I would like to thank BAYAN’s Ed Santoalla for his invitation (BD Mail, May 5) to a dialogue with any of BAYAN’s leaders -- an invitation I would accept with alacrity if I had a personal complaint against any of them.

In fact, I entertain no personal gripes against them. It’s just that I consider some BAYAN activities to be stupid, ill-advised, or absurd, just as I consider some BAYAN decisions to be harmless, others to be praiseworthy, and still others deserving of general support.

This is an attitude I hold towards ALL mass movements (not just BAYAN). Any such movement, by definition, has to number among its adherents a wide spectrum of opinions, abilities, and motivation.

Any umbrella organization covering people ranging from moral and intellectual giants to moral and intellectual dwarfs and pygmies is bound to find itself, at one or another, making a decision which represents the compromise most acceptable to the movement’s heterogeneous mass membership

Such decisions will strike outsiders and even some insiders as immoral, impolitic, unwise, or absurd even if it is clear to the leadership that the decision in question may have been the best alternative available under the circumstances. Decisions like these will always be criticized or ridiculed, regardless of the worthiness of the movement’s objectives or the idealism of its leadership.

BAYAN is not exempt from this fact of organizational life.

Obviously, I was not the only one to note the "weird situation" of BAYAN standing "alongside Blas Ople’s ‘BAYAD bunch’ " at the gates of the United States embassy. Ms. Joedith Lego saw the irony of the situation too, even though she chided me for making fun of BAYAN: "Why can’t we just let them be? They have already been severely criticized even by their own members" (BD Mail, May 5).

Finally, let me say that I appreciate the graciousness with which Mr. Santoalla and Ms. Lego couched their disagreement with me -- in stark contrast to that lady who speculated that I must be "the mouthpiece of a rabid anti-communist right-wing group out to derail the people’s nationalistic and democratic aspirations for the greater glory of their white master in America" (BD Mail, Apr. 28).

CARLOS ALFARO