Jose W. Diokno

Remembering Jose W. Diokno Jose W. Diokno was Senator, Secretary...

Mon, 27 Feb 2012 10:10:10 +0800

Remembering Jose W. Diokno

Jose W. Diokno was Senator, Secretary of Justice, Lawyer, Nationalist, and Filipino. Friends and admirers remember him in this short documentary.

Activities to Commemorate the 90th Birth Anniversary and 25th Death Anniversary of Jose (Pepe) W. Diokno

Thu, 23 Feb 2012 00:28:00 +0800

On the occasion of Jose W. Diokno’s 90th birth anniversary and 25th death anniversary, the Free Legal Assistance Group announces the activities in commemoration of the life and death of its founder.

Friday, 24 February 2012

9:30 – 12:00 nn — The Philippine Political Science Association launches a book entitled Chasing the Wind: Assessing Philippine Democracy at the Philippine Social Science Center Auditorium, UP Diliman; Dr. Maria Serena I. Diokno will speak “On Justice, Freedom and Democracy: Remembering Ka Pepe Diokno”

10:30 – 12:00 nn — FLAG holds a press conference at the Max Restaurant, Maria Orosa Street, Manila, in recognition of the contributions of its founder, Jose W. Diokno, to law and justice in the Philippines. It will focus on a few landmark cases handled by FLAG, two of which remain pending in the Supreme Court. Atty. Jose Manuel Diokno and Atty. Arno V. Sanidad will speak at the press conference

Sunday, 26 February 2012

10:00 am — The Family of Jose W. Diokno offer a Holy Mass at the De La Salle Greenhills Chapel; a short video on Jose W. Diokno will be shown after the Holy Mass

Monday, 27 February 2012

9:00 – 11:30 am — The Commission on Human Rights launches The Jose “Ka Pepe” W. Diokno Memorial Lecture at the CHR Multipurpose Hall; Atty. Jose Manuel I. Diokno, FLAG chair will speak on “Developmental Legal Advocacy and the Human Rights Approach to Equal Access to Justice”

2:00 – 5:30 pm — The People Power Volunteers for Reforms CARAGA and the Father Saturnino Urios University (FSUU) Policy Center hold a Parangal for the late Senator Jose W. Diokno at the FSUU AVR 1, FSUU Main Campus, Butuan City; Speakers include Sister Letty Daral, MSM (former TFDP - Former Regional Head), Atty. Wilfred Asis (FLAG regional chairperson), Atty. Josefe Sorrera Ty (Dean of the College of Law of FSUU), Atty. Lawrence Fortun (Vice Mayor of Butuan) and Miss Athel Hijos (Gabriela party list)

Tuesday, 28 February 2012

1:00 – 5:00 pm — The Freedom from Debt Coalition in partnership with some campus organizations of UP-Diliman hold a youth forum Remembering Ka Pepe: The Unfinished Agenda of EDSA ’86: Economic Sovereignty, Human Rights and Peace at the Auditorium of the College of Mass Communications, UP Diliman; the forum will have two speakers and three reactors from youth organizations

Wednesday, 29 February 2012

1:30 – 4:30 pm — The De La Salle University (DLSU) College of Law and FLAG hold the 1st National Forum on Developmental Legal Advocacy at the Br. Andrew Gonzalez Hall, 20/f Multi-Purpose Hall, DLSU, 2269 Taft Avenue, Malate, Manila; former Dean Marvic F. Leonen will speak on “Developmental Legal Advocacy in the Context of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Environment” and Atty. Pablito V. Sanidad will speak on “Developmental Legal Advocacy: Problems and Prospects.”

5:00 – 7:00 pm — The De La Salle University (DLSU) awards the Ka Pepe Human Rights Award at DLSU, 2269 Taft Avenue, Malate, Manila

Holy Masses

Holy Masses have also been offered for Jose W. Diokno and his wife, Carmen I. Diokno, in churches around the country:

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

6:45 pm — St. Jude Catholic Church, Legazpi City

Saturday, February 25, 2012

5:30 pm — Redemptorist Church, Cebu City

Sunday, February 26, 2012

6:00 am — Our Lady of the Atonement Cathedral, Baguio City
7:00 am — San Sebastian Cathedral, Bacolod City
7:00 am — College Chapel, Ateneo de Davao, Davao City
7:30 am — Saint Vincent Church, Baguio City
7:30 am — Lourdes Church, Kisad Road, Baguio City
10:00 am — Our Lady of Fatima Parish, Tahao Road, Legazpi City
10:30 am — Baguio Cathedral, Baguio City
5:30 pm — Parish of St. Raphael Arcangel, Legazpi Port, Legazpi City
5:30 pm — St. Gregory the Great Cathedral Paris, Old Albay District, Legazpi City
5:30 pm — Our Lady of the Gate Parish, Daraga, Albay
5:30 pm — St. Joseph Cathedral, Butuan City
5:30 pm — Immaculate Conception Parish, Butuan City
5:30 pm — Sto. Nino Parish, Libertad , Butuan City

Monday, February 27, 2012

12:00 noon — College Chapel, Ateneo de Davao, Davao City
4:30 pm — FSUU AVR 1, FSUU Main Campus, Butuan City
5:15 pm — Chapel, University of Eastern Philippines, University Town, Catarman, Nothern Samar
6:00 pm — San Sebastian Cathedral, Bacolod City
6:00 pm — St. Joseph Cathedral, Butuan City
6:00 pm — Immaculate Conception Parish, Butuan City
6:00 pm — Sto. Nino Parish, Libertad , Butuan City

* * *

For further inquiries, please contact:

FLAG
Email: flag@flag.com.ph
Telefax number: (632) 920-5132
Address: Room 101, Alumni Center, UP Campus, Diliman, Quezon City, Philippines

“To Sing Our Own Song” We commemorate Jose “Ka Pepe”...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 23:05:00 +0800

“To Sing Our Own Song”

We commemorate Jose “Ka Pepe” Diokno’s 90th birth anniversary with this short ad, now airing on TV.

“Sana…” We commemorate Jose “Ka...

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 22:47:00 +0800

“Sana…”

We commemorate Jose “Ka Pepe” Diokno’s 90th birth anniversary with this short ad, now airing on TV.

Jose W. Diokno's 90th Birth Anniversary

Tue, 21 Feb 2012 22:34:00 +0800

We are commemorating Jose W. Diokno’s 90th birth anniversary with a mass at La Salle Greenhills, 10 a.m. Sunday, 26 February 2012. Join us please. Mass is open to the public. The next day is his 25th death anniversary

“To Sing Our Own Song” (1983) This video is...

Fri, 13 May 2011 11:20:00 +0800

“To Sing Our Own Song” (1983)

This video is presented in four parts.

In 1983, Jose W. Diokno narrated this 50-minute documentary on the Marcos dictatorship. The program was produced by the BBC, and aired a critical view of the regime at a time when media and opposition in the Philippines were violently silenced.

Here, Sen. Diokno reveals government’s distorted view of development — one that prioritized patronage over the interests of its people. President Marcos, for example, spent 50% of the national health budget to build a state-of-the-art Heart Center in Manila, while around the country, Filipinos were dying of curable illnesses like TB, whooping cough, and dysentery.

