REMEMBERING SENATOR “NINOY” AQUINO

VIDEO UPLOAD COURTESY BY:Ubermensch4ever 

“My grandfather explained about the spirit world, how the souls of our ancestors continue to need love and attention and devotion. Given these things, they will share in our lives and they will bless us and even warn us about disasters in our dreams. But if we neglect the souls of our ancestors, they will become lost and lonely and will wander around in the kingdom of the dead no better off than a warrior killed by his enemy and left unburied in a rice paddy to be eaten by blackbirds of prey”.       (Robert Olen Butler,U.S. writer).

             I honor Ninoy in my book.   I have devoted one chapter, “Are We Worth Dying For” plus some references on him outside this chapter. They are reprinted herein below:

              “One of the finest 20th century heroes of the country went home in August 1983 from a 3-year exile from the US with a prophetic candor that the Filipinos were worth dying for. Few minutes after his plane landed, his military escorts shot him at the back of his head and few steps before his tired and weary feet longing for home touch the tarmac. A commission was formed to investigate the murder and it was headed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court whom many have considered a lackey of Mrs. Imelda Marcos because he was seen holding an umbrella for Mrs. Marcos in one of those public functions. The commission was subjected to intense public criticism, thus Mr. Marcos was forced to create another headed by Justice Corazon Agrava,  a retired jurist who was perceived to be another Malacanang loyalist.

               The Agrava Commision came up with two reports, The Minority Report and the Majority Report.  The minority report  which was submitted by Mrs. Agrava to Mr. Marcos has cleared Senator Aquino’s  military escorts for  his death and pointed to the lone communist gunman,  Mr. Rolando  Galman as the culprit.  This was  Malacanang’s  story line on how Aquino died.  The majority report submitted by the other members of the Commission found Senator Aquino’s military escorts to have conspired to kill Ninoy.

          On the basis of this findings all the military escorts were charged with murder in 1985 but were all acquitted. After Marcos fled to Hawaii in 1986, the Supreme Court declared a mistrial and another trial was conducted and found his 16 military escorts guilty of the murder. The mastermind was never known, but the people had the right suspect in their collective minds.

    (Please take note that the new Supreme Court considered the acquittal of the military escorts of Senator Aquino as a “sham trial” and has ordered a retrial before the Sandiganbayan.  The attitude of the SC was understandable because Mr. Marcos had already fled to Hawaii and Mrs. Corazon Aquino, Senator Aquino’s widow became the President in 1986. This is the year where the SC considered the decision of the Sandiganbayan acquitting all the accused from the murder of Senator Aquino a sham trial).

         (And yes, in this Chapter I answered the query that we are worth dying for.  But you have to read the book to find out why).

         References of Senator Aquino outside this chapter:

         “ x x x Gandhi was willing to be bruised by the British soldiers without let up and without putting up a fight until the soldiers would lose their appetite to beat him up. Senator Aquino was imprisoned by Mr. Marcos for 7 years and was sentenced to die by Mr. Marcos’  military tribunal but when he got the news that Mr. Marcos was ill, he hurried back home to talk some sense to the President to call for an election and transfer power to the civilian government instead of allowing a military junta to rule the country”.

 ” x x x

         The discussion of the Supreme Court of the Aquino v. Enrile case went at length on the existence of the threat of subversion from both the Maoist New People’s Army and the secessionist Moro National Liberation Front from Mindanao, (MNLF). The threat from the NPA and the MNLF, however, can be easily contained by the Army which remained loyal to the institution of the government.  (59 SCRA 183)  The deference the Court made to the President to declare martial law on account of his control of various agencies which monitored the activities of the “enemies” of the state has blunted the Court’s right to inquire into whether such state of insurrection existed or not, and considered his determination of the state of emergency a political question therefore beyond the power of the court to inquire. Thus it has conveniently failed to inquire into the motives of the executive about those claims in the light of the fact that Mr. Marcos in 1973 can no longer run for President and even if he could, the faltering economy and the unpopularity of his government made the “Boy Wonder” from Tarlac a shoo-in for the Presidency. Martial law was an excuse for perpetration to power and the Supreme Court was nothing more than a willing accomplice of the repression that follows. The Aquino case was a plethora of 448 pages of legal dissertations and historical events designed to distort the crucial period of our history itself. Those moments in our history where two political titans have tried to compete for one political firmament and one was about to outshine the other had not his opponent beckoned the institutions of power and used those institutions to outclass his competitor. But in the minds of the historians, and the generations to come that are willing to see through the fog of distortions made by the Court, Senator Aquino has outclassed his nemesis; he died a glorious death – his blood rekindles the Filipinos’ love for freedom, while his tormentor died a silent death, felled by sickness in a strange and far away soil.”

 ” x x x    

              And by the way, the Supreme Court has a history of not standing up on the side of the truth. In 1979 the Supreme Court had refused to rescue Senator Aquino who was later sentenced to die by musketry by the military courts of Mr. Marcos.

