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Kirsty Thorpe profiles Romy Tiongco
How often do you come across someone who is really ready to lay down their life for their friends? Romy Tiongco is such a person – someone who makes an indelible impression on those he meets, a theologian who is also good with his hands, a deep thinker and a challenging speaker who believes in putting the gospel into action in his life. And this means he’s a man who courts danger too, so much so that his personal safety may depend on his story being told as it is here.
Born and brought up in the Philippines, where he worked originally as a Jesuit priest, Romy has often walked the fine line between Christian activism and outright political involvement. During his time as a priest, he saw that the biggest problem facing his community was the violence and hatred between Christians and Muslims, due to the land rights effect of on poor rural people.
In the 1980s, having left the priesthood, he co-founded MuCAARD (Muslim Christian Agency for Advocacy Relief and Development) with his wife, Linda, a British aid worker, and Muslim and Christian Filipino co-workers. It was and is a pioneering aid agency, unique for bringing together people from different races and both sides of the faith divide in the Philippines to combat poverty.
considerable personal risk
When President Corazon Aquino’s transitional government succeeded the fallen Marcos regime in 1986, Romy served nine months as mayor of Damulog, his home town on the island of Mindanao about 500 miles south of Manila. It was a further step of political activism, which Romy undertook as a short term measure, and at considerable personal risk.
Then he and Linda came to live in Britain, to bring up their children Aisha and Zac in Frodsham near Chester, and work for Christian Aid in the North West of England. Romy became a familiar figure in the region, well known around the churches and the United Reformed Church District Councils for his campaigning work on behalf of the poor and his talent for catching the eye, as when he rode a bicycle rickshaw through the centre of Chester in the Lord Mayor’s Parade.
Retirement a couple of years ago gave Romy the chance to pursue a long held dream of returning to his homeland to run an ethical and ecological timber project, helping local people. Not for him a quiet life of gardening and gentle voluntary work, much though he loves his family and his home in Cheshire.
poor people trust him
But, as so often in Romy’s life, one thing led to another and before he knew it the call came to get involved in local Philippines politics again as a candidate for mayor of Damulog. Activists persuaded Romy that poor people would trust him to stand as someone who took their side against the endemic corruption in the region, represented for many folk in the person of the existing mayor Fortunato Gudito.
He and several like minded people agreed to form an independent political group, with Romy’s lifelong friend Rogelio Estudillo as its organiser, to stand for the council together. Romy’s willingness to stand encouraged others to think that local politics could be different and they could be a part of changing things. Looking back on that decision Romy reflected later: ‘All the “little” people of Damulog wanted me to run. Some even said that their prayers had been finally answered. But I got no support from the “powerful ones”.’
It was when Rogelio was drawing in the final member of their ten candidate team that things began to get nasty. On January 4 he and Romy exchanged text messages and had a couple of mobile phone conversations. Rogelio was confident that a week later, when Romy got back to Damulog, the full line-up of candidates would be complete.
At 7.30 that evening, Romy heard that Rogelio had been shot dead at his home. He knew that his friend had received earlier threats on his life, and had been warned that Romy was also a target, though Rogelio had dismissed this as crude psychological warfare. In the wake of the shooting four of the candidates received night time visits from armed men. Three men in a taxi cab were said to be on the look out for Romy himself.
As he returned to the town and gave an emotional press conference two of the political candidates had already backed out and another had gone to ground. Meanwhile the police had begun investigating the killing as a crime of passion, or the work of a business rival, ignoring the probable political motivation for it.
a few are standing up
Romy says: ‘I now understand why Rogelio became the political organiser of the group and worked so hard to get a political line-up established by 13 January 2007. He was the head, hands, body and feet of the emerging group. I now understand better why the immediate effect of his murder was a dramatic crippling of the group.
But I was taught that “the blood of martyrs is the seed of the church”. In this light, the new political ticket that arose from Rogelio’s “ashes” is not surprising. Many were scared – are scared – but a few are standing up and taking on the cause and challenge.’
In the wake of the January murder Romy drew on his familiar campaigning skills, and the potential power of publicity, to bring about non-violent change. Friends and supporters in Britain were enlisted to send demands for a fair and open investigation of the murder to the regional governor, police chief and district attorney. Other appeals for democracy and openness have gone to the President, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the Philippines Embassy in Britain and the Melo Commission, a body set up by the Philippines government to investigate political killings.All this outside pressure seems to have borne fruit. The police now have suspects for the murder, though they’re no nearer tracing the paymasters who hired the killers. It could be that progress has been made because the government in Manila impressed on the local law enforcers that unsolved murders like this may cause international embarrassment.
Romy returned to the Philippines last month, following a few weeks in this country with family and friends. He joined a full team of fellow candidates for the local elections on May 14, reassuring the supporters he left behind here that their pressure had greatly increased his personal survival chances.
His parting message spelled out his feelings about returning to this daunting challenge: ‘I don’t want to become the Mayor of Damulog – I don’t want to be Mayor – in the way I wanted to buy a farm with Rob and plant trees. I wanted to go back to Damulog to enjoy a quiet life in the farm and also spend time to help strengthen MuCAARD.
‘On one level, it does not make sense why I am leaving behind a comfortable and safe present and future and taking all the risks in running for Mayor at the 14 May elections. But it follows the pattern of most of my adult life that I didn’t make decisions based on my personal gains and losses.’
When he first decided to run, he says now, he calculated his personal chances of avoiding death as 25%. Today he thinks those odds have been totally reversed as the result of outside support, and his likelihood of surviving the campaign stands at 80%.
Still, in the Philippines the prospect of having a fair, clean and non-violent election can never be taken for granted. Within days of filing his candidacy a few months ago Romy’s campaign headquarters was subjected to an attempted raid by the Mayor’s men, one of whom even pulled a gun on a farmer protecting the place, though thankfully the weapon failed to fire.
the politics of patronage
Though it goes against the grain, Romy now makes sure he and his Vice Mayoral candidate colleague are never alone and his personal whereabouts are known to one person only. The team has now been adopted by a national party, which also gives them greater protection, and is recruiting up to 100 women and men to form a ‘peace brigade’ to protect the candidates during the last fortnight of the campaign, when the danger of violence is at its worst. Supporters in Britain are raising fund for this protection group.
Romy declares himself totally committed to the task of trying to break what he calls the ‘politics of patronage’ in his homeland. He knows the risks he is taking but embraces them as part of the realities of life in his journey following Jesus.
Back at home in Frodsham, his wife Linda explains to those who ask why she let Romy go how it never occurred to her that she should stop him. ‘I knew what he was like when I married him,’ she adds, speaking as someone who knows first hand the passion and commitment that drive him to face this sort of risk.
Romy’s own take on things is to say: ‘Love sometimes demands “letting go” - to allow the beloved to be.’ All those who support and admire his courageous actions, and those of his colleagues in Damulog, hope and pray that events don’t require him to ‘let go’ of life itself in the process of making his stand for democracy and the needs of the poor.
Kirsty Thorpe is the Convenor of the Communications Committee
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