Technically, she’s not Mrs. Rodrigo Duterte, so she’s not his first lady. But as official hostess to the wives of six heads of state here for the ASEAN summit, does Honeylet Avanceña deserve to be labeled a “common-law wife” by a coldbloodedly, linguistically precise media?
Honeylet and DU30 have been in a good-as-married relationship which was never a secret. She’s a nurse with a keen business acumen, he’s a lawyer and politician who has praised her more than once for her ability to support and feed him with her doughnuts and meat shops when the day comes that he finds himself a jobless man.
Common-law marriage, as defined in The Dictionary of Legal Terms, is “one based not upon ceremony and compliance with legal formalities but upon the agreement of two persons, legally competent to marry, to cohabit with the intention of being husband and wife, usually for a minimum period of seven years.” Without a ring and a contract, Honeylet is not the legal wife of Digong, but she does not consider herself his mistress. “We’ve been together 20 years,” she told me weeks before Mr. Duterte became President Duterte in 2016. So what should we call her?
Anything but common-law wife, which sounds so, well, common (as in vulgar). How about partner? The French, who express their language of love and romance in a style so chic, are well acquainted with stories of their President riding a motorcycle to pay his nocturnal visits to his mistress without the benefit of police escorts, motorcycle-borne or not. Before him, this President’s predecessor had divorced his first wife to marry a second time, no problem there. But these two presidents’ predecessor became a legend when at his funeral, his mistress and his wife stood beside each other, grieving; no one was scandalized.
Closer to home, society could learn from the example of a media tycoon who had long been estranged from his legal wife. In the obituary published upon his death, the name of his lady love was mentioned as his “long-time companion.”
Has anyone dared to tag the President as Honeylet’s common-law husband? (Jullie Y. Daza)
