Category: cory

Imelda (after) Marcos #Halalan2022

It is said that Ferdinand, and nation, paid very dearly for his love affair with Hollywood starlet Dovie Beams because he could not but humor Imelda at every turn of extravagance and political ambition ever after.

But was it just the Dovie scandal that turned Imelda into the power-tripping steel butterfly who fancied herself a highborn queen with crowns and tiaras and a palace to match?

Scholar Caroline S. Hau reminds that there was, too, the fact of martial law and, corollary to that, the all-important question of who would succeed the dictator Ferdinand.

HAU. The turning point for Imelda’s “rise” to power is arguably not the Dovie Beams scandal, but the declaration of martial law and the dictatorship that Marcos established in the Philippines. It is one thing to be the wife of an elected president, living in a country whose politicians are corrupt and enrich themselves at public expense, but with a free press that can criticize the president’s (and his wife’s) policies and actions and a body of elected officials to vet or else block the president’s decisions. It is another thing to be the wife of a dictator unconstrained by any institutional checks and balances, capable of putting rivals and enemies behind bars and stripping them of their assets, commanding an army to arrest anybody given the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, and helping himself to the nation’s funds and taking over various industries and turning them into personal expense accounts for himself, his wife and relatives, and his cronies and political allies.

Any number of explanations can be offered to account for Imelda’s growing clout in the martial law government, but the most important is regime maintenance, the desire of Marcos to keep himself, his closest kin, and his most trusted people in power for as long as he could. Ferdinand’s deteriorating health, the knowledge that his children were neither old nor experienced enough to “inherit” his position, the suspicion shared by all dictators that their lieutenants–especially those with strong connections to the military such as Executive Secretary Alejandro Melchor Jr. and Minister of Defense Enrile–were conspiring to build thier own power bases and ultimately dislodge the dictator in a coup d’etat: all of these would have had salience in determining (as well as upsetting) the “balance of favor” through which Marcos managed his dictatorship.

Imelda metamorphosed into the “Steel Butterfly” because she could do so and did so from 1972 onwards: there would be no institutional mechanism to hold her decisions and actions to public accountability, and there would be no one, not even an increasingly debilitated Ferdinand, to stop her from doing what she wanted. [Dovie Beams and Philippine Politics: A President’s Scandalous Affair and First Lady Power on the Eve of Martial Law. Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints, September-December 2019. pp. 595-634. Ateneo de Manila University. p623]

I believe Ferdinand was already grooming Imelda to succeed him when he appointed her Governor of the newly-created Metro Manila Commission in 1975, and then Minister of Human Settlements in 1976, and Ambassador Plenipotentiary and Extraordinary in 1978.

He did not have much of a choice. Who else but Imelda could he trust with the children’s future. Who else but Imelda shared his dream of a Marcos dynasty “reigning for ever and ever” as in Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus”.

This is why Ninoy Aquino, the only one who posed a serious challenge to the Marcos dynasty dream, had to go. ‘Yun nga lang, sumabit sa execution at sa post-production. Hindi bumenta sa audience ang storya nina Marcos at Ver na si Galman ang pumatay kay Ninoy sa tarmac.

The evidence of a military conspiracy was clear: a soldier shot Ninoy from behind, midway down the service stairs. The airport security had been so tight, Galman could only have been part of the military conspiracy to kill Ninoy and blame it on the communists.

Because the people saw through all the lies, na-EDSA ang mga Marcos. Poetic justice.

EXILE

The ouster in 1986 was totally unexpected, and unacceptable, to the disgraced tandem and their kids who had expected to live happily forever and ever in the Palace by the Pasig. To the (his) very end in September 1989, Ferdinand schemed and maneuvered for a quick forceful comeback, the surest way to bring back the good old days of impunity ASAP. But the coup attempts kept failing and he died just two months before the last, the biggest, the bloodiest, attempt which failed anyway because America played knight in shining armor to Cory’s damsel in distress.

