and he was for real, nothing like the three “brightest stars” kuno … “shining” in the sky … that duterte claims himself, go, and cayetano to be.  hello.  not one of them, not all of them together — kahit isali pa natin si inday sara at ang buong konggreso — can hold a candle to ninoy.

were he still alive, ninoy would be 87, retired na siguro but still nakiki-alam malamang, still holding forth with his ten-centavos worth on every issue under sun and moon, leveling up popular discourse at the very least.  what i’d give for some informed intelligent talk about nation, with wisdom that comes from age and experience, with credibility that comes from integrity and love of country.

one thing his political opponents couldn’t fault ninoy for, ever, was corruption.  and so they hit him hard with the communist card, tagged him a godless enemy of the state, without evidence other than that he was friendly with certain anti-america anti-bases huks and communists, but then so was marcos, friendly with certain other anti-america anti-bases communists but secretly, of course, in the run-up to martial law.  [read joseph paul scalice’s Crisis of Revolutionary Leadership: Martial Law and the Communist Parties of the Philippines, 1959–1974 (2017)]

which is not to say that ninoy couldn’t have played his cards better.  i can understand, for instance, that he thought it a great idea to facilitate, hasten, a meeting (which would have happened anyway without his help, it is said) between the communist ideologue joma sison and the rogue huk bernabe buscayno, but did it have to happen in / around hacienda luisita?  of course nakarating ang intel kay marcos, and of course marcos exploited it to the hilt.  ninoy laid himself wide open for that.

i like to think that ninoy didn’t have to die just so we could topple marcos.  i like to think that we would have toppled marcos with ninoy himself leading the way.  but i guess that would have been a different kind of battle.  enrile, for one, might not have given way to ninoy the way he did to cory.  and then, again, who knows.

ang nakahihinayang sa lahat, ninoy never, it would seem, considered the possibility, in case he was killed, that cory might take up the struggle in his place.  because if he did he might have prepared cory better, and noynoy too?  or did he try sharing the christian democratic socialist ideology with his family but their eyes glazed over?

maybe they would all have tried harder had they known how much ninoy was loved and admired for standing up to marcos, even in exile, and had ninoy known how eagerly we awaited his return.  but then how was he to know, when marcos controlled all media, and he continued to denounce ninoy as communist, and we had learned to keep our mouths shut, or else.  almost like now.

we had no idea then how many we were (legion! pala) who believed in ninoy and trusted him to lead the way forward, that is, until he was taken from us, murdered on the tarmac, our one great hope.  no wonder the love and the hope spilled over and embraced cory and the children in grief.  the rest is history, ika nga.

nowadays, we have no idea, either, how many we are who desperately desire a better life for the marginalized and impoverished masses and a just and equitable social and political order for all.  but little do we really know what it would take to achieve these goals.

what we need is a ninoy, nay, we need many ninoys, who have the welfare of the masses at heart, and who have the expertise to pick up where ninoy left off, craft a credible and sustainable development program (beyond BuildBuildBuild and PPP) toward systemic change that would be worth uniting behind. 

in an interview with nick joaquin, ninoy said that in 1967, when he ended his gig as manager of hacienda luisita to run for the senate, it took eight men to take over his job. [The Aquinos of Tarlac page 278]

eight is a good number, for starters.  but, yeah, ninoy is a hard act to follow.

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