Medardo Roda, one of the country’s best-known and well-loved transport leaders, passed away early this week.

In his heyday as president of the transport group Piston, Ka Roda championed the welfare of transport drivers and commuters alike against government neglect and abuses of the oil cartel. For his fierce defense of his fellow drivers, the dictator Ferdinand Marcos called him “the most rebellious driver the country ever had.”

Clement Bacani, former president of the College Editors Guild of the Philippines in 1984, meanwhile called Ka Roda “an icon of working class struggle”.

“Ka Roda inspired the students of the the early 1980s,” said Bacani.

For Ka Roda and Piston, the convenient excuse of “movements in world crude prices” can never amply justify oil price increases in the country. Their logic is simple: As long as foreign multinational companies monopolize the petroleum industry, we will never get the most affordable and cheapest fuel prices at the nearest gas station because the Big Three routinely and regularly engage in transfer-pricing and overpricing.

These twin-evils of transfer-pricing and overpricing have never been fully investigated by the Philippine government. Instead, the government made matters even worse by privatizing the majority of Petron and deregulating the entire petroleum industry, much to the dismay of Ka Roda, Piston and the country.

Much was promised when government shares in Petron were sold and when the state embarked on a deregulation spree. The government promised better services, cleaner fuel and the cheapest possible prices. Of course, we now know better. Meanwhile, the entry of new players have not made any considerable dent in the awesome power of the Big Three to determine pump prices.

Ka Roda’s folksy talks and down-to-earth demeanor rubbed off on Piston for the most part of the last two or three decades. While other transport groups specialized in “begging” for government subsidies and endlessly filed petitions for fare hikes, Piston stood pat on its principled stand of defending both transport workers and the commuting public. For Piston, the public should not bear the brunt of indefensible and arbitrary oil price increases through fare hikes. Piston wanted drivers and the public to unite to compel government to control oil prices and the oil industry from the stranglehold of the Big Three.

Some will say Ka Roda was being an ideological dinosaur for insisting on a strong state role in the petroleum and transport sectors. But the real jurassic thinking was to mindlessly and uncritically accept what the oil cartel routinely say or lie about.

No so-called developed country went on to attain such status without admitting the strategic importance of petroleum and transportation and with that acceptance, the political decision to ensure national control and the lowest possible prices for motorists, commercial and industrial users and the government.

Like his contemporary veteran labor leader and legislator Crispin Beltran, Ka Roda personified the kind of mass-based leadership that came “from below”, from the ranks of the poor. Ka Roda’s life and political record provide a veritable yardstick by which anyone who aspires to represent the transport sector in Congress ought to be measured. A former general/energy secretary shamelessly deferential to the oil cartel could never pass muster.

When he was still strong and not yet battered by illness, Ka Roda provided the most colorful speeches in street demonstrations, explaining to transport workers and the public why Piston’s campaigns were always national, not purely sectoral, in character, and challenging the public to confront the government’s treachery to and sedition against the Constitution insofar as national interests are concerned — national interests in such strategic industries as petroleum and transportation.

Ka Roda had another pet peeve: When government stops citizens from demonstrating in the streets to seek redress for their grievances. This long-time driver who hailed from a peasant family in Bicol, would recite from memory portions of the Constitution’s bill of rights. He would lecture the police that they should be there during demonstrations to protect citizens who are exercising their constitutional rights, and not to disrupt and to harm them. Sadly, many nowadays harbor illusions that rallies are a mere distraction and the police have become experts in brutally dispersing demonstrations. 

At a time when we see a glut in anti-”masa” and seditious leaders who gladly sell off the country piece by piece and preach the corrosive mindsets of cynicism, Filipinos ought to pause and remember Ka Roda and make a vow to carry on his causes and his aspirations.