OPINION :  August 7, 2006

 

    

DOUBLETAKE

by:  Eric F. Mallonga

 

TOUCH WITH IMMORTALITY

 

SEN. Aquilino “Nene” Q. Pimentel courageously stood as a voice of reason and sobriety at a time when tyranny ruled this land. He continues today to stand fiercely in defense of the fundamental human rights of every marginalized Filipino. His book, Martial Law in the Philippines, My Story, now filling the shelves of National Bookstore and Powerbooks, illustrates why Sen. Joker Arroyo calls him, “the poster boy of defiance to dictatorship.” Certainly, Pimentel has emerged as the eagle-eyed oppositionist to all that is wrong in a political system, unflinchingly criticizing the sinister evils of corruption and incompetence of politicians and their consequential crippling poverty. His autobiographical novel recalls the martial-law horrors, “when Filipino inhumanity toward Filipinos broke all records before and since.”  With every unjust arrest and cruel incarceration, Pimentel rose to national prominence despite threats of torture and execution by Marcos cohorts. As former President Corazon Aquino described, Pimentel became “a household name synonymous with the national cry for freedom, justice and democracy.”

 

Pimentel stood tall at a time when other men cowered in fear, roundly indicting, at every opportunity, the shameless martial rule of Marcos as a gross criminal act perpetrated upon our people, and condemning the evil schemes of the Marcos couple to perpetuate themselves in power through cajolery, bribery and threats. Importantly, he never lost his humor.  Recalling his first arrest just after Marcos declared martial law, soldiers ransacked his library in search of “subversive books” that would incriminate him. While they confiscated his books on Mao, Che Guevara, the Huk rebellion, and books with revolutionary themes, his wife pulled out the book entitled Today’s Revolution: Democracy, offering it to his military captors.  They refused to confiscate the book because it was authored by Marcos himself.

 

Pimentel’s romantic character is betrayed by the beautiful verses he quotes or creates.  In one passage of forcible separation from his family, he writes, “my heart was wrenched with pain when they took me away,” and quotes poet Kahlil Gibran: “Love knows not its own depth until the hour of separation.” He taught his children to be discerning and compassionate. Sponsoring family essay-writing contests, he once showed the photo of an emaciated child suffering from famine. His son Jac responded, “I pity the boy. I want to help him.” Jac is now a medical doctor, with his free medical missions for the impoverished. Valuing the nurturance of children, he has already bequeathed the greatest legacy to his children: to care and love for those who have nothing. Such sterling values makes me recall a friend’s message, “If you lose your wealth, you lose nothing. If you lose your job or your position, you lose nothing. But if you lose your values, your character, your compassion, you lose everything.”

 

Pimentel preaches frugality and hard work. Expressing deep consternation at the lease of Manila Hotel for sessions of the Constitutional Convention, he denounces the opulence of delegates amid our people’s poverty.  In another, he condemns the evidently sinister intentions of the Marcos regime through his narration of the exposé of fiery ConCom delegate Edgardo Quintero, who displayed peso bills received by delegates to desist from supporting the Ban-Marcos resolution, which would pin down the President to one term, and to support the shift into a parliamentary government to enable Marcos to continue ruling the country.  He also proposes sound approaches to property ownership, specifically the “stewardship principle,” incurring the ire of big business and the Marcos partisan machinery, which aimed for power to remain with its brokers, and the wealth with the wealthy.

 

There are many other passages that shed light into the characters of the men during the dreadful Marcos tyranny—Pimentel’s distaste for World Bank loans further impoverishing our people; the propensity of Marcos and Imelda in creating diversionary spectacles such as “The Thrilla in Manila,” the Korchnoi-Karpov showdown and the Miss Universe beauty pageant; the meetings for national liberation with Ninoy Aquino and other members of the opposition.  Through it all, he remained humble and modest, witnessing the historical unfolding of great events from the perspective of the outcast, the maltreated and the reviled. He suffered as his people suffered. In tribute, the late Bulletin Today publisher Apolonio Batalla, captured the man’s essence: “A public official who is not rich, who goes around in sneakers and T-shirt, strives for the improvement of his community, and speaks out his mind, cannot but be popular. He is of the masses. We do not say that he is a hero. But it seems that like heroes he has to pay a penalty.”

 

Indeed, Pimentel’s solidarity with innocent victims of a dictator’s opulence, and with the multitudes of suffering in the torture prisons and mass graves of those who defied the Marcos family, is particularly remarkable because of the often cruel price he has had to pay, and his continuing willingness to pay it. Philosophers say only the selfless and the fearless can aspire to immortality. In this regard, Sen. Aquilino Pimentel has already been touched by the Divine.

 

Back To Top

__________________