i love cory for EDSA

grabe ang mga patutsada kay cory sa twitter on the eve of her 89th birthday.  kesyo she was “just a housewife” and politically naive, thus the failure of her administration on many fronts.

but if cory had not run for president sa snap elections in 1986, kung hindi niya itinuloy ang laban ni ninoy na ibalik ang demokrasya, i daresay we would still be stuck, if not with the marcoses and vers, then with enrile and ramos and honasan, or all of the above, still under military rule and censorship at iba pang violations of human rights, democracy still out of reach.

cory was wondrously astounding.  backed by the people’s massive support, she handled those macho bandidos quite bravely defiantly brilliantly and freaked the marcoses out of the palace in just 10 days of non-violent civil disobedience.

that her six years in office left much to be desired was not her fault but ours.

because our agenda was limited to marcos’s ouster and the restoration of freedom and democracy, akala natin ay tapos na ang laban — we had done our part, with flying colors yet, and we thought we were home free.

tayo ang naive.  after 14 years of censored media, we just did not know enough about the true state of the nation (maybe we still don’t) and we simple-mindedly trusted that cory’s new government would set all wrong things right.

ayun pala, dapat ay hindi tayo agad bumitaw, if at all.

sabi nga ni eric gamalinda, on cory aquino, the day she died:

We wanted Cory Aquino to be strong so we could remain passive. We wanted her to save us so we could refuse to save ourselves. She was there so we could continue the infantile neurosis that has always sustained the Philippines’ need for a “guiding” power – God or a dictator, choose your daddy – and has always justified its corruption and poverty. She was, as so many predicted during the heyday of the people power revolution, our Joan of Arc. We knew we would burn her for allowing us to corrupt the vision we wanted her to sustain. We forgot so soon that she had achieved what no man in our supremely machismo-obsessed country had done – to get rid of the Marcoses. For that alone, we should be grateful. If the Philippines never rose from the “long nightmare” after she took over the presidency, we have no one to blame but ourselves.  [emphasis mine]

the marcos curse #ByeByeMarcos

as if the omicron surge and the duterte government’s care-less response weren’t bad enough, we have to deal with a marcos jr. running for president…

one who brings back awful memories of martial law, the conjugal dictatorship, the greatest robbery of a government, the murder of ninoy aquino…

one who faces disqualification cases filed by civil society groups on grounds of income tax evasion and moral turpitude that the COMELEC is taking its sweet time deciding.

not surprisingly there’s talk of “insider” info that the COMELEC, whose seven commissioners are duterte appointees, is “not inclined to disqualify the client of legendary solicitor general Estelito Mendoza of the elder Marcos.”

raissa robles is right.  “The Marcoses never really left home” (Inquirer 2014).

In 1998, by Imee Marcos’ own reckoning, “we waited 12 years to be on the right side of the fence.” Right side meant a political alliance with then victorious President-elect Joseph Estrada, velvet seats in Congress for Imee and her mother, and a governorship for Bongbong.

An ecstatic Imee spilled the family’s secret to success: “Many professionals were appointed by my father. So you have this immense bedrock of Marcos appointees who keep moving up.”

Like secret stay-behind units, this vast army of professionals scattered in all sectors of society have defended the Marcoses and helped erase the dark legacy of their regime. 

it’s like ferdinand marcos laid a cruel curse on the nation that the children are happily carrying on in his name, in his memory, with the eager support of a “bedrock” of grateful and beholden loyalists, bureaucrats and professionals from all sectors, who held the fort while they were away, and who have since moved up to real positions of power.

maybe this explains why the court of appeals dropped the jail sentence in marcos jr’s appeal of the RTC decision vis a vis his failure to file income tax returns for four years?

and maybe why COMELEC’s 2nd division ruled against canceling his COC despite the NO to question #22 because the respondent daw “cannot be said to have deliberately attempted to mislead, misinform, or hide a fact which would otherwise render him ineligible” ?!?

really ?!?  as in, he didn’t mean to lie?  is that like saying it was an honest mistake?

but is there anything honest about marcos jr. who has lied again and again about historical facts vis a vis martial law and his parents’ plundering ways, human rights violations and EDSA ’86?

and isn’t the fact that he took 4 years to follow the court of appeal’s order to pay up an indication of moral turpitude — a demonstration of arrogance, as though he were above the law?  isn’t that of a piece with the supreme court’s 2016 definition of moral turpitude in G.R. No. 219603?

