Bumps (10)

HALAW ang mga sumusunod sa aking pangalawang aklat “BUMPS: Fifty Years of Dictatorship and Democracy in the Philippines (1972-2022).” Bahagi ng pangatlong tsapter ang mga nangyari bago ang 1986 EDSA Revolution. Pakibasa:

THE AFTERMATH

DICTATOR Ferdinand Marcos hardly anticipated the extensive, costly, and prolonged public outrage over the Aug. 21, 1983 assassination of Ninoy Aquino. Despite his reputed erudite and wily ways, Marcos could neither stop nor slow down the escalation of public outrage into crisis proportion, threatening his dictatorship for the first time in a decade. After his Aug. 7, 1983 kidney transplant surgery, the convalescing Marcos watched helplessly, as the Filipino people responded intensely and decisively to the brazen way Aquino was killed. Despite their tight control over the local mass media, news about Aquino’s murder spread like wildfire, triggering what could be regarded the start of the downfall of the Marcos regime.

Ordinary citizens could not contain their utter shock, disbelief, and disgust over his murder committed in broad daylight. It pricked their conscience. Marcos had to explain a lot since the opposition leader was killed while under military custody. The circumstances of his brutal murder showed a direct military conspiracy. Hours after his murder, Filipinos from all walks of life – rich and poor, young, old, and the not-so-old, formed long queues to pay their last respect to Aquino, whose body was put for public viewing at the Aquinos’ residence in Times Street in Quezon City. The Aquinos neither changed the clothes he wore upon arrival in Manila nor cleaned his wound and dirtied face, enabling the world to see what they did to him.

Two or three days later, wife Cory Aquino and kids arrived from Boston and transferred his remains to a bigger and more spacious venue to accommodate the throngs of people, who paid homage to him. It was the iconic Santo Domingo Church in Quezon City, which is a kilometer away from their residence. The crowd got bigger and the queues, longer. More Filipinos perceived Ninoy Aquino as a martyr for the cause of Philippine democracy. It was an inescapable perception that Marcos could not reverse. Ninoy Aquino was the hero, while he was perceived as the villain. This was painful for him to accept.

Despite the public anger and polarizing effects of the brutal murder, known supporters of the dictatorship went to the wake to show sympathy and condole with the family. But because of the tense situation, some visitors were shunned. Their rebuff revealed the deep political wounds his murder had caused. Carlos P. Romulo, the former foreign affairs minister, who served under the Marcos dictatorship, was among them. Burial marshals politely told him to leave, hurting his pride. Later, he showed a change of heart by denouncing the dictatorship, claiming that Marcos used his “international stature” to get what he wanted from the Americans.

BIGGEST FUNERAL PROCESSION. Ten days later, or on August 31, 1983, the longest and biggest funeral procession in Philippine history took place. An estimated two million people participated and lined up on the streets, where the cortege of his remains passed to bring it for burial at the Manila Memorial Park in suburban Paranaque City. It took more than 12 hours for the funeral procession to last. Crony newspapers tried to ignore and downplay the funeral procession, but it could not be hidden that Ninoy’s murder could be regarded as the start of the downfall of the dictatorship. Its survival hangs by a thread as massive protest actions erupted in the country. It became a day-to-day thing as Marcos could not do anything to slow it down a bit.

Almost overnight, an alphabet soup of organizations mushroomed to lead the protest actions against the complicity of the Marcos regime in Ninoy Aquino’s murder. The younger brother Agapito, or Butz, who later became a senator, led in the creation of the August Twenty One Movement (ATOM) to press for the prosecution of the people behind Ninoy’s murder and signal the rise of the middle class in the protest movement against the Marcos authoritarian rule. The Justice for Aquino, Justice for All (JAJA), became the broad coalition of all opposition forces, including the Left and the Right, to seek justice from the Marcos dictatorship.

The Aug. 21, 1983 assassination of Ninoy Aquino drastically altered the political equation. It galvanized the political resolve of the democratic opposition, as they went to the extent of pressing for the resignation of Marcos, whom the opposition leaders thought had blood in his hands, to end the one-man rule and initiate the return to democracy. It served as the single spark to enhance communist insurgency in the country, as rebels recruited more adherents, staged more ambushcades against state troopers, and intensified armed struggle.

The Ninoy Aquino assassination provided the impetus for the middle class to join the protest movement against Marcos dictatorial rule. It weakened the ruling Kilusang Bagong Lipunan coalition, as its members began to doubt Marcos and took an astounding distance from him. Overall, Marcos never felt so bad until the Ninoy Aquino murder took place. His place in history was shattered to the point of beyond repair.

FORMALITY. Even the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Embassy in Manila, as represented by Ambassador Michael Armacost, were so surprised by the public outrage, prompting them to start distancing themselves from Marcos. Seeing the magnitude and depth of the public anger over Ninoy Aquino’s murder, Armacost avoided getting cozy with the dictatorship, as he treated them with ultimate formality. Where before Armacost was photographed dancing with Imelda, the ambassador avoided her except on formal occasions. It was a sharp contrast to the friendship which the Marcoses enjoyed with the U.S. President Ronald Reagan and wife Nancy.

Marcos’s response for the crisis was fatally short of brinkmanship. He failed to convince the people that Rolando Galman was indeed a communist hit man responsible for Ninoy’s death. Marcos formed a commission led by his loyalist supporter in the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Enrique Fernando, to conduct an independent probe of Aquino’s murder, but the people repudiated the commission, raising the perception that they were appointed to rig the investigation.

Marcos named Fernando as chair and retired justices Ruperto Martin, Guillermo Santos, and Felix Antonio as members. Former chief justice Roberto Concepcion was appointed too but he declined. The Fernando commission was dissolved due to the public criticisms. Marcos tried to replace it with Arturo Tolentino as head of a new commission with four other forgettable names as commissioners, but the public rejected it too, forcing its dissolution before it was formed.

After two false starts that ended in dead ends, Marcos replaced the two stillborn commissions with a five man commission led by Appellate Justice Corazon Agrava. The commission members were educator Amado Dizon, entrepreneur Dante Santos, lawyer Luciano Salazar, and labor leader Ernesto Herrera. The public accepted the Agrava commission. It held daily hearings for almost a year and the majority report confirmed the public view that his murder was indeed a military conspiracy that involved Gen. Fabian Ver, chief of staff of the Armed Forces. The protest demonstrations inevitably continued to the dictator’s consternation.

Perfumed elites from Makati City and corporate executives like Jaime Ongpin and Ramon del Rosario Jr. joined hands with the great unwashed to press for Marcos resignation and a return to democracy. In 1984, Marcos was forced to call elections for members of the regular Batasang Pambansa, where the political opposition won a quarter of the nearly 200 contested seats. In late 1985, Marcos called for the 1986 “snap” presidential elections, which culminated in the EDSA People Power Revolution. (Itutuloy)