HOTSPOT

Come 2022, I look forward to a groundswell of support and perhaps even an emphatic victory for Anakpawis if it runs again for partylist representation in Congress. And we have to thank Randall Echanis for it.

Today, the memory and record of Echanis towers over traditional political beasts who have infested the partylist system in particular and Congress in general. We would be better off with representatives in the mold of Echanis.

Echanis personifies what we want partylist representatives to be – genuine leaders from the marginalized and underrepresented, and with a proven track record of activism and political action. 

Echanis turned his back on a life of middle-class privilege and cast his lot with our grossly neglected and abused farmers. 

Instead of telling them to depend on charity or to beg for scraps from the tables of the rich, Echanis and many others lived our farmers’ lives, and together with farmers themselves came up with social, political, economic, and cultural solutions: genuine Agrarian Reform Bill, a draft comprehensive agreement on social and economic reforms, and a draft agreement on agrarian reform and rural development.

Like others of his generation, Echanis challenged the might of the Marcos government and paid dearly for it through long detention on trumped-up charges. Lesser mortals would have succumbed to torture and offers of lenient treatment. But not Echanis. 

Released from prison after the dismissal of the false charge against him, Echanis had many choices in front of him – lead a “peaceful” life, go underground or to the mountains, or seize the democratic space for farmers and working people.

He chose to seize the democratic space. He joined the former political detainees’ group SELDA, and pushed the campaign for justice through the class-action suit that would find the Marcoses guilty of rampant and systematic human rights violations.

Echanis then helped in forming Partido ng Bayan to openly contest the 1987 elections, and provide the farmers and the working people the alternative electoral vehicle to carry their aspirations. Tragically, powerful forces didn’t like the idea of leftists joining elections and winning in Congress. PnB offices were bombed, candidates slain, members red-tagged. 

Echanis did. Echanis didn’t give up. He went back to the farmers and their community organizations. By 1999, the country’s biggest farmers’ association, the Kilusang Magbubukid ng Pilipinas, named him as deputy secretary-general. 

He accepted the invitation of the National Democratic Front of the Philippines negotiating panel to be a consultant and member of its reciprocal working committee on social and economic reforms. How more democratic can one be than by helping hammer out agreements in formal peace negotiations aiming to peacefully address the roots of the armed conflict.

When farmers and workers sought to form a partylist group, Echanis was there to help establish Anakpawis. 

Today, Anakpawis could take pride in producing the finest, most brilliant and incorruptible leaders from the ranks of the toiling masses it is named after: Former Representative Crispin Beltran, champion of Filipino workers; former Representative Rafael Mariano, the former secretary of agrarian reform; and now, Echanis, champion of Filipino farmers and of peace based on justice. 

Even as he accepted the invitation to “seize the democratic space,” the same system would arrest and falsely charge him repeatedly. “He’s a ranking Communist Party leader,” was the common refrain of the administrations of  Ferdinand Marcos, Corazon Aquino, and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. But Echanis prevailed over their charges. 

Echanis sought out the new President Duterte in Davao, and joined others to remind Duterte of his campaign promises for change, specifically about farmers, the peace talks, and the release of political prisoners. Asked to produce cabinet nominees, Echanis and other leaders offered the names of Judy Taguiwalo, Liza Maza, and Mariano. Today, we know they were among the best and most pro-people cabinet members in recent memory. Duterte let go of them, and chose the company of generals and traditional politicians.

From 2016 to 2017, Echanis sat on the table of peace as a consultant, helping craft and hammer out agreements. He also met and spoke with city councilors of Metro Manila, and with peace advocates from the churches in many forums around the country. 

By 2018, when Duterte’s justice secretary filed a terrorist proscription case, it included Echanis and other leaders who had worked openly in the so-called democratic space, whether as Members of Congress, street parliamentarians, or peace talks consultants.

In the early hours of August 10, 2020, amid a tight metropolis-wide lockdown, a strict curfew and tough checkpoints, a death squad entered Echanis’ Novaliches home, and left him and a neighbor dead. Witnesses said they heard begging and screaming. He was 72. 

The principals of the death squads, as well as those of the police who snatched his body from his wife in what appears to be a last-ditch effort to humiliate and dehumanize him, perhaps think that’s the last they’d hear from Echanis. They couldn’t be more wrong. 

Now and beyond, Filipinos will be summoning the name of Echanis in our pursuit of national freedom and democracy. He joins the pantheon of our heroes and martyrs who inspire new changemakers who put people and nation first, no matter what.