The news here continues to swirl around Gloria Arroyo, her husband and sundry family members. If all the latest allegations against the Arroyos are true, this family’s transgressions against the Filipino people are second only to Ferdinand Marcos’s depredations during the martial-law period in the 1970s-80s.
But let’s forget about the Arroyos for now. After all, there’s been a surfeit of infuriating news about them in recent weeks. Let’s instead pause and remember a patriot and martyr who gave up his life for love of country. Let’s remember Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, the father of current President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III, and husband of the late President Corazon “Cory” Aquino, who herself has become an icon of democracy for defeating Marcos in a snap election in February 1983.
Ninoy Aquino was Marcos’s bitterest critic and rival before the latter imposed martial law on the Philippines on Sept. 21, 1972. Marcos jailed Aquino for seven years and seven months until he allowed him medical leave in 1980. Aquino traveled to the United States for a bypass heart operation.
I share with BALITA readers a newspaper piece — in abridged form –that I wrote about my first face-to-face encounter with Ninoy Aquino.
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That summer of 1980 in Washington, Ninoy decided to speak out against his mortal foe, Ferdinand Marcos. As a condition for his release from prison, he was proscribed from making any political statements while in the United States. But trying to silence Ninoy was like asking him not to breathe. Ninoy needed words to live. Words were to Ninoy what missiles are to a modern weapons arsenal.
Declaring that he could not honor a “pact with the devil,” Aquino freed himself from his Marcosian straitjacket and proceeded to do what he did best: inveigh against oppression….
People trooped to the Asia Society Building on Washington’s Massachusetts Avenue to hear Ninoy speak. For many people, Ninoy Aquino had only been a name. But his reputation had preceded him. An international audience packed the conference room.
Ninoy, somehow, lacked the fire I remembered before I emigrated from the Philippines. Seemingly born to be controversial, Ninoy had been a newsmaker. He had earned a reputation for being a precocious politician.
He had been a town mayor and governor in his home province of Tarlac at very young ages. Earlier, as a news correspondent for the respected Manila Times, he braved the icy Korean battlefields to report the war in that country. He also was instrumental in persuading the supremo of the “Huk” rebels, Luis Taruc, to agree to a dialogue with the government.
In 1967, Aquino, at 35, was elected to the Philippine Senate. Not content with the traditional bench-warming role of freshmen legislators, he used the senate as a forum for his outspoken criticism of the Marcos government….
Already popular in many areas in the Philippines, Ninoy was a meteor that exploded on the Senate floor. He became an instant national celebrity. For his precocity, he quickly earned the nickname “Superboy.”
I first heard Ninoy speak in person at a forum held at my school, the University of the East, in September 1968…. It was in that forum that Aquino uttered the words by which I remember him best. Exhorting the students to be vigilant of their rights and freedom, Senator Aquino proposed that the climax of the Philippine national anthem should be sung: “Aming ligaya na pag may mang-aapi, ang pumatay ng dahil sa iyo!” (“It would be our joy [or honor], when there are oppressors, to kill for you [the Motherland]!)” Ninoy Aquino, the firebrand, had substituted “to kill” for “to die” in the anthem’s words.
The words struck me not as an incitement to violence but as the cry of a patriot daring to fight to save his Mother Country….
But at the Asia Society forum, Ninoy appeared without his usual vigor. Understandably, he had just been through a personal hell. And it was his first public appearance in a foreign country after so many years….
In the open forum that followed I stood up and introduced myself by simply saying that I was “Filipino” instead of the usual organizational affiliation…. At the reception after the forum, former Sen. Raul Manglapus, who had been living in the United States and a leader of the opposition forces abroad, introduced me to Aquino.
Remembering my name from the Q&A period, Ninoy displayed a key politician’s kill. “Capampangan ca ne?” he observed in the language of the province of Pampanga without waiting for confirmation of his hunch that I hailed from that part of the Philippines. Continuing in our mutual native language, he added, “Pemacarugan mucu quetang introduction mu nandin, abe” (“You scared me with your introduction earlier, friend”), he grinned, feigning fright.
That exchange proved that Ninoy hadn’t lost his politician’s instinct to quickly recognize a name, a face, or a family or regional affiliation.
In a poignant vignette later at the reception, I inquired about his long years of incarceration and his feeling now that he was free. He gave me a pained smile and gripped my hand tightly as if imploring to be spared of such an unanswerable question. The pleading visage spoke a thousand words. I withdrew in embarassment. How could I be so insensitive?
…[Later] Manglapus invited Aquino to deliver the keynote address to that year’s convention in Detroit, Michigan, of the Movement for a Free Philippines, an opposition organization led by the former. Invited by Manglapus, I went to the convention, aiming to observe and catch up with Ninoy.
Buoyed by the partisan crowd and perhaps inspired or challenged by the presence of Manglapus, who was acknowledged as one of the Philippines’ fine orators, a sharper, feistier Ninoy showed up in Detroit.
Manglapus rose to introduce his guest. Conceding the spotlight to the man of the hour, Manglapus showered Aquino with praise, ultimately introducing Ninoy as the Philippines’ “Superman!” Ninoy smiled in his seat, half-embarrassed, half-amused by his elevation to super status. The crowd jumped to its feet in ovation, ratifying Manglapus’s praise of Aquino….
Aquino then launched an attack on Marcos, apprising his listeners of the horrors of the Marcos reign. Unlike his previous speeches in Washington and Maryland, Ninoy was emotional in Detroit. He was angrier. He was emphatic. He was solemn. He was sarcastic. The fire was back!
The crowd cheered, perhaps catching a glimpse of the light at the end of a long, dark tunnel in their country’s political crisis….
I saw Ninoy again briefly in Congressional hearing rooms in Washington as he attempted to turn around America from its embrace of the Philippine despot. But on those occasions Ninoy had time only for a quick greeting.
Ninoy retreated to the ivied calm of Harvard University where he immersed himself in the study of alternatives to authoritarian government. His ruminations there were interrupted by clandestine rendezvous with associates from the Philippines or by the occasional attempt to mediate the thorny Muslim secessionist tug-of-war in southern Philippines. Sometimes, too, he paused from his Harvard sabbatical to go to a command meeting in New York with Imelda Marcos, the relentless neutralizer.
It was said at the time that Ninoy had felt let down by the Filipinos in America. He had expected not only a rousing welcome when he came over but, more importantly, sustained support from the Filipino expatriate community as he, Manglapus and the other opposition leaders lobbied against Marcos among those who occupied America’s seats of power. It has been said that this frustration was a factor in Ninoy’s decision to go back to the Philippines and attempt to influence the destiny of the country from closer range.
On August 21,1983 [28 years ago], minutes after a commercial airliner carrying Ninoy Aquino touched down at the Manila International Airport [now named Ninoy Aquino International Airport], an assassin fired the shot heard around the world.
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(This piece is also one of the essays in my book, “Imelda’s Cake,” published in 1995.)