Corazon C. Aquino is dead and so was Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr., while we remain alive and myopic of their sacrifice and missed the golden opportunity to draw strength from their death. We remain fractious, divided, immature and greedy and offered cypress leaves to honor their graves instead of living out the ideals of their dreams and a vision for a prosperous country. Alas, we have chosen to live a meaningless life than seek a glorious death. In ‘Termites from Within’, I wrote:
“One of 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 had landed, his military escorts shot him at the back of his head, few stair steps before his tired and weary feet longing for home touch the drab and irreverent dusty tarmac.
A commission was formed headed by SC Justice Enrique Fernando, to investigate the murder of Senator Aquino but due to the intense criticism from the public, he, being identified as a Marcos lackey and an Imelda errand boy, the commission was disbanded, and its place another commission headed by Corazon Agrava was formed. The Commission concluded in the minority report that was submitted by Ms. Agrava to Mr. Marcos that it was the lone gunman, Mr. Rolando Galman who killed Senator Aquino. The majority report which was also submitted to Mr. Marcos found that it was his 26 military escorts that had conspired to kill him.
A case for double-murder was filed against all the 26 military escorts in 1985 but they were all acquitted by the Sandiganbayan. After Mr. 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 SC which had been subservient to Mr. Marcos had found its spine back under Cory’s skirt of newfound freedom.
The mastermind was never known, but the people had the right suspect in their collective minds. Before Marcos was forced out of power by the EDSA Revolution in 1986, he has called for a snap Presidential election. He was pitted against Senator Aquino’s widow, Cory, a nickname she was fondly called by her supporters. She was backed up by the powerful Catholic Church under Cardinal Jaime Sin. After the nation has voted, both had claimed victory. Marcos was declared the winner by the Batasang Pambansa while Cory was declared the winner by the tumultuous crowds on the streets of Metro Manila. While the nation was polarized, ambitious members of the Reform the Armed Forces Movement under Gregorio Honasan tried to stage a coup. One of his underlings spilled the beans over to Mrs. Marcos. She wanted to preempt the coup by looking for its most likely patron, Secretary of Defense Juan Ponce Enrile who, meanwhile, had talked with PNP Chief Fidel Ramos into staging a mutiny at Camp Crame at EDSA. Cardinal Sin called on the faithful to go to EDSA and lend support to the mutineers. It was during this time that Secretary Enrile when interviewed by the media said that Cory was robbed of her victory as President of the Republic because of the massive cheating during the snap presidential election. Cory meantime was in the Visayas under the care of some catholic nuns. Civilian protesters shouting “Cory, Cory” along EDSA had paralyzed Metro Manila while in the provinces people were glued to their televisions or their radios waiting with bated breath of what could happen with massive civilian protesters confronting military tanks and armed soldiers of the Marcos government in the streets of Manila.
Time Magazine writer Pico Iyer wrote on January 5, 1987:
Finally, the improbable became the impossible. Marcos’ tanks rolled toward the crowds, only to be stopped by nuns kneeling in their path, saying the rosary. Old women went up to gun-toting marines and disarmed them with motherly hugs. Little girls offered their flowers to hardened combat veterans. In the face of such quiet heroism, thousands of Marcos loyalists defected; many simply broke down in tears.”
The nation had a sigh of relief when Mr. Marcos, his family and cronies fled to Hawaii on February 26, 1986. Cory said after Marcos had fled the country that paved the way for her own rule over a very fractious society:
“We have achieved our freedom with courage and determination, and most important, in peace. A new life starts for our country tomorrow. A life filled with hope and, I believe, a life that will be blessed with peace and progress.”
Peace and progress that proved to be elusive as her six year term as President had been plagued by a series of military mutinies which had been staged by military personnel who had been sidelined from their previous lucrative assignments and have lost the their lifestyles under Marcos. These coup attempts had sent the economy in yet another tailspin.
The nation was hopeful that the country would have moved towards economic prosperity under Cory because she owed no one political debts to pay. She was catapulted to power by the people and only the people she must listen to. But the adventurous segment of the military had denied our nation the opportunity to achieve stability, progress and peace.
Cory should have taken power as a popularly elected president of the Republic but the ambitious military who would like to be seen as part of Cory’s triumph would like her to serve as a President of a provisional government. Either as a provisional president or a regularly elected eleventh President of the Republic, Cory was sworn nonetheless as President by the Justice of the Supreme Court.
The military mutineers were seen by some of us as heroes of EDSA while others saw them the way they should be seen: “plain opportunists.” These personalities were martial law architects and implementers for 12 years who have seen the upsurge of civilian support for Cory and had decided to abandon their commander-in-chief in a fast sinking ship.
Instead of looking at these coup plotters as villains we see them as the saviors of the Republic. We elected some of them to high government positions and they continue to derive benefits from the very institutions they had subverted in favor of a Marcos one-man rule and from the institutions they tried to subvert in favor of a military junta. On the other hand, the coup plotters against Cory were punished with ten push-ups by her Chief of Staff, Fidel Ramos and some of those prominent coup plotters found their way back in the corridors of power as senators or as executives of lucrative government corporations.
The perception that most of those in power were guilty one way or another of subverting our democratic institutions had prevented us from imposing the full measure of punishment to those who openly committed acts of treason and subversion against the republic. To our minds, only the members of the New People’s Army, the members of the Moro National Liberation Front and the members of other left-leaning groups deserved to be punished by death or by outright execution. The most sinister plotters that had destabilized the nation and ruin our economy and the raiders and plunderers of our treasury do not deserve the kind of punishment meted out to other subversive elements of our society when in matters of degree, the latter wrongdoers have wrought more havoc and destructions to our motherland. This is the reason why after Mr. Marcos and his family had fled to Hawaii in 1986 and most of his kins and his retinue of crony capitalists had come back, we have yet to see them go to jail.
Filipinos have short term memory and a very forgiving race. We do not know exactly whether these qualities underpin our vice or our strength as a nation. But as of now, I am still muted if indeed, we are all worth dying for. (amendment to “Termites From Within”).
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