PEACE-MAKER

It was in the beautiful city of Sankt Augustin, Germany in 1998 when we addressed a forum organized by the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (Foundation), which is affiliated with the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), where we first espoused the idea of an “Asian Dialogue” and which would engage the mainstream political parties of our continent on matters of peace, security, and development up to now.

The Christian Democratic Union is a democratic and conservative political party in Germany which produced great post-war leaders like Konrad Adenauer, Helmut Kohl, and Angela Merkel.

Chancellor Helmut Kohl, a towering figure in German politics and the first leader of a reunified Germany, became our friend and was very supportive of close political and economic relations with Asia.

Angela Merkel, a quantum chemist, was the first woman Chancellor of Germany and the first woman and first non-Catholic to lead the Christian Democratic Union. She was considered by many as the de facto leader of Europe during her time. Notably, another great woman leader of Europe was also a chemist and the first woman prime minister not just of her country but in Europe, the late Margaret Thatcher of the United Kingdom.

Two years after the Sankt Agustin conference, in the year 2000, we founded and launched the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP) here in Manila, which has now almost all of the major political parties of Asia as members, active in promoting peace, international cooperation, and economic development, its headquarters we later transferred from Manila to Seoul in hopes of contributing to peace in the Korean peninsula, which unfortunately, has not happened up to now.

We continue to believe, however, that with mutual will in sustained, even long drawn-out negotiations, North Korea and South Korea will someday emerge united, as in the case of the then two Germanys and the two Vietnams.

Still in 1998, we were in Carmel, California having accepted an invitation to speak at a forum organized by Paul Burgess Fay Jr., who served as President John F. Kennedy’s Secretary of the Navy, and our old friend, Arab and Europe business leader, Hany Salaam, who established a Christian-Muslim Center in Georgetown University.

We then received a call from former Senator and Foreign Affairs Secretary Raul Manglapus, who asked us to join him and former President Fidel V. Ramos in Madrid for the meeting of the executive council of the Christian Democrats International (CDI). He said that he had nominated us for International Vice President of CDI.

We told him that we had no impulse yet to take a political role overseas. We stressed that we just lost the presidential elections and did not relish the prospect of losing another election so soon. However, Manong Raul was insistent. He told us that he already campaigned among many European and Latin American friends and wanted us to succeed him as CDI International Vice President.

We protested but could not turn down our dear friend Raul, a fearless freedom fighter, brilliant reformist, and superb orator who in 1965 made a quixotic quest for the presidency of the Philippines and in 1992 co-founded with us and then former Defense Secretary Fidel V. Ramos the Lakas-NUCD-UMDP, now simply Lakas-CMD, which became Ramos’ political vehicle that catapulted him to Malacañang.

And so we found ourself in Madrid a few days later, where we, who were then practically unknown to the organization, addressed the CDI executive council led by then President Jose Maria Aznar of Spain, Prime Minister Kjell Magne Bondevik of Norway, Prime Minister Wilfred Martens of Belgium, among other European leaders.

As fate would have it,we became International Vice President of CDI. We are pleased to say that at the CDI executive council meeting in Mexico City in 2002, on invitation by President Vicente Fox, we initiated the renaming of the organization from Christian Democrats International to Centrist Democrats International, in our desire to make the CDI a truly global organization, more inclusive, and in a better position to reach out to other faiths and groups. We also established and launched the CDI Asia Pacific in Manila in 2006.

Asia and the world are at an inflection point in history; that there are dark clouds of conflict posing a serious risk to regional and global peace and stability. Thus, we continue to believe that meeting challenges of the 21st Century requires a conducive environment based on an unwavering commitment to peaceful coexistence, cooperation, and economic and cultural connectivity, with dialogue and negotiations as the only way out for a solution to disputes.

(This is a reprint of our earlier column dated November 10, 2024).