I imagine that in the ailing Ferdinand’s lucid moments over those three years and a half when they were in Hawaii, and he was in and out of hospital, aching to go home, na paulit-ulit nilang napag-usapan ni Imelda, at napag-isipan nang malalim, exactly HOW to get the family back to the Pinoy future, with the patriarch’s luster restored.

No doubt Ferdinand continued to mentor | lecture Imelda on the ways of the law, and of politics, and of propaganda. Surely that famous line “Perception is real, truth is not” is a Marcos legacy, his very own political mantra passed on to Imelda and now the kids. It explains all the lying, all the denials, all the twisted stories, repeated endlessly over a decade on all media, so that people have started believing the bogus Marcos version of martial law and EDSA history.

BACK TO THE FUTURE

Looking back now on Imelda’s trajectory upon her return from exile, it is clear that she came home in November 1991 not just to face and plead innocent to ill-gotten wealth court cases and the like, but to work on denying and disputing all accusations of wrongdoing by her husband and herself, including the Ninoy assassination, if not in judicial courts then before the bar of public opinion.

And, let’s give it to her, the Marcos widow has done exactly that in the last 30 years, to the point that many decry the alleged persecution of the Marcoses and believe they deserve a second gig in the Palace.

BACK IN BUSINESS 1992-2016

She lost in the ’92 presidential elections but Bongbong won a seat in Congress as Ilocos Norte rep.  In ’93 she was convicted for graft but the case was on appeal so she was out on bail, praise the law, I mean, the lord.  Also in ’93 she lost the bid to bury Marcos in Libingan ng mga Bayani but at least she got him back home in Ilocos to display in a museum while awaiting more opportune times.  In ’95 Bongbong lost his first run for the senate but Imelda won the seat he vacated in Congress as Ilocos rep.  In ’98 she again ran for president but withdrew a few weeks before E-day and threw her support behind landslider Erap who ordered Marcos’s burial in Libingan ng mga Bayani (LNMB) even before he had taken his oath, but the outrage was so huge, the new prez backed off.  Consuelo de bobo: Imee ran for Ilocos rep and won the first of three consecutive terms.

By 2000 the campaign to free the convicted killers in the Aquino assassination, in jail then for some 14 years (counting from ’86), was in full swing, fueled by one of the convicts, Sgt. Pablo Martinez—one of 16 lowly-ranked officers serving double life sentences for Ninoy’s and Galman’s killings—who confessed in ’94 that he had been Galman’s handler, claimed he saw Galman shoot Ninoy on the tarmac, and named a general and a businessman identified with Danding Cojuangco who allegedly gave him and Galman their orders on the morning of the 21st of August 1983.

The story didn’t gain traction because Martinez was lying–Galman did not shoot Ninoy–but over the years, everytime August rolled around, media would keep repeating and speculating on the story, eventually succeeding in sowing doubt about Marcos and Ver as co-conspirators and throwing shade on Danding Cojuangco instead as the mastermind.  By the 20th anniversary of the assassination, the big lies had taken hold.

In 2005 Imelda Marcos threw her support behind Gloria Arroyo when the prez needed it most, after the Hello-Garci scandal, which must have counted a lot because in November 2007 Arroyo started releasing the killers of Ninoy and Galman after serving only one of two life sentences.  By March 2009 they all walked free, they had suffered enough, it was said; they might even be innocent like Marcos, it was also said.  In 2016 Bongbong ran for VP and almost won.  Imelda won anyway: Marcos got his hero’s burial in November, though behind closed gates.  In 2019 Imee won a seat in the senate.  And now Bongbong’s running for prez.

NEXT STOP, THE PALACE?

Imelda’s incredibly close to fulfilling the Marcos dream.  Can we still stop her | them at this point?

Our only fighting chance is to prevail upon Isko, Ping, and Manny to withdraw from the race for love of country—make the battle one-on-one as in the time of Cory.  With all of the opposition ganging up on Marcos-Duterte may panalo tiyak si Robredo.  Sa VP race, may the best man win—sana may bulagaan!

