PEACE-MAKER
During our foray into parliamentary and political diplomacy, we travelled to Iran many times since the first year of the Shah. And in 2006, in Tehran, we conferred with Iran’s highest political leaders on possible ways and means of engaging Iran in the global community’s effort to ease the then and today’s continuing multiple wars in the Middle East, the foremost of which are the Sunni and Shi’ite inter-Muslim conflicts, the violent struggles in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Libya, and associated politico-religious and tribal conflicts in Africa.
We met then President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, speaker of Parliament Haddad Adel, our close friend former speaker of Parliament Nategh Nouri, then Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki, and our dear friend, the late great former president Hashemi Rafsanjani, whose daughters became friends with our wife Gina.
We found the Iranian leaders proud of their country’s enhanced importance in the Middle East and in the world. They were even more proud that the European, American, Asian, Latin American, and African powers were beginning to acknowledge the reality of Iran’s rising power and influence.
Iran has a special place in our heart for various reasons.
Tehran, Iran’s capital, is home to the Secretariat of the Asian Parliamentary Assembly (APA), now composed of more than 40 parliaments in Asia, which, with all humility, we co-founded, to create the beginnings of an Asian Parliament. As our modest contribution in strengthening Iran in its parliamentary initiatives, we transferred the APA headquarters from Manila to Tehran, despite objections by some parliamentary leaders in the Philippines and in Asia.
Iran’s political parties are also members of our International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP), which represents some 350 ruling, opposition, and independent political parties from 52 countries in Asia, and which we founded and launched in Manila in September, 2000. Iran’s former vice president and minister of Energy Hassan Ghafoori Fard, an old friend, is one of the co-founders of ICAPP and sits in the 39-member ICAPP standing committee.
We also remember that when democracy was restored in our country in 1986, our beloved then President Cory Aquino initially offered us to be the Philippine Ambassador to Iran, but we politely declined, with deep gratitude, as we informed her that we wanted to run for congressman in the fourth district of Pangasinan in 1987. We instead briefly served, from 1986 to 1987, as ambassador-at-large under the Cory Aquino administration.
And in the United Nations, Iran and the Philippines were the closest allies in promoting the concept and practice of interfaith dialogue.
In partnership, the Philippines and Iran successfully sponsored a resolution in the UN General Assembly in November 2004, binding the UN to promote interfaith dialogue as a way of helping resolve politico-religious conflicts, strengthening the religious moderates, and isolating those who advocate terrorism in the name of religion.
We also wish to point out that then President Rafsanjani made a successful visit to Manila, following then President Fidel Ramos’ earlier visit to Tehran in 1995, so far, the last visit of a Philippine president to Iran and vice versa.
Then speaker Nategh Nouri, on our humble invitation, also visited Manila. His and President Rafsanjani’s visits advanced political, economic, and cultural relations between our two countries.
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Former Chinese president Jiang Zemin passed away last Nov. 30 at the age of 96.
He was the first president of China who visited the Philippines since the establishment of diplomatic relations between our two countries on June 9, 1975. He made a state visit to our country in November 1996, during the term of President Fidel V. Ramos.
We had the privilege of conferring with President Jiang during our modest foray into parliamentary and political diplomacy in Asia and the international community.
He was warm, charismatic and, indeed, “a steadfast advocate for international engagement.” He steered China’s remarkable economic growth and modernization and its emergence as a global power.
Like all other leaders, he also had shortcomings and failures but, undoubtedly, his achievements far outweigh them.