Plaza Miranda Editor John Coronel asked me for an article on my experience during the martial law (ML) regime of Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr. I told him I wrote a statement for the Human Rights Victims Compensation Board and said I could share this and add a few items about connecting with the Liberal Party (LP).

I thought I could insert stories about my contact with LP leaders during the ML period, then considered just adding a postscript, but finally decided a prescript on joining the Party as a non-politician would be better.

Meeting Sen. Jovy Salonga

I remember meeting Sen. Salonga on a Wednesday Forum event in the mid-1970s at the Cosmopolitan Church on Taft Avenue in Manila. We never became close as I was working with the Catholic Major Religious Superiors of Men then and he was a well-known leader of the non-Catholic Christian Churches. But I would attend Wednesday forum events occasionally.

I was impressed by the Senator’s sharp mind and clear articulation of opposition to ML. At one point I set up an exploratory meeting at a retreat house in Sta. Ana with him, Sen. Jose W. Diokno. and Sen. Tito Guingona. Nothing much happened after that meeting but the three expressed friendship towards each other, despite Sen. Salonga being with the Liberals, Sen. Diokno having been a Nacionalista Party leader, and Sen. Guingona having been with the Christian Social Movement.

Sen. Diokno years later was appointed by Pres. Cory Aquino as her first chair of the Commission on Human Rights, while Sen. Guingona joined the LP in 1987-1992, was elected senator and served as Vice President in 2001-2004.

I gravitated towards cause-oriented groups politically after my release from political detention in 1986. A number of us served as the “third leg” of the Koalisyong Pambansa (KP) campaign of Jovy Salonga and Nene Pimentel for President and Vice President in 1992. KP put together the Liberal Party and the Partido Demokratiko Pilipino-Lakas ng Bayan (PDP-LABAN), which was established in 1982 by Sen. Aquilino Pimentel, Jr. and Sen. Benigno S. Aquino, Jr. The “third leg” represented people’s organizations and non-government organizations (NGOs) that had become active in Project 2001 which former Department of Agrarian Reform Secretary Butch Abad organized in 1991. The “third leg” later became Akbayan Party List in 1998 and has been an LP ally since, while Sec. Butch Abad served as LP President in 1999-2004.

Shortly after that campaign, Sec. Abad invited me to join the Liberal Party. I was sworn in by then LP President Jovy Salonga together with Romeo Candazo, who became the LP congressman from Marikina, and Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, who had served as Marcos, Sr.’s Defense Secretary and martial law administrator. Sen. Salonga joked then, looking at Sen. Enrile and me, “It is only the Liberal Party that can swear in at the same time the jailer and the jailed!”

I think he did not realize that Romeo Candazo had been detained thrice under ML and he and I had been together in a national democratic collective at one point and that Juan Ponce Enrile would leave the Liberal Party after only one year.

I have now been a member of the Liberal Party for 31 years. In 2007, I was made a member of the National Executive Council (NECO) as a non-politician “person of national stature.” In 2018, I was asked to be the founding chair of the Party’s think tank, the Center for Liberalism and Democracy (CLD).

The Party swings from being pragmatic to being principled and back. This is unavoidable because of Philippine political realities. “Winnable” self-financed candidates, for example, are often accepted into the Party but may turn out to be illiberal.

But, overall, LP has contributed significantly to the country’s progress in keeping with the values of social liberalism: people empowerment, inclusive development, freedom, individualism, personal responsibility, human rights, peace, justice and the rule of law, tolerance and pluralism, enlightenment and progress, open society, and spontaneous order.

In fact, the most significant periods of the country’s development were during the years that liberals or liberal allies were in power, in 1986-1992, 1992-1998, 2001-2004, and 2010-2016. (I include the first three of the nine years of President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s administration as the country did well then, much better than during her later six years.)

Combining NGO development work with Liberal Party efforts and stints in appointive government positions in the Presidential Commission on Government Reorganization, Department of Agrarian Reform, and LANDBANK has been my life since 1986. This enabled me to push agrarian reform, participatory local governance, and sustainable integrated area development to benefit family farmers and others in meaningful ways. It did not enrich my family but it allowed us to live comfortably enough, and more importantly, gave us a sense of purpose.

Meeting Sen. Gerry Roxas and Supporting Sen. Ninoy Aquino

I remember how several of us former leaders of the Federation of Free Farmers visited former Senator Gerry Roxas, then the Liberal Party President, in late 1977 or early 1978 to determine whether we could cooperate in the parliamentary elections the dictator Marcos had scheduled for April 7, 1978.

The Senator’s view was that LP should do nothing to legitimize the regime. It would not participate in an election that was bound to be neither free nor fair. It favored boycotting the election. (I remember how his office in Cubao was set up with a chess set ready for a game. In fact, we did play one game. He won.)

Senator Ninoy Aquino was in prison at that time. Unable to use LP as his vehicle, he decided to put up a political party called Lakas ng Bayan (LABAN). He was allowed one TV interview. Ronnie Nathaniel, one of the brightest pro-Marcos journalists then, was chosen to “interview” him. But Ninoy was irrepressible. People were impressed by his sharpness despite having been a political detainee since 1972.

As expected, Ninoy and his entire slate of 21 candidates for Metro Manila lost. First Lady Imelda Marcos topped that election. Ninoy came in twenty-second. The results were incredible. But it was good that Ninoy and his running mates put up a fight, because this further exposed the venalities and emptiness of the martial law regime.

Forty-five years after that time, people remember April 6 better than April 7. The pro-LABAN noise barrage that happened on April 6 was amazing. Car drivers honked their horns, citizens blew noisemakers, people came out of their houses all over the city to bang pots and pans. The noise barrage lasted until way past midnight. The opposition found its “voice.” The people’s conclusion on April 8 was that the election had been rigged.

The election results in 2022 were similar to 1978: incredible. The noise barrage of April 6, 1978 can be likened to the amazing Leni Robredo-Kiko Pangilinan “kakampink people’s campaign” rallies and other activities from October 2022 to May 2023. There was no martial law in 2022-2023, but the disinformation efforts of the administration, voter intimidation, vote buying, and suspected digital manipulation were as effective as the rigging under ML in 1978.

The conclusion of the two campaigns is likewise similar: prepare for the “long game.” Political shortcuts like impeachment, an ouster movement or a coup d’etat are highly unlikely to succeed at this time. But this does not mean we should stop searching for the truth and we are grateful to the TNTrio (former Comelec Commissioner Gus Lagman, Gen. Eliseo Rio, and former FINEX President Franz Ysaac) for spearheading the effort.

The next big political explosion broke out in August 1983, five years after the noise barrage of April 1978. ML forces assassinated Ninoy Aquino on the tarmac of the airport now named after the late Senator. People turned out in the hundreds of thousands for the wake and funeral of Ninoy. It was clearly an anti-Marcos political statement.

I was a political detainee in Samar then. I felt that the end of ML was near.

True enough, two and a half years later, after Marcos, Sr. manipulated the snap elections of February 7, 1986, whistleblowers denounced the charade. People entrusted to miscount the votes walked out. Despite this, Marcos, Sr. had himself and his running mate declared President and Vice President.

One thing led to another and Marcos, Sr., his family, and an entourage of about 90 were forced into exile on February 25. Cory Aquino, Ninoy’s widow, became President.