Jose W. Diokno: The Scholar-WarriorBY JOSE DALISAY, JR.
To young Filipinos for whom EDSA 1 and the martial-law
dictatorship are now vague if not vanished memories, the name of
Jose Wright DioknoPepe to his friends and contemporariesmay be a
distant echo. It is a name often spoken in the same breath as Ninoy
Aquino, Tanny Taada, Chino Roces, Jovy Salonga, Gasty Ortigas, and
a few other battle-scarred fighters for freedom, but the
association, while uplifting for all, tends to blur the individual
in favor of the group, as these unselfish gentlemen would have
preferred.But every hero is individually formed in the crucible of
struggle, every heroic act individually chosen. Each hero emerges
like a pearl in an oyster from the womb of resistance, their
brightest and strongest qualities rising to the surface, the
hardened accretions of personal values tested in the arena of
public issues.For a man such as Pepe Dioknochampion of human
rights, nationalism, and Philippine sovereigntyheroism was never
something to be actively sought by an illustrious few. It was,
rather, a collective virtue immanent in the people, a people
awakened to their rights, opportunities, and civic
responsibilities. It was a hero who led a consistent life of
thinking the right ideas and doing the right thingsa life which, by
its very nature, and despite its search for quietude in a roiling
universe, would inevitably court danger and alarm.Dioknos was such
a life, that of a lover of books who enjoyed nothing more than to
lie prone in his library, devouring tome after tome of fiction,
education, and legal philosophy, and yet who could not and did not
refuse to march in the streets or argue in court as an impassioned
combatant for his most cherished principles.Unlike some of his
contemporaries, Diokno was never flashy, never sought attention
except to pursue or prove a point. He came from a conservative,
fairly privileged background, but eschewed flamboyance; he was very
well educated and literate in several languages, but forsook
bombast for substance. He had a wry sense of humordemonstrated by a
possibly apocryphal story about his deadpan reaction to his
reported dourness (You know meDiokno, no joke.)but he preferred to
laugh at the jokes of others. He was, at one time, a Secretary of
Justice and then a Senator of the Republicbut he campaigned alone,
traveled without bodyguards, and never kept or fired a gun in his
political life. When he died, it was in the company of those he
held dearesthis family, and his books.Family backgroundMany of
those books came from the library of his father Ramon, himself a
lawyer who rose to be become a senator and later a Justice of the
Supreme Court. Ramons father, in turn, was the son of a
revolutionary general, Ananias Diokno, who had liberated much of
Panay from the Spaniards in 1898. The Dioknos hailed from Taal,
Batangas, but Pepe was born in Manila on Feb. 26, 1922, to Ramon
and his wife Leonor Wright, an American mestiza. (When Pepes
daughter Maris took this subject up with him and asked him if his
lineage therefore made him one-fourth or one-eighth American, Pepe
huffed and said, One hundred percent Filipino!)It was a large
family; Ramon had married Leonor after the death of his first wife,
and there were ten children in the brood (Pepe himself, by
coincidence, would also have ten children). As the son of a general
who went on to fight the Americans, Ramon Dioknodespite the irony
of marrying a mestizaloathed the United States and forbade the
speaking of English in his home. Thus Pepe grew up speaking
Spanish, and learned English only from a tutor, as part of his
schooling.Ramon Diokno had been an active lawyer and political
figure, serving as a councilor in Batangas and later as a campaign
manager for and counsel to President Manuel L. Quezon before
serving in the Senate and the Supreme Court. Not surprisingly, he
wanted his son Jose to take up law as well; a half-brother of Pepes
had also finished law, but died young. The boy resisted and, after
graduating as valedictorian of his high school class in De La Salle
College in 1937, he studied commerce instead. Thanks to repeated
acceleration, he graduated at the tender age of 17 also from La
Salle, summa cum laude. He took the CPA board examinationsfor which
he had to secure special dispensation, since he was too youngand
topped them with a rating of 81.18 percent.Self-taught
bar-topnotcherAt this point, he could no longer ignore his fathers
suasions, and he enrolled in law at the University of Sto. Tomas.
He had wanted to go to the University of the Philippines and would
later send his own children there, but his conservative Catholic
parents would have none of it. As it happened, after just a year of
study, the Second World War broke out. Pepes father told him to use
the time to read, and picked out the books for him to plow through.
