Martial Law 40 years after.

By Philippine Daily Inquirer
September 1, 2012

His provenance nurtured his politics that spanned six decades of the nation’s historic past.

Saturnino Cunanan Ocampo was born to a family of landless tenants in  Pampanga in Central Luzon, the cradle of agrarian unrest, a background that predisposed him to a life of political dissent.

He became a student activist in the 1950s, and co-founded the Maoist youth group Kabataang Makabayan while working as a business journalist in Manila in the mid-1960s.

When martial law was imposed in 1972, he dove underground and eluded military dragnets until his capture in 1976. One of the longest-held political prisoners, Ocampo escaped his guards while on a pass to vote at the National Press Club annual election in Intramuros, Manila in 1985.

Amid the euphoria of the Marcos downfall in 1986, he surfaced and served as spokesman of the leftist panel in peace talks with the Aquino administration. But the role proved short-lived.

In early 1987, the peace talks collapsed after soldiers fired at militant farmers camped at Mendiola Bridge near Malacañang. Ocampo went underground again and was arrested in 1989.  He was released in 1992. In May 2001, he won a seat in House of Representatives as a nominee of the partylist group Bayan Muna. He served three terms, championing the cause of farmers, fisherfolk, the urban poor and other marginalized sectors.

In 2010, he ran for the senate, and lost. No matter; Ocampo has proven through six decades that a heartfelt pro-people politics will always prosper whether one is in the august halls of Congress, or in a quaint barrio in the hills.

SIM: What was your political involvement when martial law (ML) was declared?

Satur Ocampo (SO):  I was a journalist-political activist involved with the Movement of Concerned Citizens for Civil Liberties (MCCCL), organized and led by then Sen. Jose W. Diokno in response to the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus in August 1971. In fact I was involved in the larger progressive protest movement that began in the mid-1960s.

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