More than the romance that is expected, the Tiamzons, and the others mentioned, depicted a tale that does not merely promise the lover the world, but rather with a faithful commitment to change it.
By TED TUVERA
Bulatlat.com
MANILA — In superhero fiction stories, like Superman and Spiderman, the hero usually leaves behind his lover for his mission: but for revolutionaries, their love story itself is a part of winning their mission.
The arrest of alleged Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) Chairman Benito Tiamzon and Secretary General Wilma Austria-Tiamzon has perhaps intrigued public observers that a conjugal leadership has maintained an armed struggle that is 45 years old by March 29.
The Tiamzon couple is inevitably comparable to previous revolutionary heroes who waged their causes along with their partners: like that of Diego and Gabriela Silang, Andres and Oryang de Jesus-Bonifacio, Karl and Jenny Marx, CPP’s founding chairman Joma Sison and Julie de Lima, and NDFP Chair and former priest Luis Jalandoni and Coni Ledesma. Their respective love stories are more meritorious and radical which makes it unique than the usual love plots that are mostly depicted in infatuating soap operas and films that suggest the Cinderella impossibility.
More than the romance that is expected, the Tiamzons, and the others mentioned, depicted a tale that does not merely promise the lover the world, but rather with a faithful commitment to change it.
Little is known, except if you subscribe to unbelievable and confusing military intelligence reports, about their affair except by some confirmed stories from First Quarter Storm (FQS) and Martial Law veterans who claimed that they were once detained along with the couple that they were both student activists from the University of the Philippines-Diliman during the expected period who choose to go underground and cast their bets for the armed struggle along with the New People’s Army (NPA).
Perhaps, during or after their previous arrests and their protracted integration with the masses and the faceless heroes of the mountains, their love story was not simply exclusive to each other, for if it were, they won’t be in the headlines today anymore and may have been in the ground limelight as still activists or took the lifestyle that they could have said as the “system they formerly opposed” like some cowardly former FQS activists who are literally in that “system” today.
The story of Ka Benny and Ka Wilma is not their own, for they have this noble commitment of love and service to the people with a promise of national liberation and social justice through revolutionary means.
As reports suggest, government forces began their surveillance work against the top communist leaders in Eastern Visayas after Yolanda’s deadly blow. The press-releases of the armed movement before the arrest of the Tiamzons, said that CPP-NPA units began their own relief efforts after a ceasefire declaration by helping civilian masses, mostly farmers in the mountains (that is perhaps under the reds’ jurisdiction) through rebuilding homes and productive tasks. It is notable that the couple was perhaps, despite security risks, overseeing their group’s efforts. This report is a double-bladed answer to allegations that the CPP-NPA did nothing (there was even a news that the NPA made a punitive ambush which was later proven to be hoax by the PNP itself) and a hard-hitting blow to President BS Aquino and his administration who has not made any significant efforts, as far as Yolanda victims are concerned, except for hypocritical press releases and show-offs that did not made any satisfying move for their hungry and almost hopeless situation.
Hence, since the Tiamzons were there, BS Aquino’s remark that their captivity is a “big blow” to the rebel movement goes back to him as a big blow to his regime’s immobility and inutility.
AFP statements now usually condemn the Tiamzon lovers as “criminals against humanity” and the whole armed movement as such and must therefore give-up their arms.
If it is a “crime against humanity” to love and serve the masses through educating, organizing and mobilizing them to struggle for a better future that promises freedom and justice, what then are the extrajudicial killings, tortures and other human rights violations that are perpetrated by the uniformed men who are expected to “serve and protect the country”, as exemplified by a notorious fugitive named Jovito Palparan?
As long as oppression is prevalent among the vast majority of the people, that same love and commitment to struggle will not give-up their arms.
In a peculiar way, I expect my own love story to be embedded in such a commitment to change the rotten, moribund system that corrupts the people from the genuine freedom it aspires.
Free all political prisoners! 
