Category: marcos

The Unbelievable Irwin Ver (updated)

Being reposted on Facebook is Esquire magazine’s 2017 essay “Strange Bedfellows: A Martial Law Love Story” by Aurora N. Almendral. It’s about the romance of the author’s mom, Gemma Nemenzo (sister of Francisco “Dodong” Nemenzo, high-ranking communist in the ’60s and ’70s) and former colonel Irwin Ver (son of Marcos’s AFP chief of staff Gen. Fabian Ver in the time of martial law).

No offense meant to Gemma, whom I met in 1983, Sesame days  (she was the media liaison of the Philippine Sesame Street Project), but Irwin Ver’s pronouncements about Ninoy Aquino and the dictator Ferdinand Marcos are nakaka-offend, being clearly of a piece with Bongbong Marcos’s flippant dismissal of anything negative about his father. In effect, Irwin and Bongbong paint their fathers innocent of any crimes and unjustly ousted by the people.

ON NINOY’S KILLING 1983 | “No, I don’t think he was involved”

Irwin’s story is that, like his father the general, he was at home when Ninoy was shot.

He was watching TV when his father barged into his quarters dressed in pambahay, to tell him something had happened at the airport.

“If he knew that something like that would happen,” Irwin said, to me, to my mother, to my mother’s friends and family, to everyone who has asked him, “he would have been in uniform. He would have been at his office, monitoring the situation. But he was as shocked as the rest of us. No, I don’t think he was involved.”

But But But. According to the Agrava Fact-Finding Board, at around 1:30 PM, AVSECOM commander Gen. Luther Custodio  “reported the incident [read assassination] by telephone to General Fabian Ver who was at the time in his office at Malacañang Park.”

There is no doubt that Gen. Ver was monitoring the situation. Two days previously, August 19, his order to Custodio was to “return Aquino to his point of origin on board the same aircraft he took in coming in.” He must have realized after that there was no way China Air Lines could simply immediately turn around and fly Ninoy back to Taipei. Early on the morning of August 21, he revised his instructions, ordered Custodio to: “Arrest Aquino and turn him over to the Military Security Command in Fort Bonifacio.”

That the general was nakapambahay lang, as Irwin claims, means nothing. It was a Sunday, after all, and his office was right next to his home in Malacañang Park (correct me if i’m wrong). How he was dressed, or not, has no bearing on whether or not he was monitoring the situation. Unless it was deliberate, if true, to give the impression, in case the shit hit the fan, that he was off-duty and completely uninformed and uninvolved and innocent, or something silly like that.

In November 1984 the Agrava Board’s Majority Report (that so displeased the dictator) unequivocally named Fabian Ver (and 25 others) indictable for the “military conspiracy in the premeditated killing” of Ninoy Aquino.

ON MARCOS IN THE TIME OF EDSA 1985 | “He did not want to kill his own people”

Irwin’s kuwento is that he was at the Palace sometime after Marcos’s high-noon oath-taking.

The same day, Colonel Irwin Ver, head of the presidential guard, favored son of General Fabian Ver, Marcos’s most loyal aide and Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, was at Malacañang Palace. Irwin saluted Marcos, who was still dressed in the barong he wore for the cameras. Despite the oath-taking performance, Marcos seemed to have already accepted defeat. Irwin had not. Our position is still defensible, Irwin reported, ready to fight off an attack from the rebels. “No,” Marcos said. He did not want to kill his own people. Irwin recalled seeing the sadness in Marcos’s eyes, and for a moment he feared that he himself might cry.

Drama queens. Question is, what were they so sad about?  Were they sad about not killing their own people? Or were they sad because their officers were defying orders to kill the people.

Surely Irwin Ver remembers the very eventful morning of February 24, Day 3 of the four-day EDSA uprising. By then, Enrile and RAM had left Camp Aguinaldo and joined Ramos in Camp Crame.

Early that morning, according to Alfred McCoy [Veritas Special Edition, Oct 1986], Fabian Ver gave the signal for an all-out attack on Camp Crame by riot police using tear gas, Marine artillery, helicopter gunships, and low level jet bombers.

Riot police teargassed the human barricades in Libis / Santolan and cleared the way so that two battalions of Marines led by Col. Braulio Balbas were able to enter Camp Aguinaldo, from there to take positions within sight of Camp Crame.