*

Read Randy David’s “If Marcos Jr. becomes president” https://opinion.inquirer.net/151481/if-marcos-jr-becomes-president

 

EDSA ’86 — Aquino vs. Marcos lang daw ?!?

SABI-SABI NG MGA MARCOS #1

Ang EDSA daw ay hindi pag-aalsa laban kay Marcos nung 1986.  Ang EDSA daw ay laban lang ng dalawang political families: Aquino vs Marcos.

HINDI TOTOO.

Ang EDSA ay pag-aalsa ng taongbayan kontra-Marcos nang dinaya ni Marcos ang snap election.

Dati nang gawi ni Marcos ang pandaraya sa  mga referendum at eleksyon in the 14 years of Martial Law – lutong Makoy, ika nga.

Yung 1986 snap election ang naging last straw.  Agad kasing napatunayan ng taongbayan na may nagaganap na dayaan nung mag-walk-out ang computer technicians ng COMELEC — iba daw ang vote-count nila sa vote-count na ibinibigay sa mga media na hawak ni Marcos.

Balita pa ng NAMFREL, sa mga balwarte ng Oposisyon may tatlong milyong rehistradong botante ang hindi nakaboto – nag-disappear na lang ang names nila sa voters’ lists.  Icing on the cake na lang ang confession ni Enrile nung Feb 22 na dinaya nila si Cory sa Cagayan.

Taongbayan na dinaya ang kalaban ni Marcos noong EDSA.

Taongbayan na sawang-sawa na sa panunupil at korapsyon ang nanindigan laban kay Marcos noong EDSA.

KUNG AWAY-PAMILYA LANG ang kina Marcos at Ninoy … gusto lang ni Marcos na mapatahimik si Ninoy … bakit buong bansa ang isinailalim sa Martial Law?

Kung si Ninoy lang ang problema, bakit umabot si Marcos sa Proclamation 1081 at Batas Militar?

ANG TOTOO:  Ang goal talaga ni Marcos ay mamuno sa Pilipinas habangbuhay.  Bagong Lipunan = Marcos Dynasty.  Marcos Forever.  Pagkatapos niya, si Imelda.  At pag-ready na, si Imee.  Na puwede lang mangyari kung walang Ninoy at kung tuloy-tuloy ang Batas Militar.

Pero dahil may isang astig na Ninoy Aquino na nanindigan laban sa diktador, na siya niyang ikinamatay, lalong namulat ang taongbayan sa tapang at kabayanihan ni Ninoy at sa kalupitan, panunupil, at panlilinlang ng rehimeng Marcos.

ANG TAONGBAYAN AT SI CORY

Taongbayan na mulat sa demokrasya at kalayaan ang nag-udyok kay Cory na tumakbong pangulo noong 1986.

At nang dayain ni Marcos ang snap election, taongbayan ang nagbigay-buhay sa crony boycott ni Cory.  Ika-pitong araw na ng boykot nang mag-defect sina Enrile at Ramos.  [Humahabol much?]

Sa kainitang iyon ng boykot, parang hulog ng langit ang datíng ng military defection.  Wow.  May armed forces na si Cory?!?  Agad sumaklolo sa EDSA ang taongbayan.

Ayun pala, hindi type ni Cory ang dalawang bandido, and vice versa,

Si Ramos ang nagpa-aresto kay Ninoy close to midnight of September 22 1972. Si Enrile ang “jailer” ni Ninoy 1972-1980.

Kung si Cory ang nasunod noong nag-defect sina Enrile, sa Luneta niya yinaya ang supporters niya, hindi sa EDSA.  Mas gusto niya sanang manood lang from the sidelines habang nagbabanatan at nagpapatayan ang puwersang repormista at puwersang loyalista. [Imagine. What if.]