Pepes passion for learning manifested itself immediately; after
reading a couple of books, he went to the old man and asked to be
tested, but the old manas Maris Diokno recalls her fathers
storytold him, You either know it or you dont. Just read.He
continued reading, and when the war was over he took the bar exams
in 1944 under a special dispensation from the Court, since he had
never completed his law degree. Again Pepe Diokno topped them with
a rating of 95.3 percentalong with Jovito Salonga, who had gone the
full route. At this time, his father took ill and asked him to take
over the firm.One of his first important cases, as it turned out,
involved defending his father. Ramon Diokno ran for the Senate in
the first postwar government in 1946, and won, but he objected to
parity rights for American businessmena nationalist stance
supported by Jesus Lava, Luis Taruc, and the communist-affiliated
Democratic Alliance in the Lower House. To punish Ramon, his
enemies filed a case of election fraud against him. Pepe rose to
his fathers defense, and eventually they won the case, but only at
the end of the term in 1949. The father-and-son team must have made
quite an impression; Lorenzo Taada would later recall the young
Pepe assisting his father in court, the both of them blessed with
phenomenally photographic memories. (After winning his case, Ramon
Diokno was then appointed to the Supreme Court, and died in Baguio
during one of the tribunals summer sessions.)Young lawyerIn the
meanwhile Pepes life took another happy turn. He had met a pretty
Bulakea named Carmen Reyes Icasiano at a party; they had come with
their respective dates. But Pepe and Nena soon fell in love, and
they were married in 1949, after a two-year courtship. All in all,
they would have ten children: Carmen Leonor, Jose Ramon, Maria de
laPaz, Maria Serena, Maria Teresa, Maria Socorro, Jose Miguel, Jose
Manuel, Maria Victoria, and Martin Jose. The last, Pepe and Nena
took in as a two-week old infant in 1967.Pepe Diokno the young
lawyer found corporate law remunerative but boring. He took on some
corporate cases, but what he really enjoyed was litigation, the
presentation of evidence. Again the passion showed in his
eloquence; when he argued a case before the Supreme Court, other
lawyers flocked to watch him and to listen to him argue fluently in
both English and Spanish.One of Pepes clients and closest friends
was Manila Mayor Arsenio Lacson, a powerful politician who was
poised to run for the presidency. Diokno had successfully defended
the outspoken Lacson against a libel charge, stemming from Lacsons
acerbic attacks on his radio program; Lacson also wrote a column
for a newspaper that Pepe edited. Maris Diokno remembers how close
the mayor became to the family, who were then living in a house in
Paraaque, near the Baclaran church. Lacson used to go the house at
six in the morning and cook breakfast for everyone before waking
them up.Secretary of JusticeIn 1961, Diokno was appointed Justice
Secretary by President Diosdado Macapagal. It was a political
anomaly, because Macapagal was a Liberal Party stalwart while
Diokno was a lifelong Nacionalista. But Macapagal had asked the
capable Lacsondespite Lacsons also being a Nacionalistato help run
his presidential campaign, and Lacson had agreed only on condition
that Diokno be appointed to head Justice if Macapagal won. And so
it happened.In any event the union did not last long; in March
1962, Sec. Diokno ordered a raid on a firm owned by American
businessman Harry S. Stonehill, who was suspected of tax evasion
and bribery, among other crimes. Stonehill reputedly bragged about
having big-name politicians in his pocketbut Jose W. Diokno was not
one of them. The arrest and the subsequent corruption scandal
resulted in an embarrassed Macapagal having to fire several Cabinet
membersincluding, inexplicably, Sec. Diokno, who had found the
temerity to arrest Stonehill. He simply received a letter from the
President, accepting a resignation he never submitted, Maris
recalls.Diokno received death threats because of the Stonehill
case; the family had to move important papers from one hiding place
to another, and Mayor Lacson assigned them a driver, a big, dark
plainclothesman from the Manila Police Department.SenatorIn 1963,
Pepe Diokno was invited by the Nacionalistas to run for the Senate,
and he agreed. He won, and would serve two terms: from 1963 to
1969, and from 1969 until the declaration of martial law in
1972.For the growing Diokno family, it was a happy interlude. The
girls came to his office after school and played in the anteroom
until it was time to go. It was a family that prayed the rosary
every night, led by Pepe himself. Family outings usually meant
piling up in the big black car for a trip to the PECO bookstore,
where they would stay all day, poring over books. Whenever Pepe and
Nena went abroad, the children got more boxes of books, such as
those by Enid Blyton. (The only exception, Maris says, was a
brother of Pepes who had aged with a childs mind, and for him Pepe
always had a toy.)Pepe himself loved novels about cowboys and
Indians, devouring them while lying flat on his stomach. After
lunch and his afternoon siesta, he listened to Tony Falcon, Agent
X-44; he also loved kung fu movies. He was generous with money, but
he never kept money in his pockets; he gave everything to Nena. So
he often found himself strapped for cash, and Nena would have to
run after him before leaving the house to make sure his wallet had
something in it.At work in the Senate, Diokno quickly established
himself as a nationalist and reformer. But he also pushed to
promote Philippine businesson fair terms. The activist-writer Ed
Garcia reports that: On the floor of the Senate, he did not
hesitate to articulate his thoughts on economic self-reliance and
self-determination in the face of the continued stay of foreign
military bases which, he argued, justified foreign intervention in
Philippine affairs.As lawmaker, he successfully fought the oil
companies and masterminded the signing into law of the Oil Industry
Commission Bill. He is the acknowledged father of the Board of
Investments and author of the Investment Incentives Act. He also
authored Joint Resolution No. 2, which set the policies for
economic development and social progress, and co-authored the
Export Incentives Act and the Revised Election Law, among others.
