Comrades pray for Gonzales

The Partido Demokratiko Sosyalista ng Pilipinas (PDSP) chapter in Iloilo will offer prayers in a mass for the speedy recovery of National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales, PDSP’s founding chair, who suffered a stroke following a grueling Senate inquiry.

The mass will be officiated by Rev. Fr. Antonio Anino at 6 a.m. on September 28 at the Santa Teresita Church in downtown Iloilo City and will be attended by PDSP and Aksyon Sambayanan cadres as well as members of its allied organizations from the urban poor, women and farmer sectors.

Anino, while still a seminarian, was a member of the Nagkakaisang Kilusan ng mga Demokratiko Sosyalista ng Pilipinas  (NKDSP), precursor of the PDSP that Gonzales co-founded in the 1970s. He is now Santa Teresita parish priest.

Iloilo is one of the places where the PDSP, the country’s sixth largest political party, has mass bases. Iloilo City Mayor Jerry Treñas was a PDSP cadre when he was a student at the Ateneo de Manila and had remained a supporter when he joined politics.

During the Marcos years, PDSP cadres in Iloilo served as the backbone of the Bansang Nagkaisa sa Diwa at Layunin (Bandila), the most visible anti-dictatorship democratic force then.

A leading personality who co-founded PDSP with Gonzales is also an Ilonggo, Fr. Romeo Intengan Jr., S.J. who is from Barrio Obrero and had spent his high school years in the defunct Lincoln College here.
Gonzales, Intengan and Treñas were among those arrested and jailed during the prayer-march rally in April 1978 held to protest the rigged results of the Interim Batasan Pambansa elections.

Gonzales is now confined at the Philippine Heart Center and needs to undergo a heart surgery after suffering a stroke while being grilled at a public hearing in the Senate.

Gonzales has been diagnosed with a "very critical" narrowing of his left main coronary artery that did not respond to medication, said Ludgerio Torres, PHC director.

Gonzales, 58, suffered a stroke on Wednesday as he testified at a Senate public hearing in which Arroyo's Senate foes accused him of illegally hiring a US lobby group to solicit funds for a project to rewrite the constitution.