Category: media

iskho lopez (1948-2020)

met him in the late sixties sa A.S. basement, UP diliman.  writer na siya noon, contributing sa Collegian.  i was impressed and inggit.  ran into him again more than a decade later in the very early 80s, in another basement, the Metropolitan Museum’s, where Metromagazine, the weekly multi-channel tv docu, was being produced for the Metro Manila Commission by marita manuel and jorge arago’s gang of visual artists.  he was in the entertainment industry na.  from writing movie reviews and PR stuff, he had branched out to screenplays for award-winners such as Pinakamagandang Hayop sa Balat ng Lupa, co-written with raffy guerrero (1974) and Pagputi ng Uwak, Pag-itim ng Tagak (1978) with lando jacob and direk celso ad. castillo.

at the time i was writing feature articles, later a tv junkie column, for Parade magazine, and on the side reading birthcharts of everyone who asked, including iskho (sun in aquarius, moon in virgo).  and then i got into the Philippine Sesame Street Project as headwriter, along with noel añonuevo as light action film director, and iskho gave it a try, writing for kids, na kailangan funny and appealing, like a tv commercial, pero no special fx at ang daming bawal.  naloka siya — declared himself for-adults-only.

in ’84 when jorge and most of the gang had moved out of 1818 kansas st. in malate to bliss pasig and landlady evelynne horrilleno was still in the states, iskho and lorrie purisima turned the main house into a coffee house of sorts and called it Kape Talismo.  at the time i had moved on from Sesame and joined jorge in putting  out a journal on alternative futures (junie kalaw’s call for sustainable development), meeting twice thrice a week sa marietta apts., also in malate; invariably we would end the day in kansas, having cold beer and kamote fries with whoever else happened to drop in on iskho.

“….it was quiet on the hippie front off taft,” sabi ni krip yuson, “until Iskho Lopez came up with his Kape Talismo  …  celebrity chefs were featured, but the exclusive clientele couldn’t pay in cash or have plastic cards swiped. They had to exchange their lucre for Kape Talismo dollars, if I recall right.”  i do recall one night with celebrity chef baboo mondoñedo, but kape-talismo-dollars is new to me, maybe because i never asked.  i do remember dropping cash into an urn passed around by santi bose.

martial law pa noon, post-ninoy, and the ferment was real, especially on the “hippie front”.  there was a palpable sense of a center that wouldn’t hold, of things coming to a head, and kape talismo (loved the word play) was a great place to hang around with kindred spirits from left right and center, almost presaging the EDSA to come.  or maybe good vibes lang talaga ang 1818 kansas, at si iskho na rin, who was also writing movies sunudsunod for elwood perez.

after EDSA parang kinareer na ni iskho ang publishing.  in cory times he asked me to write for Bongga, a showbiz tabloid that he was editor of.  binuhay niya ang tv junkie column ko and let me go taglish, which was fun.  bandang 1990 nuong full blast ang anti-US bases campaign, i was asked to put together a proposal for a multi-media multi-genre campaign for the Philippine Information Agency.(PIA).  pinagtulungan namin ni iskho at naibigan naman ni noel garth tolentino ang trabaho namin,  inspired! sabi pa niya.  except that cory suddenly went pro-bases and we were dropped like hot potatoes, as in, ni hindi kami binayaran kahit man lang for expenses incurred.  hayz.  laking tuwa namin sa salonga senate nang mapatalsik anyway ang bases.

early in FVR times he was with Manila Standard as lifestyle/entertainment editor; bitbit uli ang tv junkie.  and then in 1996 there was ISYU, the all-opinion tabloid with nonoy marcelo as art director that was even more fun than Bongga because i got to write not just showbiz stuff but politics and environment too.

panahon din ni FVR when an advertising bigwig who learned that i was putting together a chronology of the four EDSA days made bulong, in case i hadn’t heard, that rosemarie “baby” arenas, rumored ex-mistress of the prez, was one of the first people to come out in support of the two bandidos.  i started asking around, sinong may konek, magpa-interview kaya?  iskho to the rescue.  kilala niya si mila alora, publicist ni ms. arenas,  next thing i knew, we were on our way, katrina, iskho, and i, with gerry gerena who videotaped the interview.  i leave it to katrina to make kuwento what she and iskho were cackling about while wolfing down bowls of pistachio nuts behind the scenes.

