HOTSPOT

It was a pleasant surprise to read in this paper about Luis Jalandoni as a “towering figure in the Philippine communist movement.” He passed away on June 7 in The Netherlands at the age of 90.

Born to a family of powerful landlords and sugar barons, Jalandoni gave up a comfortable life and his share of land to farmers and farm workers. He opted to join the priesthood. Bishop Antonio Fortich appointed him as the head of the diocesan Social Action Center.

Jalandoni then gave up his priestly vocation to become a full-time activist. He helped organize the Christians for National Liberation, and the National Democratic Front.

With Archbishop Jaime Sin officiating, the former Fr. Louie wed the former Sr. Coni Ledesma (herself coming from a wealthy family) in 1974, formalizing a lifelong partnership marked by dedication to the preferential option for the poor and, yes, to a revolutionary cause.

Perhaps their most challenging assignment was to physically leave the country and people they have sworn to serve. Jalandoni and Ledesma would establish by the late-1970s the NDF international office in Europe to gather moral, political and proto-diplomatic support for the anti-dictatorship resistance and the revolution.

Jalandoni’s first breakthrough as chief international representative was perhaps the joint effort of the NDF and the Moro National Liberation Front to charge the Marcos regime before the Permanent People’s Tribunal.

The opinion tribunal’s session on the Philippines was held in Oct.-Nov. 1980 at Antwerp, Belgium. It exposed the Philippine situation before an international audience, ruled against Marcos, and called for support for the resistance mounted by the Filipino and Moro peoples.

Jalandoni would be appointed as member and later chair of the NDF negotiating panel in peace talks with the Philippine government under Presidents Fidel Ramos, Joseph Estrada, Gloria Arroyo, Noynoy Aquino and Rodrigo Duterte.

It is perhaps difficult to believe now that a lot has been achieved in the talks, what with the apparent penchant nowadays for rejecting and demonizing peace negotiations.

But the NDF, led by Jalandoni, and successive Philippine governments have in fact signed many important agreements since 1992: The Hague Joint Declaration; Breukelen Joint Statement; Oslo Joint Statement; Joint Agreement on Safety and Immunity Guarantees; Agreement on the Ground Rules of the Formal Meetings; Joint Agreement on the Formation, Sequence and Operationalization of the Reciprocal Working Committees; and the landmark Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law (CARHRIHL), among others.

It was also Jalandoni who in 1997 deposited with the Swiss Federal Council and furnished the International Committee on the Red Cross the NDF’s Declaration of Undertaking to Apply the Geneva Conventions of 1949 and Protocol I of 1977. Simply put, this declaration committed the NDF to observe international humanitarian law, apart from and ahead of the signing of the CARHRIHL.

An interim peace agreement, ceasefires, and expedited talks on the other substantive agenda of the negotiations (social and economic reforms, political and constitutional reforms, and cessation of hostilities) were being discussed in the flurry of high-profile talks in 2016-2017. Even the third-party facilitator was hopeful that a politcal settlement would be reached. But the then-president changed his mind.

Whatever happens under the current and future presidents, Jalandoni leaves behind not just decades of peacemaking efforts, historic agreements, and breakthroughs. Any future talks cannot start from scratch.

Jalandoni’s life story is full of giving up a whole lot — his privileged personal status and his generational wealth, his vocation of the priesthood, his stay in his own country, and even his own citizenship in order to secure his life and liberties while doing revolutionary work and peacemaking from abroad. This lifelong self-sacrifice and devotion to radical pro-poor change — virtues that are scarce nowadays among our leaders — is why he towers over the movement and the country.

As a journalist and activist, I have been fortunate to meet Ka Louie and Ka Coni several times in Europe and in Manila.

Perhaps most memorable for me was one of his visits here when peace talks allowed him to go unmolested.

A terrible incident had happened in some faraway area the night before they arrived in Manila. At his first public event that morning, Ka Louie shushed the excited audience by sharing about the previous night’s incident from memory, no codigo: the names and age of the victims, the addresses down to the sitio and barrio, the circumstances, what happened and why, called for justice.

Maraming salamat po, Ka Louie.