Manzano has flooded the U.S. Congress and the White
House with telegrams, mostly-handwritten personal
letters, documents, and press clippings pointing out why
the government of the United States should not support
the dictatorship in the Philippines. He even managed
to convince television stations in the San Francisco area
to grant him free air time to refute single-handedly the
overpowering propaganda of the Manila martial regime in
the United States.
In fact, Manzano and Antonio Garcia, information officer
of the MFP , were the only two persons who supported me
mightily in my decision to go to Washington, D.C. Manzano
used some of his contacts on Capitol Hill to make sure that I
would be heard by the United States Congress.
It was the case I was about to state, and the very decision I
had made to state this case before the U.S. Congress, that
gave me a sense of purpose, a mission for my country, and a
sense of entering the threshold of history.
At the time, I tried to relate the feeling I had to the fact that
the United States of America, on the eve of its bicentennial,
had found a most auspicious, if regrettable, occasion to
dramatize the wisdom of its founding fathers in opting for
a responsible living presidency at the apex of government. I
imagined the overwhelming rejection from the delegates to
the Continental Congress in 1776 for certain well-intentioned
proposals that the former British colonies of North America
embrace a dictatorial form of government for the newly-
independent nation. I thought that the situation that the
United States of America now faced was exemplification
of the principle of taxation with representation; people pay
heavy taxes for having a voice in the affairs of government.
The propitious occasion was, of course, the forced
resignation of President Richard Milhous Nixon on August ...
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