Two who stood up against the Marcos dictatorship

Two Sundays ago, a picture appeared in the front page of one of our newspapers that brought a series of memories to my mind. It was the picture of Ninoy Aquino when he was leaving the United States to suffer his fate in the Manila International Airport. Escorting him were two of his closest associates in exile – Jose Calderon and Heherson Alvarez.

Both came back after the EDSA Revolution and both served as delegates to the Constitutional Convention. Calderon died a few years back, but Alvarez – if anything – is even more an active than ever. He has served two terms as senator and was Secretary of Environment and Natural Resources for sometime of the GMA administration. His big problem was to get through the Commission on Appointments. He had stepped on too many toes.

When he sacked the director of the Environment Management Bureau purportedly for legalizing the smuggling of banned Ozone Depleting Substances, he earned the ire of a powerful group. And when Alvarez proclaimed Department of Administration Order 17 setting aside 15 kilometers as municipal fishing grounds exclusively reserved for small fishermen who were being wiped off their fishing grounds by big fish trawlers, the group galvanized into a solid force to oppose his confirmation by the Commission on Appointments.

The same thing happened when a timber-mining magnate did not get his demand to have his timber license agreement converted to an integrated Forest Management Agreement and his claim as sole legal mining concern over Mount Diwalwal recognized and affirmed by the DENR. Alvarez maintained that could only be granted if past tax liabilities of the firm amounting to over half a billion pesos was first settled. In the case of the mining claim, Alvarez opted to give thousands of small miners the right to mine Mt. Diwalwal for the state with the small miners getting 85 percent of the proceeds. Part of the proceeds was also going to be used to remedy the harm that mining does to the environment.

Powerful and influential groups formed a loose alliance to block Alvarez’s confirmations. At a center point, it became clear that Alvarez had either to compromise or be permanently bypassed by the Commission of Appointments. Alvarez stood his ground, braving daily abuse from sympathizers of the alliance in media. The alliance was dead certain Alvarez was doomed. The Commission approved his appointment.

Not long after that, when he enforced a Supreme Court order returning to the indigenous tribe in General Santos City their ancestral domain. Alvarez had stepped on a well-entrenched group, his reformist initiatives had made serious inroads threatening too many vested interests.

These bold socio-environment experiments especially in Mindanao are high watermarks for the Arroyo administration. And at a time when the lights there are being extinguished – literally and figuratively – may very well be this administration’s bright legacy to that benighted island that has been wracked by wars of all kinds since pre-Hispanic times.

Alvarez has served our nation well through many crises. I don’t doubt he will remain a great resource as we, as a nation, attempt at every turn to break out of the Sisyphusian syndrome we find ourselves in. (Sisyphus was the cruel Corinthian king whose punishment in hell was to roll up a heavy rock on a hill and roll it up eternally each time it rolled down.)

We have not heard the last of Alvarez. A man who braved the wrath of the Dictator, who was instrumental in the toppling of Erap, who drew the line many a time for noble causes, risking life, honor and family, his voice cannot be stifled nor his vision crushed.

One thing we must say for Alvarez – he is a man of conviction. When you deal with him, you know what he stands for and what he won’t stand for.One thing we must say for Alvarez – he is a man of conviction.