Human rights abuses

The documentary also exposes the atrocities being committed by the regime. President Marcos fostered a military scared citizens into obedience. Ordinary people were arrested and tortured, and entire villages were massacred in broad daylight.

We meet an 8-year old girl named Marela. “[The military] began shooting us,” she says. “We fell down. My mother put her arm around me. Then, when everything was quiet, I stood up. My mother’s head was wounded… My little brother’s body was cut in half. I felt my head, it was all bloody — my mother’s brains were all over my hair.”

Another boy watched as soldiers murdered his father. He shares, “He was held… his head was turned sideways. Then it was cut off. They played with my father’s head. They pushed it with a stick and kicked it towards a coconut tree… I will avenge my father. Even a small chick can grow up into a fighting cock.”

The oppressiveness and ineptitude of the Marcos leadership drove many Filipinos to militancy. Sen. Diokno notes, “Martial law destroyed all our democratic institutions, so that people have no way of expressing what they feel and what they want. Protest has gone underground… where the Communist Party conducts seminars. [There], moderates like me can’t get into the debate… As always, violence breeds violence.”

Justice and freedom

Sen. Diokno believed that the system can instead be changed through moderate, peaceful means. He explains, ”No government can depend on force alone. If it continuously depends on force, then the day is going to come when that force is not going to be enough. So government tries to transform that force into law, so that it favors those who are in power. But in the same way, law can be used to fight that force. If law can be used to institutionalize social injustice and inequity… to marginalize people and throw them into poverty, then people can also use law to get out of that situation.”

So, Sen. Diokno founded the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG), a nationwide network of lawyers dedicated to defending ordinary citizens and prosecuting those who abuse their power. FLAG continues to operate today, and it is the oldest and largest organization of human rights lawyers in the Philippines.

The documentary ends with a message of hope. Sen. Diokno, who always believed in the Filipino spirit, says, “It looks impossible for my people to get out of this trap. But we will. I know my people. Even if we have to wade through blood and fire, we will be free. We will develop. We will build our own societies. We will sing our own songs.”

Quotes by Jose W. Diokno

Thu, 03 Mar 2011 10:52:00 +0800

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“I know my people. We will be free. We will develop. We will build our own societies. We will sing our own songs” — Jose W. Diokno

“No cause is more worthy than the cause of human rights… they are what makes a man human. Deny them and you deny man’s humanity.” — Jose W. Diokno

“Against a united people, no force is strong enough to prevail.” — Jose W. Diokno

“We must believe in ourselves, in our capacity to overcome hardship, in our ability to make the right decision.” — Jose W. Diokno

“We must view public office as a way to serve the people, not to profit at their expense.” — Jose W. Diokno

“The superior virtue is not to receive justice, it is to fight relentlessly for it.” — Jose W. Diokno

“There is one dream that we all Filipinos share: that our children may have a better life than we have had. To make this country, our country, a nation for our children.” — Jose W. Diokno

“Law in the land died. I grieve for it but I do not despair over it. I know, with a certainty no argument can turn, no wind can shake, that from its dust will rise a new and better law: more just, more human, and more humane. When that will happen, I know not. That it will happen, I know.” — Jose W. Diokno

“We are one nation with one future, a future that will be as bright or as dark as we remain united or divided.” — Jose W. Diokno

“Authoritarianism does not let people decide; its basic premise is that people do not know how to decide. It promotes repression that prevents meaningful change, and preserves the structure of power and privilege.” — Jose W. Diokno

“Yes-men are not compatible with democracy. We can strengthen our leaders by pointing out what they are doing that is wrong.” — Jose W. Diokno

“The point is not to make a perfect world, just a better one - and that is difficult enough.” — Jose W. Diokno

“Do not forget: We Filipinos are the first Asian people who revolted against a western imperial power, Spain; the first who adopted a democratic republican constitution in Asia, the Malolos Constitution; the first to fight the first major war of the twentieth century against another western imperial power, the United States of America. There is no insurmountable barrier that could stop us from becoming what we want to be.” — Jose W. Diokno

“All of us are Filipinos not only because we are brothers in blood, but because we are all brothers in tears; not because we all share the same land, but because we share the same dream.” — Jose W. Diokno

“Reality is often much more beautiful than anything that we can conceive of. If we can release the creative energy of our people, then we will have a nation full of hope and full of joy, full of life and full of love — a nation that may not be a nation for our children but which will be a nation of our children.” — Jose W. Diokno

“We need—and our people hunger for — an economy run by humans for humans.” — Jose W. Diokno

“Criticism, we welcome. Distortion, we deplore.” — Jose W. Diokno

“Full human development is the optimal development of all that is human in all humans, the bringing to full flower of the native genius of each and of all.” — Jose W. Diokno

Defining Jose W. Diokno

Wed, 02 Mar 2011 19:14:00 +0800

BY F. SIONIL JOSE

The truest leaders of a nation are not always anointed by elections or popular acclaim. They do not preen before an adoring populace, or strut in the perfumed corridors of power in fact, they stay away from the sharp focus of media, from the rambunctious pulpits of quasi-religious charlatans. It is in their nature, their sterling character, to work quietly, persistently, often at their own expense and personal sacrifice or discomfort. And some, as a matter of fact, are reduced to penury by their own virtue. What they do is voice the aspirations of the silenced and the silent, and are the pithy conscience of a people often mired in ignorance and apathy. Apolinario Mabini of the Revolution of 1896 was one crippled, poor, but enlightened, he provided the ideological underpinning of that revolution, and though thrust away from the inner councils of the President of the first Republic, Emilio Aguinaldo, he went on to write and speak for the nation that had become an American colony. Jose Wright Diokno is another the truly marmoreal opponent to the Marcos dictatorship, in a sense stronger than Ninoy Aquino because he never aspired to take over from Marcos. And also because he stayed home.

I first knew Pepe Diokno when I was in the old Manila Times in the 1950s; I had gravitated to politicians like him Raul Manglapus, Manny Pelaez, Manny Manahan all of whom championed agrarian reform. I really got to know him best after my return from Sri Lanka in 1964 and I opened Solidaridad Bookshop late that year. I often saw him in Joaquin Po’s Popular Bookstore at Doroteo Jose where, in the ‘50s, Manila’s tiny circle of writers/intellectuals often perused Joaquin’s latest books from the United States and the United Kingdom.

I was fascinated by Pepe primarily because of what he had done in 1962 the year that I left for Sri Lanka for a diplomatic posting. As Secretary of Justice in the Macapagal cabinet, he prosecuted Harry Stonehill and had the American businessman thrown out of the country.

Secretary of Justice

Harry Stonehill came to the Philippines with the US Army of Liberation in 1945 and had stayed on like a few of those GIs who saw opportunities in the erstwhile American colony. He had married into one of the wealthy local families and, with his business savvy, had started a conglomerate of enterprises pioneering and innovative. It included a ramie plantation in Mindanao that would have developed into a major textile industry, glass manufacturing, and whatever else. He had allied himself with Filipino industrialists and was far ahead of so many of them in vision and energy.

But Stonehill was too loudmouthed, even for Filipino politicians who were adept at boasting. He made it known that he could have any politician in his pocket, and to me personally, he said that one reason for his success was that he diligently followed the 11th commandment: Never get caught.

