Ateneo de Manila University's Citation of Atty. Carlos Medina Jr.
Carlos P Medina Jr
Parangal Lingkod Sambayanan
In 1976, Carlos “Chochoy” Medina entered the Ateneo de Manila University (ADMU) with a plan. Philosophy would prepare him for law school and a law career, which in turn would prepare him for a career in politics, following the tradition of his mother’s family, the Pichons of Davao City.
But the Ateneo in the late 1970’s was a crucible of ferment in a time of dictatorship. It was also under a mandate from Fr Pedro Arrupe, SJ, then Superior General of the Society of Jesus, to form women and men for others. Chochoy’s experiences at the university gave him the lifetime orientation that turned his ambitions from political office to the defense of human rights. Four experiences were particularly formative for Chochoy. The first was his experience with the Ateneo Student Catholic Action (atSCA), an organization that practiced solidarity with nearby informal settler communities. Chochoy learned to see the lives of the communities’ residents through their perspectives. He also learned to see their situation from the perspective of atSCA’s social analysis, which critiqued the nation’s inequitable distribution of wealth as antithetical to Catholic social teaching and a result of the structural exploitation of the poor. He also learned leadership skills, joining atSCA’s executive board in 1978 as a cell leader and becoming its president in 1979. The second formative experience was the summer work camp organized by the Ateneo’s Office for Social Concern and Involvement (OSCI). For six weeks, he lived and worked among farmers in Puting Kahoy, Silang, Cavite, where he learned about their problems over their strong, homegrown coffee and where he also experienced being mildly interrogated by the military.
A third formative experience was his recruitment into a social democratic group opposing the dictatorship. This experience sharpened his political skills and his awareness of the different forces in the political underground.
The fourth formative experience was the exer-cise of his leadership in the wider student commu-nity through the Socially Oriented Activities (SOA) of the Ateneo, a political bloc of student organ-izations working with the poor, which Chochoy co-founded. SOA sought to raise the Ateneans’ aware-ness about social issues, and fielded candidates for the student government around an agenda empha-sizing service to the poor and democratic citizen-ship. The presidents of SOA organizations and their allies in the student government often strategized campaigns well into the small hours of the morn-ing. Chochoy was an energizing presence at these meetings. Xavier University’s president, Fr Roberto Yap SJ, then president of the Ateneo Christian Life Community, recalls that as the young conspirators grew drowsy from the lateness of the hour, Chochoy would rouse them by standing on his head while facilitating the meeting.
After college, Chochoy entered the Ateneo School of Law. His father was proud of how Chochoy put himself through higher education with scholarships, never requiring financial assistance from his family. What his father did not know was that Chochoy, too proud to ask for money, would sometimes eat no more than a single monay and
a softdrink for lunch. Chochoy was a focused law student. He also remained involved in issues of the poor, spending the summer of 1981 as a legal aide for indigent clients in the prelature of Malaybalay.
After the 1984 bar examinations and a stint at the San Antonio Legal Aid Corporation (SALAC) as defense counsel for Manila City Jail detainees, Chochoy spent a year earning a Master of Laws at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) of the University of London in 1986. In that year, the dictatorship collapsed—somewhat to his chagrin, since the only contribution he could make to the event was to be photographed by a major London daily leaping for joy with Filipino students from LSE.
Chochoy’s first job after LSE was as research associate of the Institute on Church and Social Issues (ICSI), a Jesuit think tank that assists organizations of the marginalized in articulating and advocating policy reforms. At ICSI he drafted proposed legislation for urban poor organizations; created and edited its monthly newsletter, Intersect; did research for the first Aquino administration’s Government Negotiating Panel for Peace in the 1987 peace negotiations with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP), the network of organizations allied with the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP); and served as resource person of the 1988 Presidential Task Force on the Improvement of the Administration of Justice.
In 1989, he was invited to establish the Ateneo Human Rights Center (AHRC), an ADMU auxiliary unit that seeks to promote and protect human rights by training prospective human rights lawyers, increasing the poor’s access to justice, monitoring government compliance with human rights instruments, and empowering civil society. He was AHRC’s executive director for over two decades. Many of his engagements while at AHRC were particularly relevant to the strengthening of democracy. He helped develop curricula for law schools that included courses on human rights and laws affecting vulnerable groups. He initiated and supervised a project for the establishment of Multi-Sectoral Quick Action Teams of government agencies and civil society groups to address extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances.
