The Edjop effect

I’ll get right to the point: my wife Beng and I, along with a younger couple, caught one of the last few screenings of the movie “Edjop”– and we all emerged so moved, albeit in different ways, that we had to spend another hour-plus over coffee just to process what we saw.

It wasn’t even a matter of “liking” or “not liking” the movie or director Katski Flores’ and scriptwriter Jade Castro’s treatment of the life of the martyred activist Edgar “Edjop” Jopson. Grappling with the broader contours of the story, we were in no mood to quibble over details gotten wrong (and yes, there were a few) or political lines blurred, as many subsequent reviews and critiques seem to have focused on, for their own good reasons.

For Beng and me, the impact was personal, having been activists ourselves who came of age during that tumultuous First Quarter Storm that Edjop – perhaps inadvertently – helped launch. We saw “Edjop” for what it likely set out to be – the story of a young middle-class idealist’s radicalization in an environment of gross injustice, poverty, and oppression. What made it particularly poignant – and this for me represented the film’s true strength, although others may have seen it as a needless diversion – was its framing as a father-daughter story, of a younger generation’s belated understanding and acceptance of their elders’ actions and even excesses. I found it well acted, especially the major roles.

Full disclosure: director Katski had interviewed me, among many others, even while the film project was just getting started, to get my views on Edjop. (She had, of course, other excellent sources, including Bing Pimentel’s books on the man and the period and Joe Cuaresma’s documentary.) I told Katski that I could contribute very little beyond impressions gained from one brief encounter with Edjop.

That encounter happened a few days before January 26, 1970 – the date of Ferdinand Marcos’ State of the Nation Address at the old Senate building (now the National Museum), for which the National Union of Students of the Philippines (NUSP), which Edjop headed, was planning a massive protest rally. An organizational meeting for that rally was held somewhere in Quezon City, and for reasons I can no longer remember except possibly that I was already an activist at the Philippine Science High School, I was there, more of a kibitzer than anything.

I had just turned 16 a few days earlier. We had rallied in high school for local demands such as a new and larger building, but January 26 was going to be our first big exposure to national issues, and we took the lead from the NUSP, the so-called “moderates,” being then deeply mistrustful of the radical Left under the Kabataang Makabayan and Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan (KM-SDK). I recall that meeting of senior NUSP leaders and their allies, and Edjop in a white shirt or barong. What struck me was his earnestness, his passionate belief in his cause, conveyed in an even voice and manner.

We joined the January 26 rally, assembling on the grounds of the University of Sto. Tomas, bearing “J26M” armbands. We marched to the Senate where Marcos was speaking. I was too far from the entrance to follow everything, but I could see that the KM-SDK were also there in front, and I would later learn (though this account might yet be corrected) that Edjop had decided to terminate the rally early because things were turning ugly, but then SDK firebrand Gary Olivar, a formidable speaker, grabbed the microphone to agitate the crowd. Marcos emerged, a black cardboard coffin was thrown his way from somewhere, the security forces moved, and a melee ensued. We ran for our lives. The FQS had formally begun.

We moderates were almost as indignant about the way the Left had hijacked the event as by the State’s brutal response; I stayed out of the January 30-31 protest rally that proved even more violent, but watched on the news as students were teargassed and truncheoned along Mendiola and Malacañang. I dreaded what lay ahead; I was due to graduate from high school that year. It should have been a time of hope, but I knew only that something was terribly wrong, that the future was going to be harsh, and that I was as confused as anyone about what to do and whom to follow.

As it turned out, history carried a very wry sense of irony – even humor, were the setting not so tragic.

Within that year, I entered UP and almost immediately joined the Nationalist Corps, the Philippine Collegian, and the Alpha Sigma fraternity. The Nationalist Corps became my entry point to the SDK, and now I saw the “clerico-fascist” moderates to be sorely misguided and wanting in revolutionary fervor. In Alpha Sigma, one of my fraternity brothers was none other than the Gary Olivar we blamed for the J26M fiasco; in the Collegian, our editor was another frat brod, Tony Tagamolila.

As the decade moved on, I would be arrested and imprisoned, and upon my release, I would take on a writing job I needed – with the government. Tony Tagamolila would die in an encounter with the military in Panay. Gary Olivar would move to the US and study at Harvard (and much, much later would become PGMA’s spokesman).

Little did I know that Edjop himself had become radicalized and was performing far more dangerous tasks in Mindanao than most of us ever did even in Manila. His death fell like a rebuke to those who had doubted him. Meanwhile, I had resigned from my NEDA job to go back to UP to study and to teach, and by the time the Ninoy assassination and EDSA happened, I had become convinced – as I still am – that the middle road remains the most viable if not the only one forward. It seems that I’ve returned to Edjop’s NUSP.

I don’t know what Edjop himself would think of our situation now, of another Marcos in Malacañang trying to face down a possibly even more vicious alternative, of a CPP fractured by internecine warfare, of a people too easily swayed by rumor and shadow. If the effect of Edjop – the movie and the man – is to make us think of where we ourselves stand today, then the effort of making this film will well have been worth it.

*      *      *

Email me at [email protected] and visit my blog at www.penmanila.ph.