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About Augusto Caesar Espiritu


About the author: Augusto Caesar Espiritu (1928  August 14, 1993). Lawyer and Economist. Editor of the Philippine Collegian. Admitted to the Bar, March 20, 1957. Delegate to the 1971-73 Constitutional Convention. Ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany. Author of Parliamentary Government, Volume 18, Issue 1 of Studies on the evolution of eighteen fundamental ideas in the 1973 constitution; Volume 1 of The Evolution of fundamental ideas in the 1973 Constitution, U.P. Law Center, 1976.

About the diary: This diary was published as How Democracy Was Lost; a Political Diary of the 1971-1972 Constitutional ConventionNew Day, Quezon City, 1993. (ISBN: 9711005336), now out of print.

In his introduction, the author stated that the diary was first “my daily dictations in my tape recorder while being driven to and from the Session Hall [of the 1971 Constitutional Convention] in Quezon City.” According to the author, his secretary then transcribed the tapes, a process that continued even after the adjournment of the convention. In the same introduction he noted that, “This diary had to be hidden in Malate, then in Cubao, and finally at the UP Law Center, where it was ‘lost’ among the voluminous proceedings of the Convention deposited there by delegates who had reason to fear their falsification by those who, in the end, upon dictation of Malacañang, wrote a Constitution intended to crown a would-be-dictator. Later these papers were transferred to BF Homes in Quezon City, where they were cared for by an aged mother who has since passed away.”

Readers are urged to consult the original publication, which includes introductory and other notes.

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