But he did. Jose W. Diokno was his nemesis. Stonehill was banished, the enterprises he started dismantled and taken over by his lackeys.

Was the ousting of Stonehill evidence of Diokno’s anti-Americanism? In those many years that I knew Pepe, we had a continuing argument on two issues: his pronounced opposition to the American presence in the Philippines, and violence as a final option in revolutionary change.

Many in my generation had opposed the Parity Agreement imposed on us by the Americans upon the grant of our independence in 1946 that they have equal rights in the exploitation of our natural resources. And above all, the military bases the huge tracts of land which they controlled in Clark, Subic and elsewhere.

I had argued that his anti-American stance was politically bad for him because he was a politician in a country whose population is so pervasively pro-American.

As for violence as an option in a revolution against a tyrannical regime, I had argued that the state uses “white” violence against its own people when the justice system, which it controls, does not provide even simple justice to the oppressed. The answer to this intransigence is “red” violence which the people must exercise.

Nationalist

Pepe was truly a man of the law, of peace. “When you accept violence,” he said, “there is no way by which you can control it.” While he did not accept violence as such, many of those he defended in the courts subscribed to this belief.

Diokno’s opposition to the American bases was anchored on nationalist principles. I recall a lunch with the New Yorker writer, the late Robert Shaplen an old Asia hand and one of America’s foremost journalists covering the Philippines.

Bob had asked what the root of his opposition to the bases was, why he wanted them out when countries like Japan a very nationalistic country had them and so did Thailand. So many countries had defense treaties with the United States.

Diokno said, “We are a young country. We cannot develop without a strong sense of nation. The very presence of the bases here impedes precisely that feeling. You mention Japan, the other countries these are mature countries, they do not need to emphasize the importance of nationalism.”

I was in complete agreement with him. The American bases, the tremendous American influence in the country inhibited Philippine development because they perpetuated dependency and the teacher/pupil relationship.

Bob Shaplen understood that. Diokno admired America, so many of the egalitarian qualities of American society. He sent his children there to study, and when he was finally stricken with cancer, it was to the United States where he hurried for treatment.

Diokno’s opposition to the American bases was shared by a vociferous minority. I had worried about it for the simple reason that it was not productive for any politician to harbor such sentiments. Even the New People’s Army could have gotten more mass support if it was not anti-American and pro-Chinese.

But later on, I changed my thinking. The Japanese were paying for the American bases in their soil. There were American bases in Korea, in Taiwan, and these countries were forging ahead of us. Verily, the American presence did not obstruct progress. On the contrary, these countries were able to take advantage of the best market in the world the United States.

Freedom fighter

Pepe was a very good writer and a brilliant speaker in English and Tagalog. Wherever it was, at the halls of Congress, a small caucus or a massive crowd at a political rally, his audience listened raptly, attentively for he was no common rabble rouser, spouting big words and hurling bombas as the rabble would call bombast.

Recounts Chel, his lawyer son, sometime in 1978 or there abouts, Diokno spoke at Liwasang Bonifacio in Manila. His theme: Marcos and his oppressive regime. The crowd was huge; it hung on to every word that he uttered, and at the end of his speech, as Chel observed, had he urged the crowd to march to Malacañang, he was sure that it would have done so. Was it Lenin who said that “power was in the streets, and all one had to do was pick it up”?

But after that speech, he asked his sons to go with him for a cup of coffee and Diokno told them why he had held back his mesmerized listeners: it was the right thing to do.

He was also a very good photographer; this not many knew. I saw his pictures, I saw him work in the dark room. He had vision, an artist’s clear and observant eye.

I say all these to illustrate the wide arc of his talents. I enjoyed visiting Pepe; for one, his secretary Perla Castillo is a schoolmate at the elementary school in the old hometown. It was also at his office were I often met the late Haydee Yorac, one of the stalwarts of the Free Legal Assistance Group (FLAG) which Pepe set up. And there was Cookie, his ever-helpful daughter.

When Marcos declared martial law in September 1972, Pepe was arrested and confined in solitary in Fort Magsaysay in Laur, Nueva Ecija at the same time that Ninoy Aquino was also jailed there. That month during which he was in solitary, he almost lost his sanity. The imprisonment was psychologically designed to humiliate and demean him. The tiny room was bare except for a cot. The window was barred, the door had no knob, and the fluorescent lamp couldn’t be switched off. He was denied reading and writing materials as well as material possessions.

He said Marcos was deliberate he released him but he continued to imprison Ninoy because Marcos knew Diokno was not a real threat to him. He did not aspire for the presidency, he did not have the political machine that Ninoy had.

People’s lawyer

He could now oppose Marcos in the open and that is what he did. More than this, he continued to work for the workers and the peasants. There were occasions when I accompanied him to the provinces where he went at his own expense to defend the poor in court trials.

He confided that he intimidated the judges with his presence, a national figure, a political and legal luminary, on the side of the peasantry. Almost always, he won the court battles with his presence alone. The peasants adored him.

As with most of those who opposed Marcos, Diokno suffered financially. He had to let go of his house in Magallanes to transfer to a more modest and accessible house in Quezon City. But even with his diminished income, he continued his free legal service to the poor.

He was already on his deathbed when I last visited Pepe. Nena, his devoted wife, no longer permitted visitors, but because she recognized our long friendship, she allowed me to see him. I almost broke down when I saw him so wan, so emaciated. I did not want to tax his mind any further but I just couldn’t help myself. That Mendiola tragedy had just transpired; President Cory had refused to see the farmers asking for agrarian reform; they had demonstrated and 19 were killed.

“Pepe,” I said, “those who were killed in Mendiola how will they ever get justice? Their fate argues for revolution.”

He smiled. “Frankie, hindi nag-iba ang isip ko. Once you accept violence, there is no way you can control it.”

When he died, his body was brought to that church near his house. I went there one morning and on my way out, I came across them along the sidewalk outside the churchyard, recognized some the farmers whom Pepe had helped.

I asked, “Why aren’t you there inside close to him?”

One of them said, “We are here because Cory’s security people do not want us inside.”

I was so shocked and angry, as I left them tears burned in my eyes.

On greatness

Achievers become popular, famous, rich even. But greatness? This exalted condition is reserved for those who have transcended themselves and given themselves sincerely to others, helped them in their time of need, comforted them in their grief, and lifted them from the sorry drudgery of this world. Jose W. Diokno was not an ordinary Filipino the way most of us are with our passports. He was a great Filipino, like all those paragons who make us proud.

My generation, which survived the Japanese Occupation, Marcos and the gross incompetence of the Cory and Erap administrations can make infallible judgments on our history and the decrepit quality of our leadership. History has always tested us the Revolution of 1896 and the subsequent coming of the American imperialists tested our grandfathers. The Japanese Occupation did the same to our fathers and my generation was sorely tried by the Marcos dictatorship. We know now why, alas, we failed.

We have honored so many political leaders who never deserved to be even on the shortest of pedestals, men who collaborated with our enemies, men who should be labeled as prostitutes and traitors.

Jose W. Diokno has yet to be fully recognized for what he has done, for what he stood for. At long last, there is a street named after him, a stretch of highway not often used, parallel to Roxas Boulevard; if comparisons are to be made, I would say that Pepe Diokno was greater than President Roxas although Diokno never achieved the eminence, the high office which Roxas reached as President of this Republic.