Meanwhile, Sikorsky gunships were ordered to fly to Camp Crame and bomb two helicopters parked there to prevent Enrile and Ramos from escaping by air. Instead Col. Antonio Sotelo led the 15th Strike Wing’s seven gunships bristling with rockets and cannon to Camp Crame and defected wholesale.

CAMP AGUINALDO ► Looking down from the high ground of Aguinaldo’s golf course, Balbas had awesome firepower “boresighted” on the rebel headquarters only 200 meters away: 3 howitzers, 28 mortars, 6 rocket launchers, 6 machine guns, and 1000 rifles. [McCoy]

CAMP AGUINALDO, 9:00 AM ► General Josephus Ramas gave Balbas and his Marines the “kill order.” With his artillery ready to fire at pointblank range, Balbas lied to Ramas. “We are still positioning the cannons and we are looking for maps.” Ramas: “The President is on the other line waiting for compliance!” [McCoy]

CAMP AGUINALDO, 9:20 AM ► Ramas again barked the command through the radio: “Colonel, fire your howitzers now!” Balbas replied, “Sir, I am still positioning the cannons.” [Cecilio T. Arillo. Breakaway. 1986. page 77]

At some point Balbas radioed Tadiar, made certain that the order had been cleared with / by  Marcos. But even so, the Marines could see that even Camp Crame’s grounds were teeming with people.  Balbas just could not order his men to fire. “We will be hurting a lot of civilians,” he said to Tadiar.

Just about then, over at the Palace, a Sikorsky gunship sent by rebel chief Fidel Ramos to rattle not harm the Marcoses, fired six rockets on the Palace grounds. Damage was negligible but the Marcoses and the generals freaked out.

CAMP AGUINALDO ► Balbas got a “frantic call” from Col. Irwin Ver, Commander of the Palace Guard, ordering a “full attack” on the rebels. Lying boldly, Ver said the Palace was hit and they suffered 10 casualties. [McCoy]

Yes, Irwin Ver himself, who would have us believe that Marcos did not have the heart to kill his own people.

That Malacanang presscon where Marcos tells Ver that his order was NOT to attack Crame? That was pure palabas. As in moro-moro. Dramarama sa umaga. The dictator saying one thing and doing the opposite. Messing up the narrative, as always.

ON FABIAN VER & MARTIAL LAW | “It felt like a war situation”

As a son, Irwin is loyal to his father’s memory and defends his reputation. … He knows there were many regrettable abuses of power at the lower levels of government, but insists that Marcos never ordered foot soldiers to commit arrests, torture, and disappearances. “It felt like a war situation, a combat situation. We were both on the offensive and the defensive. It is not uncommon that would happen,” said Irwin, “that some soldiers would act on their own.”

True. Marcos had nothing to do with foot soldiers, but he had everything to do with the generals who lorded it over the police and military forces, the Rolex 12—topped by Ver, Enrile, and Danding–in particular, who implemented his orders and  benefitted greatly (got rich) in / over the 14 years of martial law.

General Ver became the fall guy for the Marcoses. He went into hiding and spent his life on the run, using fake passports and assumed identities, in part because he could not afford defense lawyers for the cases the American and Philippine governments were mounting against him. He died without seeing his family again.

… In the accounting of misdeeds after the fall of Marcos, General Ver was associated with the corruption that came with unfettered power—and his sons have inherited an on-going case for plunder.

Irwin would have us believe that his Dad didn’t share any secrets with the family. Like, who was the mastermind of the Ninoy murder?

Irwin believes his father did find out, but he took the knowledge to his grave. “It’s better you don’t know,” General Ver told him, “You’re still in your military career.”

And yet Irwin Ver has stories that make me wonder. Take this one about Marcos and Ninoy in Inquirer‘s “Marcos: ‘My best successor is Ninoy'” by Fe Zamora back in August 2008:

On at least four occasions before May 8, 1980, Marcos sent his most trusted officer, AFP Chief of Staff Gen. Fabian C. Ver, to deliver a note to Aquino at his detention cell in Fort Bonifacio. On the last two visits, Ver asked his son, Col. Irwin Ver, commander of the Presidential Guards, to join him.