For his performance as legislator, Pepe Diokno was cited
Outstanding Senator by the Free Press for four successive years
beginning 1967. (Garcia, 57)
NationalistIt was typical of Diokno to mince no words in
propounding his principles. In a speech before an American audience
in 1968delivered in a bastion of gentility called the Westchester
Country Clubhe launched into a comprehensive and well-measured but
clearly critical speech explaining Philippine economic nationalism.
The Philippines, Diokno said, had a dream: It is the dream to join
the modern world without sacrificing democracy to dictatorship, as
others are doing; not at the expense of the poorwho have paid the
price elsewherebut of those who reaped the benefits of colonialism
and therefore can afford the cost of modernization. Philippine
nationalism is determined to achieve this dream. It knows it must
restructure the Philippine economy and Philippine society to do so.
It knows it will be difficult and painful. All it asks of your
people and your government is your understanding and, if you deem
it worthwhile, your help to make the process faster, less painful.;
and if you do not deem it worthwhile, to leave us alone.Let us do
it as we believe it must be done, not as you would do it in our
place. Let us make our mistakes, not suffer yours. With your help
or despite your hindrance, Philippine nationalism will do the job.
No one else can. (Manalang, 102)When he finished, his editor would
note, there was no applause.Martial LawBy the early 70s the
political climate was darkening, and Pepe Diokno was beginning to
sense an alarming shift in the wind, toward authoritarianism. When
Marcos suspended the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus, Diokno
resigned from the Nacionalista Party in protest, and took to the
streets with the other members of the Movement of Concerned
Citizens for Civil Liberties (MCCCL). He had cast his lot with the
resistance.And so it happened that when Marcos declared martial law
on Sept. 21, 1972, Pepe Diokno was among those first enemies of the
State arrested by the military in the early morning hours of
September 23.They had just prayed the novena, and the young Dioknos
were planning to step out for a movie with their friends, but their
parents forbade them because of the bombings that had been going
on. Just then five or six carloads of armed soldiers arrived to
invite Sen. Diokno to join them. They had no warrant, and had cut
the Dioknos phone line. To avoid any more trouble for his family,
Diokno changed from his pajamas and went with the soldiers to Camp
Crame, accompanied by his young son Mike. He was later moved to
Fort Bonifacio, there to join the likes of Ninoy Aquino, Chino
Roces, Teddy Locsin Sr., Voltaire Garcia, Nap Rama, Jose Mari
Velez, and his other comrades in the civil liberties movement. The
country had been plunged into the maw of martial law, realizing his
worst expectations.Solitary confinementThe close-knit Dioknos were
devastated by his arrest and imprisonment, especially when he was
transferred, along with Ninoy Aquino, to solitary confinement in
Laur, Nueva Ecija. We didnt know where he had gone, Maris
remembers. One day the military just came and dropped off his
belongings, including his underwear, except his papers, which the
military kept.Laur brought together two of the keenest minds of the
resistance to the dictatorship: Diokno and Ninoy Aquino, ten years
his junior, equally impassioned but much more voluble. Ninoy looked
up to Pepe as a kind of older brother, Maris says. Ninoy was a
raconteur, with lots of stories. Dad was quiet and enjoyed
listening and laughing along. Unlike Ninoy, Pepes fight with Marcos
never had a personal element; he had never had a face-to-face
confrontation with Marcos, and never would.Solitary confinement
would both strain and strengthen the spirit of the two men. Nena
Diokno herself was a strong, intelligent woman. Your mother is
really strong and she kept me going, Pepe would later tell Maris.
