The Supreme Court’s 9-5 decision rejecting the petitions to stop the burial of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the Libingan ng Mga Bayani is a betrayal of both the Court’s noblest traditions and of the animating spirit of the Constitution. We share the view that the majority’s version of judicial restraint in the face of presidential prerogatives has allowed evil to slip through the thicket of technicalities—and triumph.
Nov. 4-Friday from 9am to 1pm. Padre Faura, SUPREME COURT Gates. If you have not engaged in any public protest against the proposed Marcos burial at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, this is our LAST CHANCE to be heard. On November 8, Tuesday, the Supreme Court Justices are deciding on whether to allow the Marcos burial at LnmBayani. If they vote yes, then the SC will bury Truth and Justice with the Dictator. Join us for this last push, a last plea to the SC Justices to vote against the burial. The last time a crowd was at the SC gates, it was a throng of Marcos loyalists there in full force. The SC justices do not engage in social media, they do not see our memes, our online protests. They need to see us, in the flesh at their gates, pleading our cause. Please come. Huling Hirit na ito!
There is also a concert-prayer rally at Lapu-lapu monument at Luneta on Sunday, Nov 6 from 4-8pm
(Facebook message via Susan Quimpo. Huling Hirit sponsored by Duyan ng Magiting Coalition, Akbayan Youth, SCAPS, Ateneo Sanggunian, QC Unite, Simbahang Lingkod ng Bayan)
…. Under Marcos, logging licenses and timber concessions were given out as gifts and favors to select family members, close friends, politicians, and supporters. Shared out like a great cake, the forests of northern Luzon were sliced up in unequal portions and distributed to the privileged few. Marcos’ mother, an uncle, a brother, a sister and her husband, were concessionaires to hundreds of thousands of hectares of forest in the provinces of Cagayan, Isabela, Nueva Vizcaya, Aurora, Quirino and Quezon. They installed themselves as board members and shareholders of newly formed lucrative logging companies and timber processing plants….
it was while i was writing marginal notes to the ishmael bernal anti bio, grounding a “dialogue” between bernal and jorge arago (both leftists at some point) in the culture and history of their times, when i found myself forced to deal with senate president jovito salonga’s studied view that it was cpp chairman jose maria sison who had ordered the bombing of plaza miranda in august 1971, and not, as we all had believed, president marcos.
sison has always denied it. of course. but salonga was known for rectitude and probity; he would not have charged sison so unequivocally if there had been any doubt in his mind. and in this light there is no ignoring related questions raised re ninoy aquino who was expected at that miting de avance of the liberal party of which he was secretary-general. it is said that he was just delayed by a party that he had had to attend; but it is also said that he had been warned to stay away from plaza miranda by a kadre friend, thereby insinuating that ninoy had not only saved only his own skin, but even that he had been complicit in the bombing.
i wondered if that was why ninoy stayed and submitted to arrest in september 1972 instead of going underground or fleeing into exile — he felt that he deserved some punishment for plaza miranda? perhaps he could have done something to prevent the carnage? but what if maybe, if there had been a warning, it had come too late to warn anyone else? more recently, as i was reading up on the affair and writing this blogpost in my head, i wondered if the discovery that sison was responsible for plaza miranda may have affected the way that senator salonga had felt about ninoy, given the latter’s admitted links to the cpp-npa.
steve salonga, a friend from u.p. days and on facebook today, was quick to enlighten me via private message:
I looked positively at those links [of Ninoy with the CPP-NPA]. That happened way before Miranda and has no relation to later events. Most of what you hear about that today was actually trumped up ‘evidence’ during Ninoy’s military trial for murder.
Dad began hearing the ‘scuttle-butt’ about JOMA ordering the Plaza Miranda operations as early as 1982. Although it wouldn’t be until 1990 that testimony at a senate blue ribbon comm hearing would expose the whole fiasco.
The rumors that Ninoy knew about the bombing before the fact are true, but then, so did we. At that time we had raw intel of a plan to bomb our campaign sorties. But nothing definite. After Miranda, the rumors about Ninoy surfaced. But neither Dad nor I believed any of it. We knew Ninoy was at a party with Doy Laurel at the Sky Room at Jai Alai. We also knew he would follow shortly after that party. We never changed our mind about his innocence.
just the same it boggles the mind that when ninoy came home from exile, he timed it so that he landed on the tarmac on the 21st of august 1983, twelve years to the day since the plaza miranda bombing. at the very least, it tells me that august 21, 1971 was a critical juncture in his life that he deemed worth marking. with his death, as it turned out.
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Truth about blast first told in Sierra Madre by Jovito Salonga
Revolution by assassination? by Max Soliven
Days of Shame: August 21, 1971 and 1983 by Rigoberto Tiglao
Once upon a ride to the Plaza Miranda bombing Part 1 by Mauro Gia Samonte
Part 2 … Conclusion
Ninoy Aquino, the Plaza Miranda bombing and Japanese collaborators
Jose Maria Sison Arrested by Dutch Govt for Murder
Victor Corpuz, Joma Sison, Martial Law, Plaza Miranda Bombing