in GMA times post-garci, when she banned celebrations of the 20th EDSA anniv at the shrine, and nagtawag si jojo binay sa ayala, makati, who should we run into but iskho, with the chiz contingent, if memory serves.  from showbiz to politics, why not.  the year before had not been great.  we were in bistro remedios with him and jorge, noel and ed pacheco — galing sa private viewing ng A la verde, A la pobre (2005) ni briccio santos — and ed and noel, taking turns, kept breaking into song… “don’t cry for me, argentina”… sabay nguso kay iskho a.k.a. “evicta peron” — di na naman nakakabayad ng rent!  tawang tawa kami ni katrina, i guess dahil rin cool na cool naman si iskho, tipong what else was new nga naman.  which is why the fulltime job sa Manila Times as news desk editor was really good news. and, as it turned out, parang itinadhana.

next stop: malacanang palace, no less. “Uy congrats to kafatid Iskho Lopez,” sey ni salve asis nuong sept 2010:  “Bongga. Na-appoint siyang Editor in Chief of the Presidential News Desk. Yup, sa Malacañang na siya nago-office. … Si Sec. Sonny Coloma ang immediate superior niya.”

nakarating tuloy ako sa casa roces, that very sosyal resto across the palace, where iskho hosted a dinner for me in october 2011 dahil di siya nakarating sa august launch ng Revo Routes.  noon ko nabitbit si jorge for the last time at umapir din sina leah makabenta at nini yarte, at si noel, of course, bitbit si mayee fabregas.  better late than never si direk elwood perez plus 1.

in 2013 when my book designer for EDSA Uno requested a copy of gen. fabian ver’s blackboard map of the EDSA camps that had been preserved and was reported to be on display in the  Presidential Museum and Library, walang kahiya-hiyang binulabog ni katrina si tito iskho sa palasyo.  as always, iskho was the gracious host: made sure she and partner vito were on the guest list for the day and even met them at the gate (tight ang security, they had to leave laptops and camera behind).  he had also earlier scoped the museum (na ang gulo pa raw) and so knew where exactly the blackboard was.  siyempre katrina stole some shots on her cellphone.  pagkatapos ay nagpameryenda pa si manash sa casa roces, hindi nagmadaling bumalik sa trabaho, must have welcomed the break from palace politics.

huli ko siyang nakadaupang-palad in feb 22 2014.  nasa casa roces kami ni katrina to join honey de peralta’s book club Flips Flipping Pages in a discussion of EDSA Uno (2013) on the 18th anniv.  jumoin din si iskho, at pagkatapos ay we hied off to BGC to meet up with noel for a long dinner and chat, mostly about ishma, whose anti bio was next on my list.  nakabaston na si iskho noon but he denied really needing it, napulot lang daw niya sa taxi, lolz.

tuloytuloy pa for a while ang tawagan namin sa telepono at messaging sa facebook.  tuwing may iskandalong nababalita, siya pa rin ang aking touchstone.  totoo ba?  kung minsan he’d shrug it off, nagpapapansin lang; pag totoo naman, tiyak na may dadag siyang tsismis na delicious.  he had quite a network, and he seemed to know everyone worth knowing.  once he phoned just to tell me: hoy, si ano, nagsusumbong, tinag-team daw niyo siyang mag-ina!  tatawatawa.  ahahaha.

nuong ginagawa ko na ang Pro Bernal Anti Bio (2017), may pangalang nabanggit si ishma sa isang interbyu by aruna vasudev na hindi ko ma-place.

ISHMA  “We were influenced by three big festivals in the mid-60s that were initiated by the glitterati, principally headed by Rejii Moreno.  His film society, for example, showed Kurosawa films like Rashomon, plus the great Satyajit Ray flms – The Apu Trilogy, … Charulata. We even got to see classics like The Cranes are Flying from the Soviet Republic.”

i first asked ed cabagnot who had just shared some vignettes on a couple of bernal films for the book.  sino si rejii moreno?  sagot niya: “Naku, try Iskho Lopez… He might know.”