            Senator Aquino had earlier asked the Supreme Court to transfer his case from the military tribunal to the civilian courts which were open during martial law. Frustrated by the demeanor of the Court, he tried to withdraw his petition, just like the way the late Senator Diokno did on his petition for habeas corpus in 1973, but the Court nonetheless ruled on his motion for transfer of jurisdiction against him by claiming that the military courts have been duly constituted and therefore have jurisdiction over civilian defendants. 

         It was the subtle pressure from the US State Department that spared Senator Aquino’s life from the murderous military tribunals in 1975 only to be slain in 1983 by the same dark forces that lay behind those institutions of power under Marcos. [Aquino vs. Military Tribunal, (63 SCRA 549)] when Senator Aquino went home after a three-year of exile from the US. 

“ x x x

          A congressman from Ilocos Sur was shot at the back while about to receive the sacrament of a communion one Sunday morning. The house of worship was not safe from lawlessness that was perpetrated by those who are supposed to uphold the law. Gangland execution style of this magnitude, just like the execution of Senator Aquino in tarmac in 1983 can only be done by people in authority with tacit approval of the intended plan from someone up in the chain of command”.   (NOTE:  This post has been updated from what originally appeared in the Book to make the narration more correct).

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HOW TO MUTILATE A COUNTRY

     

PHOTO FROM MANUEL L. QUEZON III BLOG

The Philippine archipelago is comprised of the territory “ceded” by the Spain to US in the treaty of Paris of December 10, 1898. In the treaty, these territories are described as follows:

 

“A line running from west to east along or near the twentieth parallel of north latitude, and through the middle of the navigable channel of Bachi, from the one hundred and eighteenth (118th) to the one hundred and twenty-seventh (127th) degree meridian of longitude east of Greenwich, thence along the one hundred and twenty seventh (127th) degree meridian of longitude east of Greenwich to the parallel of four degrees and forty five minutes (4 [degree symbol] 45′]) north latitude, thence along the parallel of four degrees and forty five minutes (4 [degree symbol] 45′) north latitude to its intersection with the meridian of longitude one hundred and nineteen degrees and thirty five minutes (119 [degree symbol] 35′) east of Greenwich, thence along the meridian of longitude one hundred and nineteen degrees and thirty five minutes (119 [degree symbol] 35′) east of Greenwich to the parallel of latitude seven degrees and forty minutes (7 [degree symbol] 40′) north, thence along the parallel of latitude of seven degrees and forty minutes (7 [degree symbol] 40′) north to its intersection with the one hundred and sixteenth (116th) degree meridian of longitude east of Greenwich, thence by a direct line to the intersection of the tenth (10th) degree parallel of north latitude with the one hundred and eighteenth (118th) degree meridian of longitude east of Greenwich, and thence along the one hundred and eighteenth (118th) degree meridian of longitude east of Greenwich to the point of beginning.The United States will pay to Spain the sum of twenty million dollars ($20,000,000) within three months after the exchange of the ratifications of the present treaty.”  (Article III, Treaty of Paris).  “The Philippines comprises all the territory ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Paris concluded between the United States and Spain on the tenth day of December, eighteen hundred and ninety-eight, the limits which are set forth in Article III of said treaty, together with all the islands embraced in the treaty concluded at Washington between the United States and Spain on the seventh day of November, nineteen hundred, and the treaty concluded between the United States and Great Britain on the second day of January, nineteen hundred and thirty, and all territory over which the present Government of the Philippine Islands exercises jurisdiction.”

 

       The 1973 and 1987 Constitutions define Philippine territory as follows:

 

       “The national territory comprises the Philippine archipelago, with all the islands and waters embraced therein, and all the other territories belonging to the Philippines by historic or legal title, including the territorial sea, the air space, the subsoil, the sea-bed, the insular shelves, and the submarine areas over which the Philippines has sovereignty or jurisdiction. The waters around, between, and connecting the islands of the archipelago, irrespective of their breadth and dimensions, form part of the internal waters of the Philippines.”

1898, DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

 

         We as laymen, come to know our territories as the main islands of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao comprising of some 7,107 islands.

 

        We did not agree that our country was ceded by Spain to the US on December 10, 1898 because we have become independent 6 months before that when Emilio Aguinaldo declared Philippine independence on June 12, 1898. This is the reason why we continue to celebrate our independence day on this date and not July 4, as we previously did.

 

        From the time of the revolutionary government of Aguinaldo up to the present time, we have exercised sovereignty over the island of Mindanao. Mindanao had recognized our government when its tribal chieftains have run for public office and had pledged allegiance to the Philippine flag.

