channels.