MANILA, 15 December 2003 — The Philippines yesterday mourned the sudden death of Foreign Secretary Blas Ople, who died of a heart attack after the plane he was on made an emergency landing in Taipei to seek medical treatment for him.
Ople, 76, fell sick late Saturday while on a Japan Asia Airways flight from Tokyo to Bangkok after attending an Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit, said Foreign Undersecretary Franklin Ebdalin.
Ople had breathing difficulty and then lost consciousness, Ebdalin said.
Taiwan Foreign Ministry spokesman Richard Shih said the flight crew attempted to resuscitate Ople while the plane diverted its course and flew to Taipei. In Taipei, medical staff at Taoyuan’s Minsheng Hospital gave Ople emergency treatment but failed to save him, Shih said.
CTI Cable News showed a Philippine official reading a statement from Ople’s daughters that said the foreign secretary had breathing difficulties and then went into a coma on the plane. Ople’s body was flown to Manila late in the day by Philippine Airlines (PAL) plane.
Regarded as a passionate nationalist and a workaholic, he was also an unstoppable chain smoker despite lung disease.
“The nation mourns the death of a great Filipino,” President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who was in Hong Kong early yesterday, said in a statement.
“We were awed by the vision and indomitable wit of Secretary Blas Ople. He was an architect of Philippine foreign policy in the finest tradition of enlightened and pragmatic diplomacy,” her statement said. “We will miss him and the world will miss him.”
The US Embassy sent its condolences, calling Ople’s death an “immeasurable loss to the nation of a great patriot and statesman.”
Ople had accompanied Arroyo last week at regional summit in Japan. Ebdalin has been designated as acting foreign secretary until Ople’s replacement is announced.
Congress was to fly the flag at half-staff on Monday and a resolution would be introduced to praise Ople’s government achievements, Senate President Franklin Drilon said.
Journalists and fellow Philippine officials remembered Ople as a man who loved to discuss the intricacies of regional and global diplomacy late into the night over cups of black coffee, amid trails of cigarette smoke.
Ople was labor minister under former President Ferdinand Marcos, who was ousted in 1986 by a popular uprising.
He began serving as an opposition party senator in 1992, and was Senate president briefly in mid-1999.
He relinquished his Senate post in July last year when Arroyo appointed him foreign secretary, replacing Vice President Teofisto Guingona, with whom Arroyo had a spat over his opposition to the US military presence in the Philippines. Ople led senators who approved a pact with Washington called the Visiting Forces Agreement, which allowed the resumption of large-scale US military exercises and port visits in the Philippines. Left-wing groups denounced him for his pro-American stance.
Ople was also an author, journalist and longtime columnist for the Manila Bulletin newspaper.
He was born on Feb. 3, 1927 to working class parents. His father was a craftsman who repaired boats in Hagonoy, a fishing town on the Manila Bay coast.
