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<a class="gmail-domain gmail-reader-domain" href="https://www.rappler.com/voices/thought-leaders/opinion-life-and-times-jose-maria-sison/">rappler.com</a>
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<h1 class="gmail-reader-title">The life and times of Jose Maria Sison</h1>
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<span class="gmail-posted-on">Dec 18, 2022</span></span> - Tonyo Cruz
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<img src="cid:ii_lbv4o5en0" alt="image.png" width="435" height="306"><br><p>The 1950s could be a world away from even today’s dystopian times.
Those were the times when students were told to “just study” in school,
women were not welcome in politics and the economy, activism was unheard
of, and the two-party system can’t get enough from the corruption and
patronage they thrive on.</p>
<p>Enter <a href="https://www.rappler.com/nation/who-is-joma-sison-communist-party-philippines/">Jose Maria Sison</a>
and his contemporaries from the University of the Philippines. They
went to Congress to disrupt and scuttle the hearings of the Committee on
Anti-Filipino Activities, which was harassing and red-tagging Filipinos
questioning the status quo.</p>
<p>They took to studying topics and reading books beyond what the
university syllabus provides. They discussed pressing national, social,
economic and cultural concerns of the public. Not only did they look
with concern for Filipino working families; they did not see workers and
farmers as charity cases. For these rising new activists, these
humblest of Filipinos are the wealth-makers and liberators of the
country.</p>
<p>By 1964, Sison and his UP contemporaries had been able to attract the
imagination and commitment of brilliant students from many other
universities and colleges. He founded and chaired the Kabataang
Makabayan, the ancestor of activist groups that would liberate minds and
mobilize many for the next decades and until today.</p>
<p>Black-and-white photos from this era show Sison in the company of
great nationalists, attending events of the KM and the Movement of
Concerned Citizens for Civil Liberties.</p>
<p>One does not need to believe in what Sison believes. Even those who
don’t cannot help themselves in admiring Sison’s patience and tenacity
in pursuing his goals. By 1968, he had helped rebuild the Communist
Party of the Philippines, and the New People’s Army by the next year.</p>
<p>Sison’s seminal <em>Struggle for National Democracy</em> and <em>Philippine Society and Revolution</em> became the basic texts for understanding the country’s past, present, and future.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/51292-timeline-first-quarter-storm/">First Quarter Storm of 1970</a>
was a national cultural phenomenon, never before seen since the
outbreak of the old Philippine revolution. Students, workers, farmers,
professionals, and even entrepreneurs talked about imperialism,
bureaucrat capitalism and feudalism as the root causes of the people’s
problems. Pamphlets, long articles, flyers, newspapers broadcast the
call for nationalism and democracy, as the antidote policies marked by
pro-imperialism and elitism.</p>
<p>The FQS was a phenomenon because the challenge to the status quo came
not from the ranks of traditional politicians or the political class.
To Sison’s credit, he acted on his belief that democracy must belong to
the people, and that the people must be able to freely think, speak out,
organize, and take action in order to effect changes in their own
country.</p>
<p>Prior to Sison, the belief was that politics belonged only to
politicians. Sison and his comrades questioned, challenged, and smashed
this. He helped organize Filipinos into a movement with a credible and
well-thought out political program bannered by genuine agrarian reform,
national industrialization, the emancipation of women, a pro-people
culture, and so on. Thanks to KM and the many organizations inspired by
Sison’s teaching, no politician or even pundit can lay claim exclusive
franchise to political expression and action.</p>
<p>By the time Ferdinand Marcos imposed <a href="https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/iq/146939-martial-law-explainer-victims-stories/">Martial Law</a>
to facilitate his family’s large-scale theft, Sison and the movement he
had helped build was ready to confront, challenge, and fight the
dictatorship. The underground movement welcomed those who sought
sanctuary from the dictatorship’s terror and those who discovered the
validity of revolutionary action to fight tyranny.</p>
<p>It was thus no surprise that many viewed Marcos, Benigno Aquino Jr.,
and Sison as that time’s top newsmakers and political figures.</p>
<p>Sison’s subsequent arrest became top news. Marcos thought his arrest
would end the movement. However intelligent he thought he was, Marcos
could never understand that he and his family were the biggest
recruiters of activists and revolutionaries. Plunder, state terror, and
economic crisis provided people an impetus to self-organize and to
mobilize by the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands.</p>
<p>Marcos had Sison tortured, tied to a cot for months, or in solitary
confinement. Outside, Filipinos thought and took action for themselves.