What is greatness in a man? Not all famous people to my mind are great in spite of their widespread popularity or fame; greatness presumes more than achievement, which makes an individual famous. Greatness is the essence of a person, the compassion that he exudes, the moral influence that he holds over people and events.

The young film director Pepe Diokno, who writes for this paper, has already won several awards for his brilliant work. I would urge him now to do a documentary on his grandfather and in this documentary, juxtapose Apolinario Mabini in it. It is my belief that Pepe Diokno, Sr. belongs to the same breed as the Sublime Paralytic. Like Mabini, Pepe Diokno possessed adamantine integrity; in his fight for the oppressed, he often stood fiercely alone from among his class of politicians. I am sure that among the very young today are many who will inherit not just his vision but the guts to fructify that vision.

Originally published in The Philippine STAR, October 3, 2010.

"Do not forget: We Filipinos are the first Asian people who revolted against a western imperial..."

Mon, 28 Feb 2011 13:56:00 +0800

A Nation For Our Children

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 16:07:00 +0800

BY JOSE W. DIOKNO

Note: “A Nation for Our Children” was delivered late in 1984. At that time Pepe was deeply involved in trying to unify the opposition against the fascistic but failing regime of Ferdinand E. Marcos. This important and crucial task did not prevent him from delineating in near-lyrical language his dream of a nation for all Filipino children — a just, humane and free society. Priscila S. Manalang

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There is one dream that all Filipinos share: that our children may have a better life than we have had. So there is one vision that is distinctly Filipino: the vision to make this country, our country, a nation for our children.

A NOBLE nation, where homage is paid not to who a man is or what he owns, but to what he is and what he does.

A PROUD nation, where poverty chains no man to the plow, forces no woman to prostitute herself and condemns no child to scrounge among garbage.

A FREE nation, where men and women and children from all regions and with all kinds of talents may find truth and play and sing and laugh and dance and love without fear.

A JUST nation where whatever inequality exists is caused not by the way people act towards each other but by differences in natural talents; where poverty, ignorance, and hunger are attacked and every farmer has land that no one can grab from him; every breadwinner, a job that is satisfying and pays him enough to provide a decent standard of living; every family, a home from which it cannot be evicted; and everyone, a steadily improving quality of life.

An INDEPENDENT nation which rejects foreign dictation, depends on itself, thinks for itself, and decides for itself what the common good is, how it is to be attained, and how its costs and benefits are to be distributed.

An HONORABLE nation where public powers are used for the public good and not for the private gain of some Filipinos and some foreigners; where leaders speak not only well but truthfully and act honestly; a nation that is itself and seeks to live in peace and brotherhood with all other nations of the world.

Is this vision attainable? Or is it just an idle dream? If we base ourselves on today, we would be tempted to conclude that it is an idle dream. For our country today is in a mess. There is no other way to describe its condition.

Our economy is bankrupt. We cannot pay our foreign debt. Within the next two years, whether or not our foreign loans are restructured, prices and taxes will continue to rise. The peso will continue to fall. The domestic market will contract further. More workers will lose their jobs; more students will be forced to drop out of school. Hunger will spread, and disease will not be far behind. Crime will continue to stalk the streets even more menacingly. Anger, resentment, and frustration will escalate. Dissidence will propagate, and repression will intensify. The government has lost all credibility, yet it refuses to do the decent thing: return power to the people. Instead it continues to deny the people their basic rights and freedoms. And the calloused behavior of some of its leaders mocks and defies this cherished Filipino value.

Yet we must not give up our dream because of today. For if we look at ourselves, we have all the resources — human and natural — to become what we Filipinos choose to be. Our population is about 53 million, and that’s the 17th largest potential domestic market in the world.

We are a literate people. Our adult literacy is 75 per cent, the 40th highest worldwide. Sixty-three per cent (63 per cent) of our young people in the 15-19 year age group are enrolled in secondary schools, which is about 50 per cent higher than the average for countries like ours. And 27 percent of the 20-24 year age group are enrolled in colleges and universities, which is twice the average of countries like ours and more than that of some developed countries like the United Kingdom, West Germany, Australia, France, Belgium, and Switzerland.

Our land area is 300,000 square kilometers, the sixty-third largest in the world. It is rich in natural resources. Less than half of our land has been systematically surveyed for mineral but commercial quantities obtained of the thirteen basic raw materials required by a modern industrial economy have already been discovered: bauxite, chromium, copper, iron are, lead, manganese, nickel, phosphates, zinc, natural rubber among these. And we also have the human drive to develop these.

Encounters with nations which invaded and occupied us or traded with us have made us open to change and quick to adapt to it. Our people are ingenious and fast learners, competitive and achievement-oriented, rational and practical, and dedicated to freedom and independence. We are, let us not forget, the first Asian people who revolted against a western imperial power, Spain; the first who adopted a democratic republican constitution in Asia, the Malolos Constitution; the first to fight the first major war of the twentieth century against another western imperial power, the United States of America. Since 1972, we have suffered the brutal repression of martial rule, but freedom still burns bright in the hearts of most of us.

So there is no insurmountable barrier that could stop us from becoming what we want to he. Why then are we in this sorry condition? I think it is because we have forgotten one basic thing. We Filipinos are a variegated people. We live in seven thousand islands. We profess no less than five major religions. We pray in no fewer than seven native tongues. But all of us — Muslim or Christian, Tagalog or Visayan or Ilocano or Kapampangan — all of us are Filipinos not only because we are brothers in blood — many of us are not — but because we are all brothers in tears; not because we all share the same land — many of us are landless — but because we share the same dream.

Whether we like it or not, we are one nation with one future, a future that will be as bright or as dark as we remain united or divided.

Sometimes — as at present — events obscure this truth. At other times, human selfishness tries to deny it. But the truth will not die. We are one nation with one future. Yet today that nation is sorely divided even on such seemingly uncontroversial questions like what to do with the Marcos government or how to deal with the U.S. government. Some — I am one of them — would want to change not only Marcos but the system he has implanted in our country. Others would want to change only Marcos. Others would not even want that. They would be happy with changing Imelda and Ver. And others would not even demand that, simply that Marcos give up Amendment 6 or the power to issue presidential detention actions or both.

On such a simple matter as the United States relations, some want statehood. Others want independence, and those who want independence do not all agree on what it means. Some believe in independence from every foreign government except the United States, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In fact, some of those who think this way seek U.S. government help to get Marcos out and put themselves in. Still others believe in independence from every foreign government which includes Russia, China, Japan, besides the United States, the World Bank and the IMF. They want no U.S. intervention in our affairs not even to oust Marcos, and they want the U.S. bases out. But some who think this way, or say they do, urge that U.S. issues be submerged for the time being. Let’s finish with Marcos first, they say, and then let’s take on the U.S. government.

Just as we are not agreed on what changes we want, we are not agreed on how to obtain those changes. Some believe that change can only come from within the Marcos system which is why they took part in the last elections. Others are convinced that change can only come about from outside that system which is why they boycotted the elections. Some think that only violence can bring about change which is why they joined the NPA, the MNLF or other guerrilla groups. Yet others think that non-violence can bring about change, and so they have joined militant, peaceful mass actions.

