Protest leader at 86 years of age

Press, 22 October 1984, Page 12

Protest leader at 86 years of age

By

RUBEN G. ALABASTRO,

of Associated Press, in Manila

At 86, when a stroll at the end of the day may be all that’s left for a man, Lorenzo M. Tanada steadies his wooden cane and slips on a gas mask to lead another march against President Ferdinand Marcos’s palace. “I’m not good at compromises,” says the lawyer and former senator who has emerged as a symbol of Filipino resistance to Mr Marcos’s 19-year rule after the assassination last year of the Opposition leader, Benigno Aquino. Called “father of the nation” by followers, Mr Tanada commands the respect of Cabinet Ministers, armed forces generals, and supreme court justices. His allies are Leftist students, labourers, and thousands of ordinary Filipinos who have taken to the streets against Mr Marcos.

In January, 1983, Mr Tanada lay in a hospital bed, half his body paralysed by a stroke. Seventeen

months later, he was leading a nation-wide campaign to boycott the National Assembly election. Today, he is at the front lines of increasingly militant marches against Mr Marcos, braving police water cannons > and truncheons, tear gas bombs, and gunfire. Mr Tanada heads movements to rid the country of United States military bases and an Americanfunded nuclear power plant. As a lawyer of political dissidents, he defends factory workers, priests, and communist rebels. He also heads the opposition umbrella group, Coalition of Organisations for the Restoration of Democracy (C.0.R.D.). “Before I die,” , he says, talking of Mr Marcos’s rule, “I wish this nightmare will be over.” Magazine cartoonists picture him as a modern-day Don Quixote, a horseman charging windmills. Not once in the dozen years he has

appeared at the Supreme Court to challenge Mr Marcos’s authoritarian powers has he won a case. Hobbling on his cane and his hair grown white, he speaks with a voice that can hush a roomful of National Assembly members. Even judges and generals on military tribunals dare not interrupt him — partly because he is hard of hearing and probably wouldn’t stop talking if they tried. “I’m used to lost battles,”, he says. "There were many times when I knew the end would be defeat but if you’ve proven your stand, winning is secondary.” History, Mr Tanada says, will judge Mr Marcos harshly. He says that the Aquino assassination, which many Filipinos suspect was a military operation, has made it increasingly difficult for the Opposition to plead for non-violence. “The only language this regime seems to understand and can be made to respond to is force,” he once told businessmen. Mr Tanada himself frowns on

violence; but two of his relatives — son Renato, and Renato’s daughter, Karen — live underground, accused by Mr Marcos of involvement in 1980 terrorist bombings in Manila. Six years ago, soldiers blocked a peaceful march Mr Tanada was leading to protest about election cheating and threw him in an army stockade. Mr Marcos freed him six days later. Mr Tanada considers that more and bigger protest demonstrations, of a scale and frequency that would make it difficult for Mr Marcos to govern, are the best way to force Mr Marcos to step down.

“I will not stop,” Mr Tanada says, “If we are persistent enough, we will be victorious in the end.”

. Mr Tanada had his first taste of water cannon and tear? gas oh September 27 when riot police clashed with 3000 protesters he was leading on a march to the presidential palace. Soaking wet and shaking with anger at the soldiers, he nearly collapsed and

had to be held up by his son, Roberto, who was marching with him. The following day, at his doctor’s clinic, he was warned against taking part in demonstrations again. “You’re an old man,” Dr Clemente Gatmaitan admonished him. “You cannot absorb physical punishment anymore.” “How many more rallies can I attend?” was Mr Tanada’s response. “You cannot help but think of death at my age,” he says as he gears up for another march. “But these things do not affect me.” A citation given him last year by the Philippines’ top Jesuit university, the Ateneo de Manila, calls him “a man for others.”

Receiving it, he spoke mistyeyed of the burden the award placed on its recipient. “Although he may not now have the time,” he told his audience, “he pledges to try to become what the citation says he is. He will strive to be nearly that man.”