BAYANI
Remembering Lean
By Marites N. Sison
First published in the author's column First Thoughts
Philippine Post, September 19, 2000

(Used with Ms Sison's permission)

HE WOULD play chess.

It would be his first luxury once the country became truly free, Leandro "Lean" Alejandro had said with a sudden smile when I asked him once what he would do when the fight was over.

A student leader at the University of the Philippines during the turbulent '80s, Lean had never been able play his favorite game much when he became an activist; there was no time to enjoy such sedentary pleasures. Not when the country was in the throes of poverty and brutality under the Marcos dictatorship. Certainly not when what was needed was to create and mobilize a critical mass.

Lean was unlike other student leaders of our time. He stood out not only because he was a beanpole. There was something about him that made people stop and listen. He was very smart, very witty, ergo very convincing when he tried to explain vague concepts like fascism and imperialism to freshmen students like myself, who had nothing else to do but warm our buns at the AS steps in between classes. So many times before we had been turned off by others who simply unfurled a red banner and burst our eardrums with, "Ibagsak ang Diktadurang US-Marcos!"

Not that Lean was not given to mouthing slogans. Let's put it this way—at least he knew what he was sloganeering about. He was one activist who, according to his friends, actually read anything from Doonesbury to Trotsky.

Like his favorite game of chess, Lean nurtured his activism on a cocktail of risk, caution and a heavy dose of reason. He knew when to advance, when to retreat and when to simply wait.

He also had a self-deprecating charm which he knew how and when to turn on. He occasionally surprised us with a visit at the Collegian office in Vinzons Hall just to shoot the breeze or pester us with jokes.

Think Lean and one sees a perpetually lit cigarette dangling from his right (or was it left?) hand and yes, who can forget those pair of tsinelas (rubber thongs) that he wore not as a fashion or political statement but as a matter of comfort.

I graduated ahead of Lean even though he was ahead of me by as much as three or four years. I knew that every semester he had purposely taken less loads than usual so he could stay longer in school and have plenty of time to take to the streets. People like him were needed to rally the youth and it was a dangerous calling he pursued passionately.

He later became one of the leaders of the Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (Bayan), tagged by the Marcos regime as the largest communist front.

Unlike other countries in Eastern Europe who, like us, suffered in the hands of dictatorial regimes, we have never been able to uncover the stacks of dossiers compiled by the Marcos military. But if we ever will, I am positive Lean's file would be voluminous because with his endearing qualities and deep intelligence he had been able to recruit thousands of men and women, both young and old, to the cause of freedom and democracy. He appeared on television many times and gave the Left a reasonable, human face.

Here was a young man respected even by political institutions like Lorenzo M. Tañada (whom he fondly called "Tanny") and Jose W. Diokno. In fact, Lean and Tanny were like a tandem: Tanny always arrived at meetings supported by his cane on the right hand and Lean on the left.

Lean was not unyielding, as others made him out to be. He was a free thinker, whose greatness lay in the fact that he was willing to listen and learn from others, according to his fellow student leader Hernani Braganza, now a Lakas congressman from Pangasinan and a member of the young progressive bloc collectively known as The Spice Boys.

So taken was Braganza by Lean's brand of activism and humanity that one of his sons is named after Lean. A respected journalist of our generation, Benjamin Pimentel (now with the San Francisco Chronicle), also named his son Lean.

As a journalist I occasionally bumped into Lean when I covered political rallies in the aftermath of EDSA. He was his usual warm self, greeting friends and acquaintances alike with a strong handshake and a bear hug. That was vintage Lean; he always made you feel worthy of his attention, he was never busy for anyone.

In May 1987 Bayan fielded him as a congressional candidate for his hometown district of Malabon—a hotspot. He ran against the sister-in-law of Cory and lost, amid reports of irregularities.

Four months later, on Sept. 19, 1987, Lean was killed. He was 27. The van which carried Lean and other Bayan officers had been waiting for the gate of its headquarters to open when it was sprayed with bullets. He left behind Lidy, his equally committed wife, a daughter, Rusan, barely a year old, a supportive family and a shaken people's movement.

It has been 13 years since Lean's death. Years back when I was away, a dear friend wrote that a musical had been staged in his honor in Manila. "Remember the time we rushed to St. Luke's? You were too distraught that I had to help you write the story," she said. Everything had been a blur that day - the rush to the bloody scene, the waiting at the hospital where Lean was taken, the endless wailing from relatives and people whose lives he had touched.

But there was one image that later stuck on my mind: The hospital attendant wheeling his lifeless body covered in white sheets onto a funeral van. What more did I need to be convinced that to pursue freedom is to dance with death?

To this day, Lean's killers remain unknown although rumors abound on who did it.

Braganza laments that Filipinos ("even UP students!") seem to have forgotten Lean. I hope not. It is always our misfortune that we push our real heroes to the edges of history and we wonder why we're trapped in this, our hellhole of a republic.

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