Pepe Diokno forbade his family to cry in the presence of the
guards. Dont give the military the pleasure of seeing you in pain,
he told his children. The only exception was his aunt Paz Wilson,
the sister of his mother (who had already died by then), who had
virtually raised him. She often cried during her visits. Pepes
solitary imprisonment at Fort Magsaysay in Laur, Nueva Ecija (with
Ninoy in a separate cell) was a painful moment for the family. Upon
seeing their faces as the Diokno family left the visiting area,
Cory Aquino and her children prepared themselves for the worst. It
was rare to see the Dioknos in tears.The whole familyeven Paz, who
was in her 90shad to submit to a strip search when they came to
visit him, and again when they stepped out. The family endured the
discomfort and the humiliation to spend precious time with
him.ReleaseBack in Fort Bonifacio, they brought him booksin French
and Spanish, so no one could censor them, as they did the English
texts; Pepe and Nena also spoke in Spanish, or one of the children
would play the guitar and the rest would sing to drown out their
parents voices. The family brought in food; he brought out coffee
for Nena. When allowed to spend the day in his cell, usually on a
Sunday, they would lay out a mat on the grass and all lie there,
next to each other. Whenever his roses bloomed he would say his
release was nearing; the children harvested peanuts and weeded his
tiny garden.Once, while he was still in prison, Nena brought him
disastrous news: the building that housed his library on M. H. del
Pilar had been burned in a suspicious fire. He had known that
library so well that he could ask for a book and specify from
memory which shelf it was on. Thankfully, unknown to him and with
uncanny intuition, Nena had earlier moved most of his books to the
house, where they lay in topsy-turvy heapsbut safely.On Sept. 11,
1974Ferdinand Marcoss 57th birthday, and almost two years since he
was picked upPepe Diokno was released from prison. He had never
been charged with anything.Free Legal Assistance GroupSharpened and
toughened by his imprisonment, Diokno plunged, to provide legal
help to political detainees and other martial-law victimsand long
before other prominent lawyers and organizations took up the cause
of human rightshe set up the Free Legal Assistance Group. His
concerns soon expanded to other causes and constituencies,
including tribal groups threatened by exploitation and military
atrocities, peasants, social workers, and other activists. He
worked with Sister Mariani Dimaranan in Task Force Detainees, which
had been set up by the Association of Major Religious Superiors of
the Philippines to protect the rights of martial law victims and to
document cases of torture, summary execution, and disappearances.He
had no fear of being arrested again, and went around and outside
the country to speak against tyranny and abuse in the Philippines.
But his was no message of gloom and doom; he could see beyond the
immediate horizon into a new dawning of freedom. In one of his most
oft-quoted speeches, he said:And so law in the land died. I grieve
for it but I do not despair over it. I know, with a certainty no
argument can turn, no wind can shake, that from its dust will rise
a new and better law: more just, more human, and more humane. When
that will happen, I know not. That it will happen, I know.
(Manalang, 76)Against the regimes reasoning that authoritarianism
was needed to spur development, he argued:Development is not just
providing people with adequate food, clothing, and shelter; many
prisons do as much. Development is also people deciding what food,
clothing, and shelter are adequate, and how they are to be
provided. Authoritarianism does not let people decide; its basic
premise is that people do not know how to decide. So it promotes
repression, not development, repression that prevents meaningful
change, and preserves the structure of power and privilege.
(Manalang, 42)Conversely, as Ed Garcia observed, (Diokno) did not
confine his defense of human rights merely to victims of civil and
political rights violations but extended his efforts to promote
economic, social, and cultural rights as well. (Garcia, 66-67)Ka
Pepe was often approached for legal help by members of the
Communist Party, and he gave help freely; more than once they asked
him to join and even lead them, but he consistently declined. In a
speech before the Bishops-Businessmens Conference of the
Philippines in April 1985, he argued forcefully and cogently for
the legalization of the Communist Party, maintaining that It is
unjust to prosecute a person for his political beliefs. (Manalang,
53) But he refused to believe in the necessity of armed struggle.
There were not very many among those who suffered during the long
period of martial law who believed that the dictatorship could be
overthrown without resort to arms, Garcia notes. What singled Pepe
Diokno out was that he not only believed it was possible to do so
but that more than anything else he worked relentlessly to build an
active resistance of citizens that was necessary to make it happen.
(Garcia, 67)People PowerTo this end, in March 1983, he co-founded
KAAKBAY (the Movement for Philippine Sovereignty and Democracy). It
took on issues such as elections, the US military bases, and other
nationalist concerns. As immersed as he had long been in the
struggle for human rights and civil liberties, the assassination of
Ninoy Aquino in August 1983 further spurred his involvement in a
broadening network of resistance groups, including the Justice for
Aquino, Justice for All (JAJA) movement, and the Kongreso ng
Mamamayang Pilipino (KOMPIL).When the inevitable happened and EDSA
1 erupted in February 1986, Pepeever the thinking manwas initially
doubtful. He refused to go when this happened in EDSA, says Maris.