In this state of disunity, change could come about, but except by a stroke of luck, it would hardly be the change that any of us want. For change to be meaningful, it is important that we agree at least on the basic issues, i.e., (1) Do we want to change just Marcos, or do we also want to change the system; (2) Do we want to free ourselves from the dominant influence of the U.S. government, or do we want to continue under its control; (3) Do we want to return to the kind of society we had before martial law, or do we want to establish a better society, more just and more human.

If we can agree on the basics of these issues, even though we may disagree on some details, then disagreements on how we can achieve these goals would not be insoluble. As long as we pursue the same basic objectives, there should be no difficulty in coordinating the activities of those who wish to pursue these objectives by different means. Let me just give you an example of what I mean.

We have today what is commonly called the parliament of the streets, and the objective of this parliament is to get rid of the Marcos government as soon as possible. But we also have political parties that are gearing for the elections in 1986 and 1987. Surely there should be no basic contradiction between these different methods. We can pursue the parliament of the streets and hopefully change the government before 1987, preferably before 1986, preferably before 1985. But if we fail, what is to prevent us from using the other methods in order to change this government. The important thing is that we agree on what we want because if we do then the dilemmas that we face today would no longer be critical.

Take for example this possibility. Suppose that Mr. Marcos for one reason or another were to quit his office tonight. Do you think the opposition would be able to put one candidate for president and one candidate for vice-president to fight against whichever candidates Mr. Marcos and the KBL would put up within the next sixty days? In 1986 if there is no agreement to these basic objectives, will the opposition be pulling up one candidate for the UNIDO, one candidate for PDP-LABAN, and one candidate for the LP, or more in the local elections as against the candidates of the KBL? And if so, what chance would the opposition have? And in 1987 if Marcos is still around to run, or even if he does not run — if he sponsors a candidate — would the opposition be able to put up one candidate, or will we be putting up four or five candidates to run against Mr. Marcos?

If we can agree, however, on all of these basic issues even if we don’t agree on all the details, then it would be easier to get agreement on one candidate. Why? Because if all of us are agreed on what we want, then insistence upon running can only be the result of personal ambition. And no candidate will ever tell you that he has personal ambitions. In fact, they will all say: I don’t want to run, but if the people want me, I will run.

And if we do agree on these basics, then docs it really make much difference who is the candidate as long as we are all united and agreed on what is to be done? It may make some difference. Some candidates may be more competent than others. The mere fact that we are all agreed on these basics should not make it impossible to achieve these changes regardless of who is this candidate. And therefore if we can agree on these basics, then we should be able to achieve the first step in this long journey to a nation for our children, and that is, the step of regaining our freedom.

But to do that, as I have said, will take time. It will be difficult. Wounds have become very deep, I’m sorry to say. I arrived, as you know, about a week ago, and I have found out during this short week that between certain groups disagreements have become personal, and those are the most difficult to address. But I also wish you to know that efforts are being made, and will continue to be made, so that all these disagreements can be ironed out. We do not expect perfect unanimity, we do not expect total agreement on every detail, but we believe that we can all agree at least on these basics.

First, that we must change not only Mr. Marcos but the system he has implanted. We must return to a truly democratic government with an independent judiciary and a responsible Parliament. And more than that, we must bring government and the making of decisions closer to the people affected by those decisions. Second, I feel that there should be — and there will be — no disagreement on the need to obtain our total liberation and freedom from American control. I say this because just the other day, there was a short meeting between representatives of UNIDO and others — those who had taken part and those who had not taken part in the last elections — and on the matter of “let’s start getting together, let’s talk and let’s see if we can get some bases of agreement,” one of them said: ‘Tanny, do you remember two years ago we signed a paper. Why don’t we use that as the basis of the agreement?” And Tanny said: “Fine. I don’t remember what was in that paper we had signed, but why don’t you just send it over’?” And it was sent over. And the first two paragraphs of that agreement made it very plain that every political force was committed to the proposition that the Philippines must be controlled by Filipinos and that all foreign bases must be removed from our country.

So I see no insurmountable difficulty there, and certainly I also see very little difficulty with respect to the third agreement, i.e., that we use our freedom and our independence to improve the quality of life of our people. Again we may disagree on how this is to be done but on the objectives, I think we are all agreed. I think that the second step in that long journey to attain a nation for our children is simply this: that in order to improve the quality of life of our people, what we have to do is really very simple n do the opposite of what Marcos has done for the last twelve years. I am not being facetious. I am not trying to be witty. I’m trying to state a fundamental truth.

Marcos has built his entire program on the principle of depending upon the U.S. and Japan and getting all the loans that he could. We must build our nation on the principle of depending on ourselves and getting as loans only what we need, not what we can get. Marcos has built his entire political system on gathering all power unto himself and eliminating all checks and balances. We must build our political system on respect for the sovereignty of the people, on the establishment of adequate checks and balances, and on empowering the people at the grassroots level.

Marcos has built his economic system on a policy of overspending, export-orientation, low wages, recession, unemployment, and poverty. We must build our economic system on strengthening our domestic market by increasing the productivity of our farmers and our workers and increasing their real wages because without an increase in the real wages and the real income of our workers and our farmers, it will not be possible for us to industrialize. We will continue to be dependent on foreign resources.

We must build our economy on removing disparities between urban and rural areas so that whatever social services we supply our rural areas — health, education, water, power, roads — must be of the same quality and the same standards as the social services that we supply to our cities.

And we must build our economy on using every method that we know as soon as possible to restore the buying power of our workers, at the very least and as a first step, to what was their buying power in 1972. From 1972 to the present, the real wages, the purchasing power, of our workers has dropped by no less than 45 per cent across the board — about 37 per cent for skilled workers and 48 per cent for unskilled workers. That has to be completely reversed. And our first objective must be to bring back their purchasing power at least to what it was in 1972 and then gradually increasing it.

Marcos has built his entire social system on a system of falsehood, on a system of repressing creativity, and on creating in our people a feeling of impotence and helplessness. I wonder how many of you have read Prof. Luisa Doronila’s report on the textbooks that are being used in our public schools and the effects they are having on our children. When the children were asked what they preferred to be — Filipinos, Americans, Japanese, etc. — the lowest rank was gotten by those who wanted to be Filipinos. What are we doing to our children? Our system must be the complete opposite. Our system must tell our children the truth. Our system must seek as much as it can to unleash their creativity.

I described to you when I began what I thought was the vision of most Filipinos of a nation for our children, and I know that for many of you, it may sound ideal. Yet reality is often much more beautiful than anything that we can conceive of. If we can but release the creative energy of our people, then we will have a nation full of hope and full of joy, full of life and full of love — a nation that may not be a nation for our children but which will be a nation of our children.

JOSE W. DIOKNO / THE DIOKNO FOUNDATION

Jose W. Diokno: The Scholar-Warrior

Fri, 25 Feb 2011 13:09:00 +0800

BY JOSE DALISAY, JR.

To young Filipinos for whom EDSA 1 and the martial-law dictatorship are now vague if not vanished memories, the name of Jose Wright Diokno—“Pepe” to his friends and contemporaries—may be a distant echo. It is a name often spoken in the same breath as Ninoy Aquino, Tanny Tañada, Chino Roces, Jovy Salonga, Gasty Ortigas, and a few other battle-scarred fighters for freedom, but the association, while uplifting for all, tends to blur the individual in favor of the group, as these unselfish gentlemen would have preferred.

