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INTRODUCTION

The willing sacrifice of the innocent is the most powerful answer to insolent tyranny that has yet been conceived by God and man.

From the Arrival Statement of

Benigno S. Aquino, Jr., August 21, 1983.

Few if any at all in the Philippines remained unaffected by the assassination of Benigno S. Aquino, Jr., the well-known leader of the Opposition to Ferdinand E. Marcos' authoritarian rule, minutes after he arrived at the Manila International Airport from a three-year exile in the United States. Marcos himself reacted to the incident in typically formalistic manner. "Heinous" and "dastardly" were the words he used to describe the incident, and he promised full government action to bring the perpetrators to justice. Imelda, Marcos' powerful wife, reacted equally in typical manner. It must have been, she replied to reporters' questions, "the will of God," and people should simply accept what God has willed. Others had less formalistic reactions. "Brutal," "barbaric," "unimaginable," "disgusting," "foolish," "stupid" were words that were used by people from various sectors of Philippine society to express the tremendous sense of resentment, rage and disbelief that overcame them as a result. The words of one of Aquino's sisters were, I think, most forebodingly apt. 'There is a time for mourning," she said shortly after the shooting, "and there is a time for anger. Today, I am still mourning."

There is no question now, months after the "tarmac incident" as the killing is now referred to, that behind the formalistic responses, Marcos reels back under the

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pressure of the most serious crisis that his authoritarian rule and the "new Society " it purports to build have ever faced. There is equally no question that the incident detonated outbursts of popular protest and disquiet over long festering problems of Martial Rule and the contradictions and dependencies this has heightened. Not only the current contours of Philippine politics were changed as a result of Aquino's courageous decision to return and his subsequent death while under custody of the Philippine military. People have been changed as well, and many new faces, unseen and unheard from before, have entered the arena of political combat testing, as it were, the limits of the "sacrifice" they are willing to make in the ongoing battle against what they perceive to be the regnant forces of oppression in their country.

As I began to write the final lines of this book, the Sakayan Para sa Kalayaan ng Bayan, SAKBAYAN in short (Ride for National Freedom), arrived in Baguio City. By the time this convoy of cars, jeepneys and vans arrive back at their starting point in Manila, it — along with the other convoys that are travelling in other parts of the country — will have travelled thousands of kilometers, crisscrossed the whole island of Luzon, and visited dozens of towns and villages.

There were students and youth among the riders. There were also professionals — lawyers, medical doctors, university professors, some with their families. There were farmers from the rural areas, as there were workers and urban poor from the cities. There were men and women from the so-called national minorities. There were artists and people from the entertainment world. There were also a few Church people, both lay and clergy. The message they were carrying was simple: for the restoration of freedom, justice and democracy in the country, the May 14th elections for the Batasang Pambansa (the National Assembly) must be boycotted.

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Elections under the supervision of an authoritarian and dictatorial regime are, in short, a sham. They have been a sham before, they are now not only a sham but also meaningless, and they will serve only to prolong and legitimize the current order of things rather than to change it.

They held a brief rally at one of the parks of Baguio City. Their public address system was makeshift. With the exception of a well-known movie director, there were no speakers of national political prominence. Mostly farmers, workers, and people from the national minorities spoke. One priest gave a brief speech, and so did one university professor. They slept the night before at a schoolhouse. Their food was contributed by local people. They were spending their own money for the trip. They shared in their speeches the agony and the anguish which they have suffered under the present dispensation. And because they were publicly seeking a boycott of elections in a country where voting is obligatory and non- voting is a crime punishable by law, they were subject to the threat of arrest and legal sanctions.

At the very same time in which the SAKBAYAN rally was going on, the KBL (the ruling party) also held its rally at an adjoining park about a hundred meters away. The loudspeakers at this rally were loud and clear. The rally platform was prominently set up. The people at the platform included a member of the Cabinet, some obviously prominent people from the city of Baguio, and the KBL candidate, Ramon "Jun" Labo, whose most known credentials for a seat at the National Assembly is the fact that he is a "faith healer" of some local clients as well as of some Japanese and other foreign tourists who have visited him, and is the "faith healer" of the President.

At the time I walked over to the KBL rally, the city mayor of Baguio was speaking. He was naturally extolling the achievements of the ruling party and

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of his administration of the affairs of the city. He was also underscoring in bold, clear terms the fact that if the people vote the KBL candidate into office, they have a clear line to his office, and whatever favors they would ask of him would be given immediate attention, something, he said, that he could not do and will not do if the people from the other parties were the ones asking the favors. Vote the "faith healer" into office, in short, to have access to the "dole outs" of the ruling powers, from city hall to Malacañang Palace.

Where, I asked as I moved between the two rallies, should Christians and the Churches be? There was no question in my mind that they should be at the SAKBAYAN. That definitely was where I located myself. But there were not very many Church people there. Where were the rest? There were some, I am sure, who were in the KBL rally, or would rather be there. There were others who think that they should be in both. There were others who would rather be in the "never-never-land" in-between, and still others who were nowhere near either.

This book puts together in one volume essays and papers that have been written over a span of almost two years for very specific Christian and Church-related groups in the country — groups who are in human rights work, in the various educational ministries, in development education, in the student movements, and in the more formal theological education of the Churches. Though some new materials were specifically written for this volume, and revisions made of the old ones, none have been lifted out of the form of "address" to concrete groups and situation in which they were originally made.

Theological reflection, we have discovered in recent times, is narrative, and because it is narrative, it is also address. They are narrative not only of the situations out of which they emerge, but also of the involvement of the "theologian" in those situations, and they are addressed

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precisely to evoke the involvement of others in those situations. And the "Address" around which these essays are centered and to which they are directed is the question of where Christians should be in the current Philippine struggle for freedom and justice, and to suggest and to probe the limits of the "sacrifice" they might make in that struggle.

In sharing these reflections with the "wider" ecumenical fellowship, it is hoped that others will be prodded or assisted in probing the limits of their own involvement — and their own "sacrifice" — in the struggle of their peoples in the situations where they are.