Obituary

Soliven, 77
VETERAN JOURNALIST Maximo “Max” Soliven died of acute pulmonary and cardiac arrest on Nov. 24 in Tokyo, Japan. He was 77.

Before his death, Soliven was publisher and chairman of the board of The Philippine Star,  which he founded in July 1986 with the late Betty Go Belmonte, Art Borjal, and Tony Roces.

Editors in the Star  recalled Soliven’s imposing presence as a publisher. “By phone, he checked up on stories, took reporters, deskmen, and editors to task for slip-ups, but also offered praise for a job well done,” according to an article in the Star.

Soliven was one of the country’s most widely read columnists. He began his “By the Way” column in the pre-martial law The Manila Times and continued in the Star before he died.

“He wrote swiftly, and talked incessantly, too, expressing his thoughts without fear of anything or anyone,” said Star columnist Domini Torrevillas.

Having covered eight administrations, Soliven often gave “unsolicited advice” to presidents and used his trademark expression “sanamagan” in his columns.

For more than a decade, Soliven was a foreign correspondent. He covered the Vietnam war in 1954 and 1959 as well as the 1968 Tet offensive and the fighting in Laos and Cambodia. He was the first journalist to interview then Brig. Gen. Suharto during the 1965 “Gestapu” coup in Indonesia. In 1964, he had an exclusive interview with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai on China’s detonation of its first atomic bomb.

He also worked as a stringer for The New York Times and Newsweek and was columnist for South China Morning Post and the Bangkok Post.

Soliven served as business editor of The Manila Times  from 1957 to 1960. In the 1960s, Soliven was editor and publisher of The Evening News.

Soliven was one of the first journalists to be arrested when martial law was declared in 1972. When he was released, he was banned from writing and traveling outside Metro Manila.

After Ninoy Aquino’s assassination in 1983, Soliven wrote articles critical of the Marcos regime.

Along with Eugenia Apostol and Belmonte, Soliven established the Philippine Daily Inquirer in 1985 and became its publisher.

He was named Journalist of the Year four times by the National Press Club and the Rotary Club of Manila.

A graduate of Ateneo de Manila University, Soliven earned his master’s in communication and political philosophy from Fordham University in New York. He also took up post-graduate studies at the Johns Hopkins University and Harvard’s School of International Studies. He was born on Sept. 4, 1929.

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