But every hero is individually formed in the crucible of struggle, every heroic act individually chosen. Each hero emerges like a pearl in an oyster from the womb of resistance, their brightest and strongest qualities rising to the surface, the hardened accretions of personal values tested in the arena of public issues.

For a man such as Pepe Diokno—champion of human rights, nationalism, and Philippine sovereignty—heroism was never something to be actively sought by an illustrious few. It was, rather, a collective virtue immanent in the people, a people awakened to their rights, opportunities, and civic responsibilities. It was a hero who led a consistent life of thinking the right ideas and doing the right things—a life which, by its very nature, and despite its search for quietude in a roiling universe, would inevitably court danger and alarm.

Diokno’s was such a life, that of a lover of books who enjoyed nothing more than to lie prone in his library, devouring tome after tome of fiction, education, and legal philosophy, and yet who could not and did not refuse to march in the streets or argue in court as an impassioned combatant for his most cherished principles.

Unlike some of his contemporaries, Diokno was never flashy, never sought attention except to pursue or prove a point. He came from a conservative, fairly privileged background, but eschewed flamboyance; he was very well educated and literate in several languages, but forsook bombast for substance. He had a wry sense of humor—demonstrated by a possibly apocryphal story about his deadpan reaction to his reported dourness (“You know me—Diokno, no joke.”)—but he preferred to laugh at the jokes of others. He was, at one time, a Secretary of Justice and then a Senator of the Republic—but he campaigned alone, traveled without bodyguards, and never kept or fired a gun in his political life. When he died, it was in the company of those he held dearest—his family, and his books.

Family background

Many of those books came from the library of his father Ramon, himself a lawyer who rose to be become a senator and later a Justice of the Supreme Court. Ramon’s father, in turn, was the son of a revolutionary general, Ananias Diokno, who had liberated much of Panay from the Spaniards in 1898. The Dioknos hailed from Taal, Batangas, but Pepe was born in Manila on Feb. 26, 1922, to Ramon and his wife Leonor Wright, an American mestiza. (When Pepe’s daughter Maris took this subject up with him and asked him if his lineage therefore made him one-fourth or one-eighth American, Pepe huffed and said, “One hundred percent Filipino!”)

It was a large family; Ramon had married Leonor after the death of his first wife, and there were ten children in the brood (Pepe himself, by coincidence, would also have ten children). As the son of a general who went on to fight the Americans, Ramon Diokno—despite the irony of marrying a mestiza—loathed the United States and forbade the speaking of English in his home. Thus Pepe grew up speaking Spanish, and learned English only from a tutor, as part of his schooling.

Ramon Diokno had been an active lawyer and political figure, serving as a councilor in Batangas and later as a campaign manager for and counsel to President Manuel L. Quezon before serving in the Senate and the Supreme Court. Not surprisingly, he wanted his son Jose to take up law as well; a half-brother of Pepe’s had also finished law, but died young. The boy resisted and, after graduating as valedictorian of his high school class in De La Salle College in 1937, he studied commerce instead. Thanks to repeated acceleration, he graduated at the tender age of 17 also from La Salle, summa cum laude. He took the CPA board examinations—for which he had to secure special dispensation, since he was too young—and topped them with a rating of 81.18 percent.

Self-taught bar-topnotcher

At this point, he could no longer ignore his father’s suasions, and he enrolled in law at the University of Sto. Tomas. He had wanted to go to the University of the Philippines and would later send his own children there, but his conservative Catholic parents would have none of it. As it happened, after just a year of study, the Second World War broke out. Pepe’s father told him to use the time to read, and picked out the books for him to plow through. Pepe’s passion for learning manifested itself immediately; after reading a couple of books, he went to the old man and asked to be tested, but the old man—as Maris Diokno recalls her father’s story—told him, “You either know it or you don’t. Just read.”

He continued reading, and when the war was over he took the bar exams in 1944 under a special dispensation from the Court, since he had never completed his law degree. Again Pepe Diokno topped them with a rating of 95.3 percent—along with Jovito Salonga, who had gone the full route. At this time, his father took ill and asked him to take over the firm.

One of his first important cases, as it turned out, involved defending his father. Ramon Diokno ran for the Senate in the first postwar government in 1946, and won, but he objected to parity rights for American businessmen—a nationalist stance supported by Jesus Lava, Luis Taruc, and the communist-affiliated Democratic Alliance in the Lower House. To punish Ramon, his enemies filed a case of election fraud against him. Pepe rose to his father’s defense, and eventually they won the case, but only at the end of the term in 1949. The father-and-son team must have made quite an impression; Lorenzo Tañada would later recall the young Pepe assisting his father in court, the both of them blessed with phenomenally photographic memories. (After winning his case, Ramon Diokno was then appointed to the Supreme Court, and died in Baguio during one of the tribunal’s summer sessions.)

Young lawyer

In the meanwhile Pepe’s life took another happy turn. He had met a pretty Bulakeña named Carmen Reyes Icasiano at a party; they had come with their respective dates. But Pepe and Nena soon fell in love, and they were married in 1949, after a two-year courtship. All in all, they would have ten children: Carmen Leonor, Jose Ramon, Maria de la Paz, Maria Serena, Maria Teresa, Maria Socorro, Jose Miguel, Jose Manuel, Maria Victoria, and Martin Jose. The last, Pepe and Nena took in as a two-week old infant in 1967.

Pepe Diokno the young lawyer found corporate law remunerative but boring. He took on some corporate cases, but what he really enjoyed was litigation, the presentation of evidence. Again the passion showed in his eloquence; when he argued a case before the Supreme Court, other lawyers flocked to watch him and to listen to him argue fluently in both English and Spanish.

One of Pepe’s clients and closest friends was Manila Mayor Arsenio Lacson, a powerful politician who was poised to run for the presidency. Diokno had successfully defended the outspoken Lacson against a libel charge, stemming from Lacson’s acerbic attacks on his radio program; Lacson also wrote a column for a newspaper that Pepe edited. Maris Diokno remembers how close the mayor became to the family, who were then living in a house in Parañaque, near the Baclaran church. Lacson used to go the house at six in the morning and cook breakfast for everyone before waking them up.

Secretary of Justice

In 1961, Diokno was appointed Justice Secretary by President Diosdado Macapagal. It was a political anomaly, because Macapagal was a Liberal Party stalwart while Diokno was a lifelong Nacionalista. But Macapagal had asked the capable Lacson—despite Lacson’s also being a Nacionalista—to help run his presidential campaign, and Lacson had agreed only on condition that Diokno be appointed to head Justice if Macapagal won. And so it happened.

In any event the union did not last long; in March 1962, Sec. Diokno ordered a raid on a firm owned by American businessman Harry S. Stonehill, who was suspected of tax evasion and bribery, among other crimes. Stonehill reputedly bragged about having big-name politicians in his pocket—but Jose W. Diokno was not one of them. The arrest and the subsequent corruption scandal resulted in an embarrassed Macapagal having to fire several Cabinet members—including, inexplicably, Sec. Diokno, who had found the temerity to arrest Stonehill. “He simply received a letter from the President, accepting a resignation he never submitted,” Maris recalls.