There was a feeling that this was a military attempt to save their
necks and the people were simply being used to cover that
action.Even when he later agreed to serve the Aquino government as
chairman of the Presidential Committee on Human Rights and chairman
of the government panel in charge of negotiations with rebel
forces, he never forgot the need for vigilance, reminding his
countrymen that: Above all, we can strengthen the President by
pointing out what she is doing that is wrong. I think we weaken her
if we support everything she does even when we do not agree with
that she is doing. Yes-men are not compatible with democracy.
People expect our President and public officials to make
mistakesbut of course, to correct them as soon as they are
convinced that they have erred. How can they know they have erred,
if we do not tell them so? (162)As he had feared, the fairy-tale
unity of what Maris (as Dr. Ma. Serena Diokno, the professor of
history) would describe as someone who was for agrarian reform
sitting next to someone who would refuse to give up their land
sitting next to someone who simply wanted US nuclear weapons and
the bases out, next to someone who said we need the Americans soon
unraveled. These contradictions and tensions tragically exploded in
what would be known as the Mendiola Massacre of Jan. 22, 1987,
during which 15 peacefully protesting farmers were shot dead by
government troops practically at the doorsteps of the Palace. In
deep disgust and even greater sadness, Jose W. Diokno resigned from
his two positions. It was the only time we saw him near tears,
Maris says.Death and legacyBy theneven much earlierDiokno was
facing his own death. In 1984, he had been diagnosed with lung
cancer. He had smoked all his adult life, as did Nena. In October
1986, they took him to Manila Doctors Hospital for a blood
transfusion; things looked very bleak at that point, and when Maris
asked the doctor how much time they had left with him, he told her
a matter of days. But Pepe himself thought otherwise; I know Im
dying, he said, but not just yet. He had the transfusion stopped
and asked to be brought home; he didnt want to die in the
hospital.He lived for four more months. They had brought him down
to lie among his books, which was where he died, in peace and free
of pain, at 2:40 am on Feb. 27, 1987. He had just turned 65.Disease
had ravaged his body, and creeping blindness had stilled his
writing, but he was lucid to the last. The children remember him at
his hopeful, fighting, smiling best, dreaming of justice on earth,
and justice in time. In 1981, in a speech on The Filipino Concept
of Justice, Jose W. Diokno took that dream in his hands and
said:Are these standards impossible to meet? If you mean meet
completely and immediately, they are. But only yesterday in world
time, it was thought impossible to land on the moon. And not too
long ago, Aristotleone of the wisest of menjustified slavery as
natural and listed torture as a source of evidence. So standards
thought too high today may well turn out to be too low tomorrow.
But whether they do so or not is not really important. What Nikos
Kazantsakis said of freedom can be said of justice: the superior
virtue is not to receive justice, it is to fight relentlessly for
itto struggle for justice in time, yet under the aspect of
eternity. (Manalang, 31)Upon Dioknos death, President Aquino
declared a period of national mourning, and in 2004, President
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo issued an order declaring a national day of
remembrance on his 17th death anniversary. Some lawmakers sponsored
a bill to rename Taft Avenue to Diokno Avenue. None of those
encomiums resonate more than Pepe Dioknos own words and the
strength of his faith in a better future. When he observed a young
woman cradling her husband who had been horribly tortured, he saw
not despair but hope:As I looked at the couple, I saw in them the
face of every Filipino; and I knew then that martial law could
crush our bodies; it could break our minds; but it could not
conquer our spirit. It may silence our voice and seel our eyes; but
it cannot kill our hope nor obliterate our vision. We will struggle
on, no matter how long it takes or what it costs, until we
establish a just community of free men and women in our land,
deciding together, working and striving together, but also singing
and dancing, laughing and living together. That is the ultimate
lesson. (Manalang, 45)SourcesDiokno, Ma. Serena. Personal
interview. 13 December 2005.Garcia, Ed. Jose W. Diokno: A Man of
Uncommon Valor. Six Modern Filipino Heroes. Ed. Asuncion David
Maramba. Pasig City: Anvil Publishing, 1993.Jose W. Diokno.
Filipinos in History. 24 November 2005Jose W. Diokno. 23 November
2005 .Manalang, Priscila S., ed. A Nation for Our Children:
Selected Writings of Jose W. Diokno. Quezon City: Jose W. Diokno
Foundation, Inc., 1987.Ramon Diokno. 23 November 2005 .