He continued his involvement in the peace process, founding in 2004 the Government of the Republic of the Philippines Monitoring Committee (GRP-MC) of the Office of the Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process (OPAPP), and serving as its vice-chairperson from 2006 to 2007. He participated in the government’s peace negotiations with the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People’s Army-National Democratic Front of the Philippines (CPP-NPA-NDFP) in Oslo, Norway. He also provided advice and education to military and police personnel, government officials, and civil society groups on peace, conflict management, human rights, and international humanitarian law.
In 2006, an administration-led “people’s initiative” for charter change threatened to create an opening for indefinite authoritarian rule through a transitional presidency with enhanced powers and an interim parliament authorized to postpone elections. Chochoy co-founded One Voice, a movement to oppose this insidious attempt at self-serving constitutional revision. The Supreme Court ruled the proposed “amendment” unconstitutional.
He also contributed to the defense of electoral integrity as a co-convenor of the Legal Network for Truthful Elections (LENTE), a national network of lawyers, paralegals, and volunteers monitoring Phil-ippine elections and advocating electoral reforms. LENTE was founded in 2007 amidst the political crisis triggered by the “Hello Garci” scandal.
Chochoy helped build an international legal and human rights community. From 1991 to 2003 he was secretary of the Human Rights Committee of the Law Association for Asia and the Pacific (LAWASIA), an association of lawyers in the Asia-Pacific region seeking to promote the administration of justice, human rights, and the rule of law and to advance legal education and the legal profession in the region. From 1996 to the 2000s, he was secretary-general of the Working Group for an ASEAN Human Rights Mechanism, which established the ASEAN Intergovernmental Commission on Human Rights. In 2008–2009 he joined the Philippine government’s delegation to the High Level Panel on the Drafting of the Terms of Reference (TOR) of an ASEAN Human Rights Body. He assisted the Open Society Justice Institute, an international nongovernment organization, in establishing a network of clinical legal education programs in Southeast Asia, and provided advice to various ASEAN governments on human rights issues. Chochoy was also a dedicated teacher. In the late 1980s, he lectured on the new Philippine Constitution at ADMU’s Department of History and Political Science. While at AHRC, he taught various courses at the Ateneo Law School, occupying its Chief Justice Claudio Teehankee Professorial Chair in Constitutional Law and Human Rights for more than a decade and serving as vice-chairperson of its Constitutional Law Department. After completing a Master of Public Administration at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University in 2002, he became a professor of the Philippine Judicial Academy (PHILJA) of the Philippine Supreme Court, and vice-chairperson of the PHILJA Department of International Law and Human Rights. He taught International Relations and Public Dispute Resolution at the Ateneo School of Government, and Policy Analysis and Advocacy at the Ateneo Graduate School of Business. In 2005, he taught International Human Rights Standards, Human Rights Advocacy, and International Humanitarian Law as a visiting professor of the Faculty of Graduate Studies at Mahidol University. But in 2011, as Chochoy was beginning a new career phase as presidential adviser for the elimination of corruption in government, an aneurysm struck him down. Since then, his major project has been recuperation. After an active and self-propelled life serving and instructing others, he must now learn to depend on others who serve and instruct him. He is also learning to trust that the Lord, in whom he has always entrusted his plans, has other plans for him. He continues to monitor political developments, frustrated that he can only watch the ongoing erosion of democratic institutions and human rights.
Nevertheless, Chochoy’s work has already laid important institutional foundations for human rights advocacy, electoral reform, and civil society participation. These institutions remain vital plat-forms for the defense of the poor and of democracy even—perhaps especially—at a time when human rights are denigrated and violated, democratic insti-tutions undermined, the Constitution threatened, and corrupt politicians and political clans restored. The Ateneo de Manila University is proud to recognize Carlos P Medina Jr’s contributions to democra-cy, and to hold him up as a model of selfless service to the nation, by conferring on him the Parangal Lingkod Sambayanan.
