by Rose Cruz Churma
This publication concludes a series that honors the legacy of Filipino heroes, heroines, and heroic personages. The first of the series was Six Modern Filipino Heroes (1993), the second was Six Young Filipino Martyrs (1996) and the third was Seven in the Eye of History (2000).
Each of the individual events featured in all the books in the series are written by different authors, but all books were edited by Asuncion David Maramba who conceptualized the series in the 1990s.
In her introduction to this book, the editor explains that the idea of “justice” is a necessity for nation-building. She writes:
“I submit that in government or governance, the primacy of justice stands above the rest; superior to even love and compassion, beyond romanticizing, like charity and “awa.” Charity alleviates, justice corrects…”
Thus the impetus to turn this figment of thought into flesh and blood reality resulted in this anthology of six Filipino women who are either targets of injustice or fighters for justice.
These six women are Leila de Lima, Leni Robredo, Maria Rossa, Risa Hontiveros, Conchita Carpio Morales, and Sister Mary John Manazan.
Leila de Lima was a senator during Rodrigo Duterte’s administration. Based on fabricated grounds, she was jailed and was only recently released last November 14, 2023.
After six years, eight months, and 21 days she was freed from incarceration, surviving a frame-up by then-President Duterte whose pet project seems to be her persecution. She was the most vehement critic of his war on drugs early in his term.
During the term of President Noynoy Aquino, de Lima served as chair of the Commission on Human Rights (CHR) and the justice secretary. She graduated from San Beda College of Law as a salutatorian and ranked 8th in the bar exams.
As a law student, she served as editor of the law school’s paper. Before entering government service, she specialized in election law and founded and managed various law firms.
Leni Robredo was elected Vice President during Rodrigo Duterte’s term, and throughout her term, she was bullied by his administration.
She ran for president during the last national elections (May 2022) and was defeated “by a juggernaut of historical revisionism,” disinformation, and an electorate that needs re-educating.
Despite limited resources, Robredo managed to serve the Filipino people well, particularly the marginalized and disenfranchised. She inspired a “pink movement” that galvanized civic engagement with the young and encouraged Filipinos in the Diaspora to promote truth, justice, and democracy in their homeland.
Maria Ressa. The first-ever Filipino to win a Nobel, Ressa is a veteran journalist who was included in Time’s Person of the Year 2018 issue, along with other journalists around the world who are fighting the spread of fake news.
In 2011, she founded Rappler, an online news organization known for its critical coverage of then-Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte’s policies, including a drug war that has claimed thousands of lives.
Ressa became the target of several legal cases filed by the Philippine government during Duterte’s term.
Convicted of libel in 2019, she remained free on bail while her case is on appeal and was granted court approval to travel to Hawai’i in 2022 to speak at the East-West Center’s international media conference and was honored by the Hawai’i State Legislature during that trip to the Islands. She has since been vindicated by recent court decisions.
Risa Hontiveros is now on her second term in the Philippine Senate, and the de facto leader of the opposition.
She is often the first or only one who questions dubious bills, or questionable deals or proposals or projects of the current administration. Over the years, she has survived a torrent of misogyny, red tagging, and other challenges, considered a true progressive to serve in a national legislative office.
Hontiveros has been upholding justice her entire life in public service—as Anakbayan representative in the lower house from 2004 to 2010, and as senator since 2016. She has authored numerous laws, typically those that support the weak and marginalized sectors of society, particularly women and children.
Conchita Carpio Morales is a former associate justice of the Philippine Supreme Court and was appointed to be the country’s Ombudsman by then President Noynoy Aquino.
She can claim to have been appointed to various roles in government by five presidents and is the first woman justice to administer the oath of office to a president and vice president.
As an Ombudsman, an indicted a former president and sent three incumbent senators to jail.
In her official functions, she is perceived as stern, serious, and intelligent, but outside of her official business, she is warm and displays a quick wit and a sense of humor as observed by those who hosted her here in Hawai’i when she delivered a lecture on corruption at the UH Law School.
Sister Mary John Mananzan entered a Benedictine convent when she was nineteen. She recalls having mixed motivations; one motivation was her desire to affect social transformation and she recalls—“If you wanted to work with the poor, you had to enter the convent.”
She considers Vatican II convened by Pope John XXIII a real revolution. It changed the lives of many particularly religious women—and she was a beneficiary of that change.
Her “baptism of fire” occurred in October 1975 when she supported 600 La Tondena Distillery workers who were on strike for better work conditions.
After that, she got involved with Manila’s urban poor—a fight against the demolition campaign of Imelda Marcos to sanitize the urban landscape.
She came home from studies abroad to a country under Martial Law, and this was the start of her realization of the need to be involved with the struggle of the people and continues to this day.
In 1986 she was elected chair of GABRIELA (founded in 1983), the militant nationalist organization of Filipino women. She eventually established the first Women’s Studies program in the Philippines in 1985 and a Women Ecology and Wholeness Farm in Cavite. At 85 years old, she continues to be a force to be reckoned with.
Each of the narratives presented in this book inspires but also calls for action. That is the editor’s intent:
“Maramba invites reflection on the true nature of justice and its indispensable role in the fabric of a nation…the book not only pays homage to its subjects but also mobilizes a collective belief in the transformative power of justice.”
ROSE CRUZ CHURMA established Kalamansi Books & Things three decades ago. It has evolved from a mail-order bookstore into an online advocacy with the intent of helping global Pinoys discover their heritage by promoting books of value from the Philippines and those written by Filipinos in the Diaspora. We can be reached at kalamansibooks@gmail.com.
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