The “Towards a Just and Lasting Peace” conference will be held from June 16-19, 2006 at the Russian Hall, 600 Campbell St. Another one-day conference, “Prospects for Peace, Human Rights and Democracy in the Philippines,” will be held on June 21 at the YWCA on Beatty St. This is Jalandoni’s third visit to the city.

 For the past 12 years, the NDFP and the Government of the Republic of the Philippines (GRP) have had on-going peace negotiations. But the talks have been stalled under the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Jalandoni will give an update on the peace negotiations and the current political situation in the Philippines at the two June conferences.

The scion of wealthy sugar landowners in the province of Negros Occidental, Jalandoni, just five years into the priesthood, found himself as head of the Social Action Office of the diocese of Bacolod in 1967 at a time of growing ferment among sugarcane workers.

Poor peasants were driven off their land by corrupt landowners and strikes were met with violence unprecedented in their viciousness. They sought refuge in his office and asked him to intervene but his valiant efforts were met with resistance by the landowners and their cohorts in the government.

On Sept. 23, 1972, the day martial law was publicly announced by the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Jalandoni got word that his office would be raided by the military. The following day, he slipped the dragnet and went underground.

It was his right of passage and marked his cutting off ties with the institutional church he served for ten years. “In spirit, I had already left the priesthood…” he told the author of the essay ‘Unlikeliest Rebel’ in the book Seven in the Eye of History.

In September 1973, he was arrested with his wife, the former nun Coni Ledesma, herself also a scion of a wealthy family in Negros. Released from prison the following year and after both obtained their respective dispensations from their religious vows the two were officially married in simple ceremonies in Mandaluyong, a suburb of Manila on Dec. 19, 1974.

No less than the newly minted Cardinal Jaime Sin who would later become a thorn on the side of the Marcos dictatorship, officiated in the ceremony.

After his release, he and Connie immersed themselves in organizing and mobilizing industrial workers in the capital city of Manila, a far cry from their former work with the agricultural workers of Negros. They helped organize the first and biggest protest action against the dictatorship with the workers strike at the La Tondena distillery plant in October 1975, earning the ire of the Marcos military.

A tip warned him of an impending arrest, and on Jan. 1976, he again went underground where he contributed his skills to help the Preparatory Commission of the National Democratic Front in its united front work against the dictatorship.

He was subsequently assigned to take up international work for the NDFP and slip out of the country in October 1976 and became a political exile in the Netherlands where he lives up to now with Coni and their only son, Jose Edmundo.

Jalandoni will be joined by other speakers at the Towards a Just and Lasting Peace conference from the Philippines such as: Dr. Carol Araullo, Chair of Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN or New Patriotic Alliance) and Elmer Labog, Chair of the militant labour alliance Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU). At the June 21 conference Jalandoni will also be joined by Maita Santiago of Migrante - International.

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