ISKHO:  Hahaha! Talaga? “Rejii Moreno”??? Sino siya? “HE” pa ang gender, ha! …  Virgie Moreno had the Salaguinto Film Society in the mid to late 60s –siguro 1965 or 66 to coincide with Los Indios Bravos.

again, iskho to the rescue!  he knew his stuff.  and i could go on and on with these memories, ang dami ko pang kuwentong iskho.  ngayon ko lang naarok that he was such a part of my writing life, from showbiz to politics.  and i’m so kilig for him that jullie yap daza’s nov. 28 column “Passing through” says goodbye to him in the same breath (so to speak) that she says goodbye to altasociedads ado escudero and louie cruz (also gone in late november), noting their “glory days”.

I assume Iskho Lopez knew Ado and Louie, even if it’s not likely that the two moved in Iskho’s circle. Iskho’s last job ended in 2016 with the Benigno Aquino III regime, for which he was chief editor of Malacañang’s news desk. Eternally a free-lance entertainment writer-editor, he surprised his colleagues when he bagged that position, miles away from the stars but close enough to rub elbows with the high and mighty.

Ado, Louie, Iskho: Passion was their calling card.

bongga ka talaga, iskho!  talbog kaming lahat!  #NotBadAtAll 

 

debunking tiglao  #EDSA #1986

i’m sure rigoberto bobi tiglao has a copy of my EDSA Uno book because he asked katrina for one when she was still with the manila times.  so, really, nakakataas ng kilay at medyo katawa-tawa ang kanyang Five facts about EDSA we didn’t know at the time.  napaka-selective and kind of twisted, in aid of putting down cory and EDSA and / while touching up the images, toning down the martial-law tainted vibes, of enrile and marcos in the time of EDSA.

historical revisionism to the max, with overtones of machismo.  all of thirty-three years later and these guys still can’t stop whining, and their tall tales get even taller.  hindi pa rin nila matanggap na naungusan sila, naisahan sila ni cory, fair and square, in those 10 shining days of the february boycott that saw the blooming of EDSA and the ousting of marcos.  get over it, guys.

TIGLAO:  Cory Aquino had little to do with EDSA 1.

CHAROT.  this is only a variation on enrile’s cory-was-not-even-in-EDSA line, and it’s also not true.  she was there for a while, in person, on the afternoon of day three 24 feb – long enough to pray the our father and sing bayan ko with the crowd in front of POEA  (reported by manila bulletin 25 feb).  thing is, she didn’t even need to make an appearance.

from the start, cory was all over EDSA in spirit – when the people trooped to EDSA they were wearing cory’s colors and waving her flags, and they were still on crony-boycott mode, demanding that marcos resign so cory could take over.

kung hindi kay cory na nilabanan si marcos sa snap election, kung saan dinaya siya ni marcos, kung kaya’t nagprotesta siya sa luneta at buong tapang na iginiit na siya ang tunay na nagwagi sa halalan, sabay tulak ng civil disobedience at crony boycott, na sinakyan nang todo ng mga coryistang sabik sa pagbabago… kung hindi kay cory at sa kanyang panawagan for non-violence a la ghandi and ninoy… kung hindi sa mga coryista na nanalig sa mapayapang pagbabago… walang naganap na EDSA.

kung hindi para sa ikauusad ng laban ni cory, walang coryistang pumunta sa EDSA maliban sa mga alipores nina enrile at ramos at RAM.  kung hindi nangumpisal si enrile na dinaya si cory sa cagayan by some 300,000 votes and that the september 22 1972 ambush on his convoy was staged, walang pumunta sa EDSA.

it was very smart of enrile, confirming in so many words that cheating indeed happened in the snap election and that martial law was declared under false pretenses.  ang dating sa people ay, uy!  biglang sinisiraan si marcos, baka cory na sila! — ang tindi at ang sigla ng kabig sa hearts and minds of the anti-marcos.