Ver told his son they were to bring a letter to the detained senator. The younger Ver expressed surprise; he thought all along that Marcos and Aquino hated each other’s guts. Ver explained that Marcos actually admired Aquino, that Marcos even saw him as “brilliant enough to be president someday.”

Selective sharing? Propaganda? Anything to help along the story that Marcos could not have ordered Ninoy killed because he admired Ninoy, Ninoy was his friend? Anything to help Bongbong get elected in 2022? Anything to bring back the happy days when the Marcoses reigned supreme and the Vers, too, in their own fashion?

I wonder how the Nemenzos really feel about that. #NeverAgain #NeverForget

*

Sources

“Strange Bedfellows: A Martial Law Love Story” by Aurora N. Almendral. Esquire Magazine. Sept 22 2017. https://www.esquiremag.ph/long-reads/notes-and-essays/strange-bedfellows-a-martial-law-love-story-a1999-20170922-lfrm3

Reports of the Fact-Finding Board on the Assassination of Senator Benigno S. Aquino Jr. Mr. & Ms. Publishing Co. 1984. pp 205, 40.

Veritas Special Edition. “Coup!” by Alfred McCoy, Marian Wilkinson, Gwen Robinson. Oct 1986. http://edsarevolution.com/chronology/day3.php

Chronology of a Revolution 1986. Vol. 1 of DUET FOR EDSA. Published by Eggie Apostol (1996). Edited by Lorna Kalaw-Tirol.  http://edsarevolution.com/chronology/

 

Bongbong Marcos should apologize for his father

ANTONIO CONTRERAS

INDEED, children should not inherit their parents’ sins. But in reality, we do. In a culture where debt of gratitude is inherited, even debts, whether financial or moral, are bequeathed by deceased parents to their offspring. We cannot take pride in the accomplishments of our parents, without balancing it with a sense of remorse, and the duty to ask forgiveness from those they may have offended.

I once argued against the act of asking for forgiveness for our parents’ actions, simply because I was a firm believer of a kind of ethics where you can only be held liable or responsible for the things that you had control over, or that in which you had an active participation. But upon much deeper reflection, I soon realized that this is a very Western construct, where responsibility and rights are very much defined within an individualistic ethos.

This is not what happens in our communitarian culture where family honor is considered to be a well-revered institution, that in some cultural groups, clan wars erupt to defend it. Thus, preserving honor is not a mere individual construct, and becomes a family duty.

It is in this context that former senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. should apologize for the sins of his father, the late President Ferdinand Marcos Sr.

At the outset, it must be emphasized that the Marcos family has always been pleading for a fair and objective treatment. They appeal to our sense of balance as we pass judgment on the complex period which Marcos Sr. had presided over, including the dark years of martial law. In fact, it is precisely because of such fairness and objectivity that Bongbong Marcos should not gloss over such complexity, by denying that everything was bright and sunny.

I lived through that period, and while I know that there were benefits that came out, there were also black memories that darkened the period of his father’s rule. To be objective is to take stock of both the positive and the negative. Bongbong Marcos cannot remind us of the good things that his father did without recognizing the bad things that happened during his term in office. After all, Marcos Sr. was not perfect as he was human, and he had his flaws. He was also not in total control of the actions of his people, but as president he bore the responsibility of being in command.

I know of people who disappeared in the dark of night, brothers in the student organization I joined. I have been told stories of torture. Indeed, these are people who may have rebelled against the state and joined the communist insurgency that threatened to make the Philippines into one of the Asian dominoes that faced the risk of falling, as the communist ideology was wreaking havoc and bringing death and destruction as it engaged in its expansionist project.

Nevertheless, there are rules of war which state parties are duty bound to uphold. While I do not expect rebels to uphold the law, what distinguished the state agents from them is the commitment to act within the boundaries of civilized combat, that inhuman punishments are prohibited, and that rights even of people who committed crimes against the government should be respected and protected. Thus, when state agents commit these atrocities, government leaders are duty bound to apologize and take responsibility.

There have been allegations of corruption, and the amassing of hidden wealth. I have always depended on the courts to adjudicate and determine the veracity of such allegations, and it is a given fact that sans the partisan agenda of those who hounded the Marcos family, independent courts both here and abroad have made judicial determination of the veracity of some of those claims.