Pero napangunahan ng taongbayan si Cory.  Sumusugod na sila sa EDSA nang nabalitaan ni Cory ang defection.  Humaharang na sila sa tangke nang bumalik si Cory from Cebu.

PEOPLE POWER

Sa huli, nang kumaripas ng takbo ang mga Marcos, hindi ito dala ng takot sa lumalakas na armadong puwersa ng kaaway – nagmamadali silang umexit dala ng matinding takot sa (unarmed) People Power na nagbabadya sa gates ng Malacañang.

People Power din, na nagbabadya sa gates ng Clark Air Base, ang ikinatakot ni Gen. Teddy Allen kaya siya humingi ng permiso sa Washington DC na ilipad paalis ng Pinas, sa lalong madaling panahon, ang  barkadang Marcos-Danding-Ver.

Ibang klase ang powers ng taongbayan kapag mulat, maraming marami, at nagkakaisa.  Walang armas, pero matapang at umaasinta.  Who knows what People Power can do?  Or make happen?

Iyan ang fear ni Marcos nung Pebrero 25 1986.  Hindi na siya in-control.  Mabigat  ang kalaban.  Anything could happen.  Kaya sila tumakbo.

BLACK PROP

Siyempre baliktad ang version of the story ng Marcos heirs.  Wala-lang daw ang EDSA, pulitika lang, away ng dalawang pamilya, kinidnap nga sila, kawawa naman sila.

Ang kakapal.

Ang kampanya ni Marcos Jr. is built on huge lies that paint the Marcoses all good and the Aquinos and EDSA all evil. 

Anything to justify a return to the Palace. 

Grabe ang riches at stake, ill-gotten and all. 

Worth na worth lying for, in the Marcos playbook.

*

read the marcos curse https://stuartsantiago.com/the-marcos-curse- 

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]

Mourning PNoy

Luis V. Teodoro

The return of authoritarian rule is a constant threat, and progress an increasingly elusive goal in the Philippines. Democratization and development have too often foundered on the shoals of government indifference, incompetence, and antipathy.

A process that began during the reform and revolutionary periods of Philippine history, democratization has been interrupted, delayed, weakened, and sabotaged by foreign invasion, imperialism, and home-grown tyranny, with some post-martial law administrations paying only lip-service to it.

Development and “modernization” have also found their way in the vocabularies of a succession of regimes. But they have similarly proceeded glacially, if at all, and are continuing to elude this country, as evidenced by the poverty and the feudal relations that sustain it.

In these circumstances, the true measure of political leadership can only be how much it has contributed to either course — or, in this country of declining expectations, how little it has hampered both processes.

It need hardly be said that no one is perfect, and that no Philippine president has ever approached that exalted state.

Benigno Aquino III was no exception. But there are presidents and presidents, and some, despite their similarities, were nevertheless also better than others.

Aquino III’s death at the age of 61 last July 24 was predictably hailed by the fact-resistant hordes that infest both social and old media in behalf of a regime whose knowledge of statecraft is limited to harassing, threatening, imprisoning, and killing anyone who dares tell the truth about it. But his passing also reminded the civic-minded of the difference between presidents. Despite the political and social calamities that have befallen this country, they still believe that the true leaders it needs will save it. These citizens make it their business to carefully weigh who is worthy of their support for president, and in 2010 they chose Aquino. Today more than ever they believe that they chose wisely.

Like many of his countrymen, Benigno Simeon Cojuangco Aquino III was a child of the hierarchic and quasi-colonial political, social, and economic orders that have prevailed in the Philippines for decades. He shared with the rest of the political class the instinct to preserve, enhance, and protect one’s familial and class interests. The Hacienda Luisita issue was, for example, a constant challenge during his term, to which he hardly responded. Although far fewer in number than today’s, the extrajudicial killings that in most cases claim government critics as victims also continued during his watch.

He was no leftist or revolutionary, and he never claimed to be either. Only mildly reformist was his “walang mahirap kung walang corrupt” platform of government, corruption being just one of the many factors behind the persistence of poverty in these isles of want.