 

     Later, when Malaysian and Indonesian influence on the minority Muslim in Mindanao, created a vibrant religion that proselytized most of the Mindanao inhabitants, certain chieftains of the island would like to establish a Republic of Mindanao. The rise of Muslim extremists of the Al Queda type found surrogates in the Muslim inhabitants in this island. The issue of the island being neglected by the central government in Manila and the poverty level of the people in this island were used to drumbeat the need for a “Mindanao Republic”. This aspiration culminated in rise of the MNLF and MILF, or even the brigand group of Abbu Sayaff, whose chief objective is to finally establish a separate Republic of Mindanao.

 

       ARMM is the political aspect of this struggle. The peace process between the MILF or MNLF and the Government, while it is  being undertaken by the government to address and appease the grievances of the people of Mindanao, is from MILF’s or MNLF’s standpoint  a strategic struggle to establish a Mindanao Republic. 

 

        It was to the credit of some of our people who see the bigger picture that the ARMM elections and “peace negotiations” between the MILF/MNLF and the government were being used only to negotiate for time, just enough time, when these group of armed militias have all the strength and resources to wave their own flag in the island and declare the “State of Mindanao” and drive away all the Christians in the island.  

 

        Just like the “peace negotiation” the government has with the NPA, it is being undertaken only to negotiate for time before the eventual kill.  Whoever thinks that the MILF/MNLF and the NPA have the desire for peace is a real dreamer. All these groups want is power and the subjugation of people who do not think just like them.

 

       Great nations would desire for more territories, while we parcel out our own under the guise of promoting peace.  We have already abdicated our rights over part of North Borneo (Sabah) during Marcos time. We are abdicating our territorial rights now over Spratlys.  We are about to abdicate our territorial rights over Mindanao. 

 

       And some of us see nothing wrong with the way we mutilate our sovereignty and national territory.  We lack the concept of nationhood and the candidness to tell our brother Muslims that the concept of one nation and one flag transcends the parochial concerns of tribalism and wardlordism. 

 
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      The 1935 Constitution in defining the territory of the Philippines provides in Article 1:

THE EARTHQUAKE AND THE BAR

 

         Four  days in California, three of which inside a pressure-cooker called San Mateo Expo Center, San Francisco, a 4-hour drive to Los Angeles, where one of the laptop sites of the California Bar Exam was administered this July 29-31.  

  

         My limited budget for hotel booked way back in May destined me to Marriot Hotel after the San Diego and LA hotels offered outrageous price of more than $250 a day compared to less than $200 in Marriot.  But you will be amazed to find that the Marriot in San Francisco is an exquisite place, clean and quite. The price variance was only due to the fact that the two cities are more metropolis and extremely urbanized compared to San Francisco.

 

        In  hindsight though, my enforced frugality did not only save me from few more dollars of credit card indebtedness, but also from the horrendous experience of having to finish the first day of the exam under the table because a 5.4 magnitude quake that hit LA and sent tremors up to San Diego area at 11:42 a.m. eastern time Tuesday, created quite a confused and chaotic situation in the bar exam centers in those two areas.  The 3-hour of the first day morning bar session should officially end at 12:00 noon

 

          A seatmate in San Mateo whose classmates took their test in LA worriedly broke the news that the situation in LA was quite chaotic and bar applicants, though jittery have to finish the exams under the table because the swaying of the building and the posts could send whatever is up on the ceiling careening down your head or your priceless laptop with the software that allows you to type your answer in your computer and then download our answer to a secure server where attendants have to decrypt them and send them to bar graders after you are through with the exam.  You cannot reopen your answer file once you have finished the exam because you need to use a decryption code to do it.  Even if you can decrypt the answer file and make changes in your answer, the timestamp will indicate hat you did it outside the regulation time, then you are busted. 

 

PHOTO FROM THE HUFFINGTON POST

 

             At any rate, the  LA/San Diego quake makes my head turn up  to heaven again as I always do  on similar situations and mumbled, Lord, you really work in some mysterious ways, but why not be fair to others?   But His notion of fair-play could be different from human standpoint.  Because it is always possible that this five minutes of dreadful clueless act of nature in LA and San Diego could have unleashed extreme onrush of adrenalin on those applicants and reconnected all those hay wired webs of protein in their brains and made them geniuses for 18 minutes before closing time.  These 18 minutes of super alertness could spell the difference between passing and failing the exam.

 

       Still, He works in some mysterious ways, though not necessarily always  in your favor.

 

       Incidentally,   before I was allowed to take the bar, the Bar Committee looking into my moral fitness to practice law in California was anxious to find if I have rehabilitated myself from my extortionist propensity as found by the Supreme Court of the Philippines.  I could have almost said  Duhh?

 

           But, I told the Committee that the accusation that I am an extortionist was not true and quite frankly I could not exorcise myself of a vice and defect in character I considered non-existent. I gave the Bar Committee copy of my book and my Second Motion for Reconsideration.  I just hope and wish that the Bar Committee gets its cue from there.

PHOTO FROM MONSTERSANDCRITICS.COM