If only for these, then it is in order for Bongbong to act honorably by recognizing that there were instances where laws of reasonable engagement against dissidents were violated and that there were instances where the courts established that indeed there were economic crimes committed. There is a preponderance of things that warrant, at the very least, a display of sincere remorse and contrition.

But instead, Bongbong has doubled down by refusing to apologize. He boldly declared that he is thankful that he is a Marcos, even congratulating himself for choosing his parents very well. Of course, no one is telling him not to be thankful for having been born into a very privileged family. And while he actually didn’t choose his parents, he can actually choose how to honor them.

As children, we do not control the actions of our parents. And while we owe so much to them, there are many parts of their lives that we are not familiar with or that were probably hidden from us. We are not privy to all the lies they told, every transgression they made, and every sin they committed. There is nothing dishonorable if we apologize for these. And it becomes a duty when we somewhat knew, and we tolerated it, and worse, we benefited from it.

For me, that is the biggest honor a son can perform on behalf of an imperfectly human parent — to bear the burden of an apology which the parents were denied of asking when they were still alive.

There is one other compelling reason why Bongbong should sincerely apologize. He is a presidential candidate offering himself to the people. If we believe surveys, scientific and otherwise, he has a chance of being the next president of the Republic. He has a solid base of support. He has nothing to lose if he apologizes. He may not convince many of those who have an intense dislike for him and his family, but he may just create more space to unify this toxically divided country by changing his narrative and redeem it in the eyes of those who are still open to changing their minds.

 

Historical revisionism and fake news

Amelia H. C. Ylagan

History is always the most revered authority, and the ultimate teacher. It is empirical proof of expected results from conditions and contexts as naturally presented by science or as conjured and executed by minds. What has happened, has happened, and there is always a lesson learned.

But the life that History gives to concepts and principles can be limited not only by the durability of physical archives but the fickleness of minds — who may carelessly forget lessons learned, or, worse, actively tamper with facts and data to suit biases and whitewash personal culpability in the deconstruction and revision of what may be a notorious Past.

An example of negative historical revisionism is David Irving’s controversial book, Hitler’s War (1977), where the dictator Adolf Hitler is shown as innocent of the Holocaust and that only Heinrich Himmler and his cohorts masterminded and executed the genocide of six million Jews in Nazi Germany between 1941 and 1945.

Are Filipinos about to accede to a revision of history over the 14 year-dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos — editing out as well the glorious EDSA People Power Revolution that ended the most notorious period that killed about 3,240, imprisoned 70,000, and tortured 34,000 people from 1972 to 1981, according to data of Amnesty International?

On the 48th anniversary of Marcos’ declaration of Martial Law, an online conference on historical revisionism titled “Balik Ka/Saysay” was held from Sept. 21-25 by the Ateneo University-based Asian Center for Journalism (ACFJ) and Consortium on Democracy and Disinformation, in partnership with Tanggol Kasaysayan and Bulatlat. The conference focused on disinformation and the machinations of politics, on the inadequacy of education, and extensively described the exacerbating influence of social media and fake news on perception and the formation of new mores and values.

Keynote speaker at the ACFJ webinar was novelist Lualhati Bautista (Dekada ’70 and Gapo) who went underground during the Marcos martial law, and despite the strict censorship imposed by the government, wrote about the anxieties and fears of ordinary Filipinos in those tremulous times. “Never forget; never again!” was her heart-wrenching message. But for those listening to her recounting of the hounding and torture of those who defied Marcos then, her horrible reminiscences might have fallen differently on unreceptive ears of those who did not directly experience martial law. How devastating to hear a young reactor at the conference, a self-proclaimed “fan” of Ms. Bautista for her art, dismissing the pathos of a dark history by concluding a long-winded to-and-fro on doubting what may be “exaggerations” in the telling of the martial law situation then. “It is not my context,” she might have said in so many words, as she quite directly insinuated to this aghast listener who has seen Lualhati Bautista’s horrible scenarios in the context of 48 years ago.

