Former Senate President and Chairman Emeritus of the Liberal Party of the Philippines Jovito R. Salonga, from The Message of Hope, published in 1975 during the height of Martial Law:
We believe in the urgency and wisdom of change. Our conviction is that best human arrangements are imperfect and must be subject to continuing improvement and renewal. Even if one man rule were to suddenly disappear, we would still be engaged in the task of speaking the truth and working for freedom and justice…The first task is to speak the truth with boldness and sincerity…This is satyagraha, the force of truth to which Mahatma Gandhi devoted his entire life.
We believe that when a system becomes so unjust and oppressive that more and more people are minded to resist its commands, a deliberate and public refusal to obey becomes a supreme act of conscience…Our people who do not approve of one-man rule, on the one hand, or the Communist order, on the other, should now begin to reflect on what the third alternative should be.
In matters of national concern, truth is arrived at only if there is responsible freedom of expression. That freedom must therefore be restored and maintained. Justice also demands that the right of every man, woman and child of this nation to integral human development be recognized and rendered operative. This means that we must reconstruct a society in which every individual shall have rightful access to the resources and basic values—spiritual as well as material—which he will need to develop himself to the highest level of his potentialities. This access is what makes him free.
Such a society can be best established and maintained only under a government that is participatory, a government in which the people are free to take part in the decisions that affect their livelihood and their lives; a government in which those to whom the people entrust such powers are accountable to the body politic; a government in which the mechanisms exist to make that accountability not fiction but fact.
A commitment to truth, justice and freedom: Let that be our third alternative.