Diokno received death threats because of the Stonehill case; the family had to move important papers from one hiding place to another, and Mayor Lacson assigned them a “driver,” a big, dark plainclothesman from the Manila Police Department.

Senator

In 1963, Pepe Diokno was invited by the Nacionalistas to run for the Senate, and he agreed. He won, and would serve two terms: from 1963 to 1969, and from 1969 until the declaration of martial law in 1972.

For the growing Diokno family, it was a happy interlude. The girls came to his office after school and played in the anteroom until it was time to go. It was a family that prayed the rosary every night, led by Pepe himself. Family outings usually meant piling up in the big black car for a trip to the PECO bookstore, where they would stay all day, poring over books. Whenever Pepe and Nena went abroad, the children got more boxes of books, such as those by Enid Blyton. (The only exception, Maris says, was a brother of Pepe’s who had aged with a child’s mind, and for him Pepe always had a toy.)

Pepe himself loved novels about cowboys and Indians, devouring them while lying flat on his stomach. After lunch and his afternoon siesta, he listened to Tony Falcon, Agent X-44; he also loved kung fu movies. He was generous with money, but he never kept money in his pockets; he gave everything to Nena. So he often found himself strapped for cash, and Nena would have to run after him before leaving the house to make sure his wallet had something in it.

At work in the Senate, Diokno quickly established himself as a nationalist and reformer. But he also pushed to promote Philippine business—on fair terms. The activist-writer Ed Garcia reports that: “On the floor of the Senate, he did not hesitate to articulate his thoughts on economic self-reliance and self-determination in the face of the continued stay of foreign military bases which, he argued, justified foreign intervention in Philippine affairs.

“As lawmaker, he successfully fought the oil companies and masterminded the signing into law of the Oil Industry Commission Bill. He is the acknowledged ‘father’ of the Board of Investments and author of the Investment Incentives Act. He also authored Joint Resolution No. 2, which set the policies for economic development and social progress, and co-authored the Export Incentives Act and the Revised Election Law, among others. For his performance as legislator, Pepe Diokno was cited Outstanding Senator by the Free Press for four successive years beginning 1967.” (Garcia, 57)

Nationalist

It was typical of Diokno to mince no words in propounding his principles. In a speech before an American audience in 1968—delivered in a bastion of gentility called the Westchester Country Club—he launched into a comprehensive and well-measured but clearly critical speech explaining Philippine economic nationalism. The Philippines, Diokno said, had a dream: “It is the dream to join the modern world without sacrificing democracy to dictatorship, as others are doing; not at the expense of the poor—who have paid the price elsewhere—but of those who reaped the benefits of colonialism and therefore can afford the cost of modernization. Philippine nationalism is determined to achieve this dream. It knows it must restructure the Philippine economy and Philippine society to do so. It knows it will be difficult and painful. All it asks of your people and your government is your understanding and, if you deem it worthwhile, your help to make the process faster, less painful.; and if you do not deem it worthwhile, to leave us alone.

“Let us do it as we believe it must be done, not as you would do it in our place. Let us make our mistakes, not suffer yours…. With your help or despite your hindrance, Philippine nationalism will do the job. No one else can.” (Manalang, 102)

“When he finished,” his editor would note, “there was no applause.”

Martial Law

By the early ‘70s the political climate was darkening, and Pepe Diokno was beginning to sense an alarming shift in the wind, toward authoritarianism. When Marcos suspended the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, Diokno resigned from the Nacionalista Party in protest, and took to the streets with the other members of the Movement of Concerned Citizens for Civil Liberties (MCCCL). He had cast his lot with the resistance.

And so it happened that when Marcos declared martial law on Sept. 21, 1972, Pepe Diokno was among those first enemies of the State arrested by the military in the early morning hours of September 23.

They had just prayed the novena, and the young Dioknos were planning to step out for a movie with their friends, but their parents forbade them because of the bombings that had been going on. Just then five or six carloads of armed soldiers arrived to “invite” Sen. Diokno to join them. They had no warrant, and had cut the Dioknos’ phone line. To avoid any more trouble for his family, Diokno changed from his pajamas and went with the soldiers to Camp Crame, accompanied by his young son Mike. He was later moved to Fort Bonifacio, there to join the likes of Ninoy Aquino, Chino Roces, Teddy Locsin Sr., Voltaire Garcia, Nap Rama, Jose Mari Velez, and his other comrades in the civil liberties movement. The country had been plunged into the maw of martial law, realizing his worst expectations.

Solitary confinement

The close-knit Dioknos were devastated by his arrest and imprisonment, especially when he was transferred, along with Ninoy Aquino, to solitary confinement in Laur, Nueva Ecija. “We didn’t know where he had gone,” Maris remembers. “One day the military just came and dropped off his belongings, including his underwear, except his papers, which the military kept.”

Laur brought together two of the keenest minds of the resistance to the dictatorship: Diokno and Ninoy Aquino, ten years his junior, equally impassioned but much more voluble. “Ninoy looked up to Pepe as a kind of older brother,” Maris says. “Ninoy was a raconteur, with lots of stories. Dad was quiet and enjoyed listening and laughing along.” Unlike Ninoy, Pepe’s fight with Marcos never had a personal element; he had never had a face-to-face confrontation with Marcos, and never would.

Solitary confinement would both strain and strengthen the spirit of the two men. Nena Diokno herself was a strong, intelligent woman. “Your mother is really strong and she kept me going,” Pepe would later tell Maris. Pepe Diokno forbade his family to cry in the presence of the guards. “Don’t give the military the pleasure of seeing you in pain,” he told his children. The only exception was his aunt Paz Wilson, the sister of his mother (who had already died by then), who had virtually raised him. She often cried during her visits. Pepe’s solitary imprisonment at Fort Magsaysay in Laur, Nueva Ecija (with Ninoy in a separate cell) was a painful moment for the family. Upon seeing their faces as the Diokno family left the visiting area, Cory Aquino and her children prepared themselves for the worst. It was rare to see the Dioknos in tears.

The whole family—even Paz, who was in her 90s—had to submit to a strip search when they came to visit him, and again when they stepped out. The family endured the discomfort and the humiliation to spend precious time with him.

Release

Back in Fort Bonifacio, they brought him books—in French and Spanish, so no one could censor them, as they did the English texts; Pepe and Nena also spoke in Spanish, or one of the children would play the guitar and the rest would sing to drown out their parents’ voices. The family brought in food; he brought out coffee for Nena. When allowed to spend the day in his cell, usually on a Sunday, they would lay out a mat on the grass and all lie there, next to each other. Whenever his roses bloomed he would say his release was nearing; the children harvested peanuts and weeded his tiny garden.

Once, while he was still in prison, Nena brought him disastrous news: the building that housed his library on M. H. del Pilar had been burned in a suspicious fire. He had known that library so well that he could ask for a book and specify from memory which shelf it was on. Thankfully, unknown to him and with uncanny intuition, Nena had earlier moved most of his books to the house, where they lay in topsy-turvy heaps—but safely.

On Sept. 11, 1974—Ferdinand Marcos’s 57th birthday, and almost two years since he was picked up—Pepe Diokno was released from prison. He had never been charged with anything.