Like his predecessors, he also believed the United States to be a reliable friend and ally. To supplement the 1999 Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), he signed with the US the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA) which gave visiting US troops access to Philippine military bases. He also thought the armed forces’ purely militarist approach to the so-called “insurgency” essentially valid, and supported the “modernization” of its weaponry.

But his father Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, Jr.’s willingness in 1983 to sacrifice his liberty and even his own life in behalf of the anti-dictatorship resistance, and his mother Corazon’s presiding over the restoration of the Republic on whose ruins Ferdinand Marcos, Sr. had erected one-man rule, must surely have influenced and shaped his perceptions of Philippine society and governance.

Among his accomplishments as president was economic growth and the resulting decrease, so claimed government agencies, in poverty incidence. He also defended the country’s rights in the West Philippine Sea (WPS) by bringing the Philippine case to the UN Arbitral Tribunal, before which his designated petitioners succeeded in getting that body to strike down imperialist China’s absurd claims over some 80% of the WPS. But equally important was his remaining true to the Constitutional prohibition against abridging free expression and press freedom. What he did not do was, arguably, as significant as what he did. He never disparaged human rights, and neither did he vilify or threaten its defenders.

One of his first acts as president was to ban the practice of government vehicles’ wendingtheir way through traffic with lights ablaze and sirens blaring, a practice known as “wang wang,” that proclaims to ordinary folk how privileged and self-entitled the supposed servants of the people are.

He was his parents’ son, and was anti-dictatorship. He shepherded through Congress and signed into law the 2013 Human Rights Victims’ Reparation and Recognition Act, through which, rather than a Truth Commission, the Philippine government finally acknowledged that the Marcos regime had indeed committed such human rights violations as illegal arrests, detention and torture, involuntary disappearances, and extrajudicial killings, for which the survivors or their kin deserved indemnification. A landmark law, the Act, as he himself described it, was intended to “recognize the suffering of many during (Marcos’) martial law.”

Like his predecessors, he too was critical of the press. He complained about what he thought was its inordinate focus on his private life, and the bias against his administration by some broadcast and print practitioners identified with the regime prior to his. But he never threatened, insulted, or harassed journalists. He thought the numbers in the killing of journalists in the country’s rural communities that have been going on since 1986 exaggerated. But he did not justify the killings by blaming the victims and accusing them of corruption.

He answered the hardest questions even from his harshest press critics rationally, with civility, and, one must add, coherently. Although he did lose his temper at times, usually with his own officials, he never barred any journalist from covering his Office or his press conferences. Neither did he use the powers of the presidency to shut down any media organization the reporting of which he thought unfair and offensive.

Journalists were confident that they could report, monitor, and criticize his acts and policies and subject them to the closest scrutiny without fear of retaliation or petty vindictiveness. Without self-censorship and government hostility, the full exercise of press freedom and free expression was possible, although not always realized, during his six years in office due to reasons other than government intervention. He thereby convinced the nation and the world that he valued those rights as a necessary pillar of democratic governance.

Benigno Aquino III was a well-meaning, fairly competent product of this time and place. What he was not was a tyrant. Neither was he a brusquely anti-human rights, grossly incompetent and abusive poor excuse for a president and head of State.

Hounded as it was by such calamities as typhoon Yolanda and lapses in executive judgment like the Luneta hostage-taking crisis and the Mamasapano debacle, his term was far from perfect. It was neither an international embarrassment nor so bad as to deserve summary dismissal and total disparagement. But some of the worst enemies of the people are manufacturing misleading and totally false “information” about it for the meanest political reasons.

Every death diminishes us all, and Benigno Aquino III’s is no exception. But the Filipino people should mourn not only his passing but also the end of that less trying time when he was in office.

Comparisons, so the adage goes, are odious. But how can anyone with an iota of awareness of what his term was truly like avoid them in the context of the horrible present?