After the downfall of Marcos, Sison sued for damages over his being
tortured. He won, alongside the class action suit.</p>
<p>Publicly-available documents reveal that Sison was not interested
solely on revolution. He was also a peacemaker who thought that the
government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines could
negotiate, compromise and finally agree on addressing the root causes of
the country’s problems.</p>
<p>Sison had a hand in breakthroughs in the peace negotiations,
according to foreign observers. He was simply not the
grim-and-determined ideologue and bloodthirsty monster that some like to
paint him to be. Together with many negotiators, he shares the credit
for the The Hague Joint Declaration, the Joint Agreement on Safety and
Immunity Guarantees, and the first substantive agreement, the
Comprehensive Agreement on Respect for Human Rights and International
Humanitarian Law.</p>
<p>Up until his demise, the NDFP negotiating panel and national council kept reelecting Sison as chief political consultant.</p>
<p>In 2007, Sison was arrested in his Utrecht home and detained on
charges facilitated by the Philippine government. He defeated the
charges in open court, and was ordered to be freed. Trumped-up charges, a
favorite of the NTF-ELCAC and its predecessors, cannot survive that
long outside Philippine courts.</p>
<p>Many have met Sison since his world tour and exile in 1987, when the
Corazon Aquino administration canceled his passport. He enjoyed the
company of migrant workers, professors, academics, poets, artists,
activists, and journalists.</p>
<p>The first time I met him was in 1996, when a friend and myself made a
side trip from Belgium to The Netherlands. We went to Utrecht to
personally present him and NDFP chair Antonio Zumel their Gawad Marcelo
H. Del Pilar trophies from the College Editors Guild of the Philippines.
The award is the CEGP’s highest honors, and the guild honored them for
their courage and brilliance in presenting alternatives to the status
quo, and their service to the campus press.</p>
<p>We had pre-conceived notions of Sison, Zumel, and other Filipino
exiles. They were warm and welcoming, eager to hear every bit of news
from the country they love. They asked about the situation in Metro
Manila, about movement-building, and more.</p>
<p>In 2012, when I was part of a group of journalists invited to visit
Oslo, Norway, we asked the NDFP international office if we could
interview with Sison and <a href="https://www.rappler.com/nation/fidel-agcaoili-dies/">Fidel Agcaoili </a>at the Amsterdam airport on our way home. We didn’t want to pass the chance.</p>
<p>We thought that we would just have coffee at an airport coffee shop.
It turned out there are function rooms at the airport. Practically all
the Utrecht-based negotiators were there. They were excited to meet
fellow Filipinos, to answer questions and to exchange views.</p>
<p>A few years ago, traditional politicians and their political hacks
accused Sison of going to bed with Rodrigo Duterte. But why would Sison
do such a thing, and risk everything he worked hard for? It was simply
unimaginable for traditional politicians that a liberation movement can
talk peace with anyone, and of course, there’s no profit to be made with
peace talks. Billions in counterinsurgency funds, a perceived source of
corruption, would be lost.</p>
<p>Duterte knew that the NDFP and Sison won’t be conned. He can’t or
won’t commit to social and economic reforms, or political and
constitutional reforms, which are the next substantive agenda. By the
time Duterte scuttled the talks, he had made pacts with China, the
military hungry for more war funds, and his oligarchic base.</p>
<p>Not many know that Sison was a genuine Ilocano, born in Cabugao,
Ilocos Sur. He came from comfortable family. He was an outstanding
student, and if he had his own way, he could have ended up a traditional
politician. But his discovery of activism and revolution changed his
outlook and aspiration. He ended up being a people’s freedom fighter, a
challenger to Marcos, a thinker and a statesman of the Philippine Left.</p>
<p>As news of Sison’s passing spread across the country, expect many
organizations, aboveground and underground, to pay tribute to him and
his ideas. Here was a man who gave up everything, even his access to his
own country, to serve our country as an exiled revolutionary and peace
negotiator. Here was a man who as a professor and as a movement-builder
taught his people to reimagine their own country and strive to make it
truly free, democratic and prosperous.</p>
<p>No retelling of Philippine history would be complete or credible
without mentioning Jose Maria Sison and his role as a liberator of
millions of minds and hearts. His place is secure there. – <strong>Rappler.com</strong></p>
<p><em>Tonyo Cruz is an opinion columnist for the Manila Bulletin. He
was former assistant vice president for Luzon and deputy
secretary-general of the CEGP, and later served as public relations
officers for activist groups and activist members of Congress.</em></p>
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