Moral turpitude is defined as everything which is done contrary to justice, modesty, or good morals; an act of baseness, vileness or depravity in the private and social duties which a man owes his fellowmen, or to society in general. Although not every criminal act involves moral turpitude, the Court is guided by one of the general rules that crimes mala in se involve moral turpitude while crimes mala prohibita do not.  G.R. No. 219603

mala in se are acts wrongful in itself.  mala prohibita are acts that are not inherently evil or wrong.

i submit that tax evasion and lying about having been convicted are inherently wrong — no ifs or buts, no benefit of any doubt — and the liar and tax evader marcos jr. should be disqualified.

here’s praying the COMELEC en banc — or failing there, the supreme court — sees the light and disqualifies marcos jr. once and for all time.

otherwise these institutions would be complicit in perpetuating, keeping alive, the marcos curse on nation, and history and posterity will judge them harshly for betrayal of public trust.

Happy birthday, Lyca!

Lyca Benitez-Brown was my boss for 7 months, April to October, in 1983. She was the executive producer of the Pinoy Sesame and I was her headwriter for the first 45 (of 90) shows of the season.  We found each other again 27 years later on Facebook.  I was working on my 3rd book on EDSA and she graciously shared her story of Radyo Bandido. I haven’t written a love letter in ages, LOL, but one is never too old, I find.

Dear dear Lyca,

I’ve long been wanting to thank you for making me kulit back in ’83 to take on the headwriting of Sesame just on Ketly’s recommendation, even if I had no experience writing for children.  You refused to take no for an answer until it was djahe na — like I was making pa-importante — so finally I said yes, okay, fine, I’d give it a try, even if I was scared half to death.

It was a most challenging, and crazy, time for a free-lancer who never before and never again worked fulltime (except on my own books).  But as it turns out, it was worth the fears and tears, not to speak of the hard work — living breathing Sesame 24/7 for the many months it took me to get the hang of it, and a seventh month to come up with a writer’s guide.

As I moved on to write TV docus and books and blogs, atbp., I found that the rigorous Sesame training always stood me in good stead.  It’s not just the discipline of working / writing with clear goals in mind, but also of taking and handling criticism creatively, rather than tearfully, haha.  I have you and Feny and Sesame to thank for that.

THANK YOU ALSO for Radyo Bandido in the time of EDSA.  So sorry that my EDSA books don’t give you the credit YOU deserve pala for the BANDIDO handle, which was absolutely inspired and so serendipitously appropriate. (Ipapasok ko sa reprint, promise!)

Nation was fortunate to have you and Peque, with your production peeps, on the side of Ketly (and the two boys :-) in those crucial 12 hours of the revolution when the danger of bloodshed was oh-so-real!  Your 2006  essay, “AIR WAR: The Story Behind Radyo Bandido,”  is certainly one for the history books of that wonderfully radical time.

Who would have thought that 36 years later we’d be back battling the Marcos curse yet again, this time on social media where YouTube, Facebook, and Tiktok videos twist martial law and EDSA history to favor the villains.

What works best, I find, are the simplest formats — one falsehood at a time, straightening out the skewed, and skewering the Marcoses in turn.  Yes, time to get back to Sesame mode, but for adults only, for a change. Hope springs eternal.

Happy 70th, Lyca, and cheers to a happy new trip around the sun!

Love,
Angie