Awardees - From The Stands

Not all the good men have gone, but finding the living good ones can be a difficult task. Every year, screening and approving committees look at wads of recommendations for the Aurora Aragon Quezon Peace Foundation Awards, which are given to men and women for their peacemaking activities. After the usual rigrous screening process, the awardees for Year 1999 were chosen, and those living were asked to give little speeches at ceremonies held at the Club Filipino last week. For years, this column has featured the AAQPF awardees, and it does the latest batch of awardees.

Archbishop Fernando R. Capalla, the awardee for peace advocacy and peace-making, is a staunch advocate of dialogue as the key to peace. The most recent, and perhaps the most significant, of his contributions to peace building was his intervention aimed at resolving an impasse in the peace talks between the Philippine government and the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People's Army-National Democratic Front. The breakdown in the talks resulted from the kidnapping and detention of four military and police officials by NPA forces in Mindanao.

Archbishop Capalla led the Humanitarian Mission to Utrecht, the Netherlands in March 1999, to negotiate successfully with the international leaders of the NDF for the release of the captives.

Last year, he was instrumental in the release of Catholic priest Msgr. Desmond Hartford, MSC, and Fr. Bernard Maes, CICM, from their kidnappers, believed to be disgruntled rebels.

In 1992, as vice-chair of the National Unification Commission, he was involved in peace initiatives on a national level, with special concern for Mindanao. He believes that a permanent and lasting peace for Mindanao is attainable through dialogue. He brought together the Bishop-Ulama Forum of Christian and Muslim religious leaders which has held 11 dialogue-meetings for achieving peace.

Victor Corpus attracted national attention when, as a young lieutenant (PMA Class 1967) he defected to the New People's Army and led a raid of the PMA armory, carting away a lad of high-powered firearms. While in the underground, he served as a personnel and training officer of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Philippines. In 1976, he was captured, tried and sentenced to death for violation of the Anti-Subversion Act. President Corazon C. Aquino pardoned him in 1986.

Then Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines Fidel V. Ramos recognized Victor's brilliance and his leadership qualities, and endorsed his reintegration into the AFP, whereupon Victor led a massive reforestation of denuded forests in Japindan, Capiz.

In mid-1996, as leader of the 78th Infantry Battalion assigned to Sultan Sa Barongis, Maguindanao, one of the most depressed and war-torn municipalities in Mindanao, Victor led the initiative to launch a multi-pronged strategy for converting the perennial floodwaters of Sultan Sa Barongis in Mindanao into irrigation waters for 25,000 hectares of farmland. Civilian-military cooperation led to the completion of a 60-meter dike and a 150-meter dike in two barangays. Seeing that the government, through Victor, was also concerned about their economic plight, MILF commanders and followers in the region have surrendered and promised Corpus their full support. Victor is the AAQPI awardee for peace through participatory development.

There are two awardees for peace education, research and communication, and institution building: Roberto A. Gana of Makati, and Carlos M. Ollado of Pampanga, lawyers of the Sentro ng Alternatibong Lingap Panlegal (SALIGAN), a non-governmental organization engaged in advocacy for the basic sectors through education and political formation. Roberto was SALIGAN's executive director, and Carlos, its urban poor unit coordinator. They worked together to bring justice and equity, the substance of true peace, within the reach of the poor.

In 1987, Bobby co-founded SALIGAN, his gift as an educator helped form countless farmers, workers, urban poor, and women into paralegals with sufficient knowledge and skill to use the law to help themselves.

Caloy, on the other hand, worked with and for the poor. In 1997, he led the effort to repeal P.D. 772, which criminalized squatting and punished the poor for the government's inability to make legitimate housing affordable to all. The enactment of R.A. No. 8368 repealed the Anti-Squatting Law.

Bobby and Caloy perished in the Cebu Pacific Flight 387 crash in Mt. Sumagaya on Feb. 2, 1998.

Alfredo D. Tombali, Sr., of Lubo, Tanudan, Kalinga, is an indigenous community leader and a respective member of the Kalinga Bodong Congress and of the Congress Kalinga Bodong Council (KBC). He was part of the KBC's declaration of Tabuk as a Matagoan or Zone of Life, and as such, no longer head-hunting ground for the Kalinga tribes.

Ama Tombali has helped restore several broken peace pacts in the province of Kalinga over the past four decades. As a municipal councilor of Tanudan from 1954 to 1959, he spent most of his salary arranging for the peace settlements between warring Tanudan and Tinglayan tribes. When he was elected mayor of Tanudan, he gave priority to peacemaking, for example, advocating intertribal marriages to minimize the occurrence of tribal conflicts. He also led Tanudanans in stopping the Araneta forest concession project in defense of their ancestral domain.

When the New People's Army entered Tanudan upon martial law, Ama Tombali organized the community, and, in coordination of the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the police, drove the NPA out.

As full-time peace negotiator and peacemaker for the province of Kalinga, he has settled in Bulanao, Tabuk, to have greater access to the Kalinga areas. Since the 80s, he has advocated the expansion of the coverage of the peace pacts to cover tribal as well as ideological conflicts.

(In my next column: The Cordillera Bodong Administration.)