“It is not my context” is the obvious indifference of most of the younger generation that did not see the excesses and horrors of martial law played out in reality. Adding cold emotion to whatever near-boiling empathy might be brought by stories told by seniors is the obtrusive social media virtual reality replete with ready fake news that the younger generations might have made its instant real Reality — their “context.”

At the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP) theater showing early in the year of Kingmaker, a documentary by Emmy-winning filmmaker Lauren Greenfield about former First Lady Imelda Marcos, an open forum was held mainly to wrap up for attending groups of students from various schools, the “Never Again” information campaign of rights groups to educate the younger generation about the perils of autocratic government. Resource person Etta Rosales, tortured and imprisoned in Martial Law, gave inputs and answered questions from the students. It was the same basic concern of the Youth: “What is in it for Me?”

Recalling that open forum, and reviewing the ACPJ conference on historical revisionism, it sends chills through this older person to realize that a better way must be found to protect those who have not personally experienced Martial Law and its excesses from the frightful chimera of History repeating itself. The protective instinct of the Elders must work within the context of the Youth, in their Reality and in their Present — and perhaps resignedly acquiesce to their focus on “What is in it for Me.”

University of the Philippines Professor Francisco A. Guiang in a comment about historical revisionism cites the historian Carl L. Becker who said that “Every generation writes its own history… we build our conceptions of history partly out of our present needs and purposes…” (1955). Hence, while the older generations might be concerned about the immoral revision of their history, the younger generations are focused on writing their own, based on their present needs and purposes, their values and principles, taught to them by their parents by example, or by individual collective experiences and environments.

It must be admitted that in the 14 years of the Martial Law experience, victims and beneficiaries all have been writing history by the acceptance, refusal or compromises made then, and many have effectively rewritten and revised that history in the 34 years after the euphoric EDSA People Power Revolution, directed by changing individual and collective present needs and purposes. Some guilt might lie in admitting that the older generations might not have shown good example and firm guidance to the younger generations as to the values and principles that urged the collective judgment then that martial law the way Marcos did it was wrong and unconscionable.

Why did the Filipino people allow President Rodrigo Duterte to bury the dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the Libingan ng Mga Bayani? We have revised History. Marcos is now a hero.

The Marcoses plundered the country’s coffers, with various estimates putting the amount at between $5 billion to $10 billion, as reported by ABS-CBN in 2017. The Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG), the body going after the Marcoses’ ill-gotten wealth, is still recovering this money; over the past 30 years, at least P170 billion have been recovered. The Supreme Court dismissed in 2018 a civil suit seeking the recovery of over P50 billion in moral damages and P1 billion in exemplary damages sought by the PCGG over the Marcoses. The Sandiganbayan in 2011 junked the case, saying the PCGG failed to prove that the defendants connived to amass ill-gotten wealth.

In 2008, former First Lady Imelda Marcos was acquitted of an $863-M corruption case involving 32 counts of illegally transferring wealth to Swiss banks abroad during her husband’s 20-year rule. Would you wonder why the documentary Kingmaker did not jar the young viewers at that open forum held after the screening, despite the first-person account of Etta Rosales of her torture during Martial Law? Imelda is guiltless. History has been re-written.

It seems that the onus of responsibility to keep the integrity of history clearly rests on those survivors of Marcos’ Martial Law. Alas, so few of the older generation still have the passion to pursue the noble upholding of the Truth. At least those who still care that History must not repeat itself for the younger generations must devise and design active ways, albeit from physically deteriorated capabilities (but still-solid minds) to inculcate values and principles above present needs and wants of the younger generations.

The best way can only be to always visibly and audibly, strongly oppose corrupt and immoral practices in present-day government and society in general that, in the wisdom of age and experience, can be a useful template for the younger generations. The older generations are still writing their history, and their legacy.

Amelia H. C. Ylagan is a Doctor of Business Administration from the University of the Philippines.

Ideas, seismic activity, dinner, and the CCP

By Marian Pastor Roces

THE OUTRAGE spiked social Geiger counters. The Imelda Marcos re-appearance at the Cultural Center of the Philippines (CCP), upon the invitation of its Board to be honored as founder, set off rumblings at a time of heightened seismic activity. Even if low intensity, the bubbling-over is as much produced by pent-up steam as Taal’s.

Read on…