By NITZ ARANCON
Correspondent
GOLD Star Daily columnist Rogelio “Butch” Bagabuyo died on Thursday night in a hospital in Manila. He was 75.
Bagabuyo, a known lawyer in the city who once served as a senior special state prosecutor at the Department of Justice (DOJ), died of kidney failure.
His son Jude said his father passed away at the Mary Chiles General Hospital in Sampaloc, Manila, around 9:30 pm Thursday, eight days after he was confined there for “septic kidney failure.”
Jude said Bagabuyo’s remains would be brought to the city today for his wake at the Cosmopolitan Funeral Homes on Capistrano Street. The lawyer would be laid to rest beside his grandparents at the city public cemetery in Camaman-an on Wednesday, June 22.
Bagabuyo’s friend Val Acapulco said the columnist first complained that he was not feeling well during a party at VIP Hotel. He said Bagabuyo went home to rest, and then took a flight to Manila the following day, June 8, two days ahead of his scheduled meeting with Sen. Aquilino Martin Pimentel III, the leader of the PDP-Laban.
Bagabuyo was active in strengthening the PDP-Laban, and in its advocacy for a shift to a federal form of government. He wrote extensively about this advocacy in his column for this paper which appeared Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
The lawyer-columnist missed that scheduled meeting with Pimentel–he was rushed to the hospital in the evening of June 9 after he complained of dizziness.
Bagabuyo was a former director of the Cagayan de Oro Press Club (COPC) who was responsible in bringing together former Senate president Aquilino Pimentel Jr., former mayor Reuben Canoy, and former governor Homobono Adaza in a dinner hosted by the Press Club in their honor years after the “The Triumvirate” parted ways.
In the ’90s, he hosted a talk show on local TV. He was also editor-in-chief of a publication of a multinational food company here.
Jude said his father, despite being on the hospital bed, had looked forward to attending the June 14 Mindanao Summit on Federalism here.
“Up to his last breath, my father was pursuing and advocating federalism,” Jude said.
Unable to return, Bagabuyo sent Jude back to the city to represent him in the summit.
COPC president Msgr. Elmer Abacahin and the group’s directors paused for a moment and then paid tribute to the late columnist during their meeting last night.
Herbie Gomez, a former COPC president and Gold Star Daily’s editor-in-chief, said Bagabuyo left a space in the daily newspaper that “no other columnist can fill with mere letters, and it would take more than printed words to fill that empty space.”
Lawyer Rey Ragas, chapter president of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines (IBP) in Misamis Oriental and Cagayan de Oro, said Bagabuyo was a great loss to the community. The IBP, he said, would pay tribute on Monday to the late lawyer who co-founded the Scintillas Legis fraternity at Jesuitun Xavier University where he studied from grade school until he graduated from law school. He passed the bar examinations in 1975.
Bagabuyo was married to Linda Dharamdas. He is survived by his children Jude or “Jobags,” Mary Anne, Rogelio II, Christopher, Rogelio III and TJ.
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