Free Legal Assistance Group

Sharpened and toughened by his imprisonment, Diokno plunged, to provide legal help to political detainees and other martial-law victims—and long before other prominent lawyers and organizations took up the cause of human rights—he set up the Free Legal Assistance Group. His concerns soon expanded to other causes and constituencies, including tribal groups threatened by exploitation and military atrocities, peasants, social workers, and other activists. He worked with Sister Mariani Dimaranan in Task Force Detainees, which had been set up by the Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines to protect the rights of martial law victims and to document cases of torture, summary execution, and disappearances.

He had no fear of being arrested again, and went around and outside the country to speak against tyranny and abuse in the Philippines. But his was no message of gloom and doom; he could see beyond the immediate horizon into a new dawning of freedom. In one of his most oft-quoted speeches, he said:

“And so law in the land died. I grieve for it but I do not despair over it. I know, with a certainty no argument can turn, no wind can shake, that from its dust will rise a new and better law: more just, more human, and more humane. When that will happen, I know not. That it will happen, I know.” (Manalang, 76)

Against the regime’s reasoning that authoritarianism was needed to spur development, he argued:

“Development is not just providing people with adequate food, clothing, and shelter; many prisons do as much. Development is also people deciding what food, clothing, and shelter are adequate, and how they are to be provided. Authoritarianism does not let people decide; its basic premise is that people do not know how to decide. So it promotes repression, not development, repression that prevents meaningful change, and preserves the structure of power and privilege.” (Manalang, 42)

Conversely, as Ed Garcia observed, “(Diokno) did not confine his defense of human rights merely to victims of civil and political rights violations but extended his efforts to promote economic, social, and cultural rights as well.” (Garcia, 66-67)

“Ka Pepe” was often approached for legal help by members of the Communist Party, and he gave help freely; more than once they asked him to join and even lead them, but he consistently declined. In a speech before the Bishops-Businessmen’s Conference of the Philippines in April 1985, he argued forcefully and cogently for the legalization of the Communist Party, maintaining that “It is unjust to prosecute a person for his political beliefs.” (Manalang, 53) But he refused to believe in the necessity of armed struggle. “There were not very many among those who suffered during the long period of martial law who believed that the dictatorship could be overthrown without resort to arms,” Garcia notes. “What singled Pepe Diokno out was that he not only believed it was possible to do so but that more than anything else he worked relentlessly to build an active resistance of citizens that was necessary to make it happen.” (Garcia, 67)

People Power

To this end, in March 1983, he co-founded KAAKBAY (the Movement for Philippine Sovereignty and Democracy). It took on issues such as elections, the US military bases, and other nationalist concerns. As immersed as he had long been in the struggle for human rights and civil liberties, the assassination of Ninoy Aquino in August 1983 further spurred his involvement in a broadening network of resistance groups, including the Justice for Aquino, Justice for All (JAJA) movement, and the Kongreso ng Mamamayang Pilipino (KOMPIL).

When the inevitable happened and EDSA 1 erupted in February 1986, Pepe—ever the thinking man—was initially doubtful. “He refused to go when this happened in EDSA,” says Maris. “There was a feeling that this was a military attempt to save their necks and the people were simply being used to cover that action.”

Even when he later agreed to serve the Aquino government as chairman of the Presidential Committee on Human Rights and chairman of the government panel in charge of negotiations with rebel forces, he never forgot the need for vigilance, reminding his countrymen that: “Above all, we can strengthen the President by pointing out what she is doing that is wrong. I think we weaken her if we support everything she does even when we do not agree with that she is doing. Yes-men are not compatible with democracy. People expect our President and public officials to make mistakes—but of course, to correct them as soon as they are convinced that they have erred. How can they know they have erred, if we do not tell them so?” (162)

As he had feared, the fairy-tale unity of what Maris (as Dr. Ma. Serena Diokno, the professor of history) would describe as “someone who was for agrarian reform sitting next to someone who would refuse to give up their land sitting next to someone who simply wanted US nuclear weapons and the bases out, next to someone who said we need the Americans” soon unraveled. These contradictions and tensions tragically exploded in what would be known as the “Mendiola Massacre” of Jan. 22, 1987, during which 15 peacefully protesting farmers were shot dead by government troops practically at the doorsteps of the Palace. In deep disgust and even greater sadness, Jose W. Diokno resigned from his two positions. “It was the only time we saw him near tears,” Maris says.

Death and legacy

By then—even much earlier—Diokno was facing his own death. In 1984, he had been diagnosed with lung cancer. He had smoked all his adult life, as did Nena. In October 1986, they took him to Manila Doctors Hospital for a blood transfusion; things looked very bleak at that point, and when Maris asked the doctor how much time they had left with him, he told her “a matter of days.” But Pepe himself thought otherwise; “I know I’m dying,” he said, “but not just yet.” He had the transfusion stopped and asked to be brought home; he didn’t want to die in the hospital.

He lived for four more months. They had brought him down to lie among his books, which was where he died, in peace and free of pain, at 2:40 am on Feb. 27, 1987. He had just turned 65.

Disease had ravaged his body, and creeping blindness had stilled his writing, but he was lucid to the last. The children remember him at his hopeful, fighting, smiling best, dreaming of justice on earth, and justice in time. In 1981, in a speech on “The Filipino Concept of Justice,” Jose W. Diokno took that dream in his hands and said:

“Are these standards impossible to meet? If you mean meet completely and immediately, they are. But only yesterday in world time, it was thought impossible to land on the moon. And not too long ago, Aristotle—one of the wisest of men—justified slavery as natural and listed torture as a source of evidence. So standards thought too high today may well turn out to be too low tomorrow. But whether they do so or not is not really important. What Nikos Kazantsakis said of freedom can be said of justice: the superior virtue is not to receive justice, it is to fight relentlessly for it—to struggle for justice in time, yet under the aspect of eternity.” (Manalang, 31)

Upon Diokno’s death, President Aquino declared a period of national mourning, and in 2004, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo issued an order declaring a national day of remembrance on his 17th death anniversary. Some lawmakers sponsored a bill to rename Taft Avenue to Diokno Avenue. None of those encomiums resonate more than Pepe Diokno’s own words and the strength of his faith in a better future. When he observed a young woman cradling her husband who had been horribly tortured, he saw not despair but hope:

“As I looked at the couple, I saw in them the face of every Filipino; and I knew then that martial law could crush our bodies; it could break our minds; but it could not conquer our spirit. It may silence our voice and seel our eyes; but it cannot kill our hope nor obliterate our vision. We will struggle on, no matter how long it takes or what it costs, until we establish a just community of free men and women in our land, deciding together, working and striving together, but also singing and dancing, laughing and living together. That is the ultimate lesson.” (Manalang, 45)

Sources

Diokno, Ma. Serena. Personal interview. 13 December 2005.

Garcia, Ed. “Jose W. Diokno: A Man of Uncommon Valor.” Six Modern Filipino Heroes. Ed. Asuncion David Maramba. Pasig City: Anvil Publishing, 1993.

Jose W. Diokno. Filipinos in History. 24 November 2005

Jose W. Diokno. 23 November 2005 .

Manalang, Priscila S., ed. A Nation for Our Children: Selected Writings of Jose W. Diokno. Quezon City: Jose W. Diokno Foundation, Inc., 1987.

Ramon Diokno. 23 November 2005 .