napaka-smart din of enrile to deny the aborted coup (set for 2:00 AM 23 feb, obviously hoping to preempt cory) that the vers discovered and marcos accused enrile and ramos of in a presscon later that saturday night.  admitting to the planned coup would have forced enrile to also admit that he had hoped to replace marcos as head of a ruling junta, which would have been the appropriate time to offer himself as an alternative to cory, in all honesty, except that it would surely have turned off the coryistas.  goodbye, human shields.   which could also be why enrile lied to the people, denied the aborted coup, all through the four days and beyond.

ika-pitong araw na ng boykot nang nag-defect sina enrile at ramos… kung hindi sila nag-defect, tuloy tuloy ang boykot, ipinapalaganap na nga ni cory sa visayas at mindanao (kaya siya nasa cebu, next stop davao).  kung hindi nagdramá sina enrile at ramos, tuloy tuloy ang crony boycott, tuloy tuloy ang panawagan ni cory at ng mga coryista na mag-resign na si marcos.

cory and marcos and, of course, enrile — all three camps — were “working” with a deadline.  the proclaimed winner had to take his/her oath within 10 days from proclamation.  marcos was proclaimed winner by the batasan on feb 15 and was preparing for a feb 25 oathtaking.  cory proclaimed herself winner in luneta on feb 16.

kung hindi nagdramá sina enrile at ramos, i imagine that cory would have been back in manila by the 24th and leading a humongous march to mendiola, if not the palace, demanding marcos’s resignation, and setting the stage for her oathtaking, preferably ahead of marcos.  given such a scenario, with the economy reeling from a nationwide crony boycott, it would not be far-fetched to assume that the military reformists would have defected anyway and fallen in line behind cory and the “will of the people.” wala nang drama-drama.  wala ring whining and tall tales post-marcos.

TIGLAO: Another brilliant move of Enrile was to call Cardinal Sin to ask his faithful to surround Camp Crame to form their human shield.  

CHARRRING!  hello?  iyan ba ang latest press release ni enrile to mark the 33rd anniv?  it was his bright idea that the people be asked to surround camp crame and shield the rebels??? — teka, tiglao can’t even get the camps straight: enrile was in aguinaldo when he phoned cardinal sin sometime before the 6:30 PM presscon (enrile didn’t move to crame until day two, when the tanks started rolling down EDSA); sa aguinaldo rin pinuntahan ni butz aquino si enrile, around 10 PM, after the presscon, and then butz spoke over radio veritas at 10:20 and made that first call for people and a peaceful solution, just before marcos appeared on TV, accusing enrile and ramos of a failed attempt to overthrow him.  according to radio veritas tapes of that night, cardinal sin seconded butz’s call for a peaceful solution at 10:40 while marcos was on tv, which means the cardinal did not exactly rush to do enrile’s bidding, if bidding it was.

ayon sa cardinal, humingi ng tulong si enrile, na ayaw pa daw niyang mamatay; it sounded to the cardinal daw like enrile was trembling, almost crying.  ayon kay enrile, puro kasinungalingan!  iyun nga lang, hindi malinaw kung alin ang kasinungalingan: na tinawagan niya si cardinal sin?  o, na nangingining ang boses niya sa takot at mangiyak-ngyiyak siya nung tawagan niya si cardinal?  kung yung una, e di wow, fake news, tiglao!

kung yung huli, wow pa rin.  so enrile wasn’t scared at all, he was so sure kasi that the people would come and save his skin if the cardinal asked them to?  but why would the cardinal even have entertained his request, unless maybe he offered to support cory in return?

ayon naman kay butz na nag-alok ng tulong, “we need all the support we can get” ang tugon ni enrile; ayon pa kay butz, enrile was “tense, perspiring, perhaps from the heat of his bullet-proof vest.”  a bullet-proof vest.  clearly enrile expected bullets to fly and could only think of staying alive.  but, again, who knows, he could have told butz exactly what tiglao alleges he told the cardinal, which might explain why butz was quick to go on radio and call on people to join him in a march to the EDSA camp?

but who’s to say that tiglao and/or enrile speak the truth on this matter at this point in time, with the cardinal and butz no longer around to confirm or deny.  too late the hero, di ba.  enrile should have claimed the bright idea while the two still lived, why didn’t he?  maybe because at some point during the four days he may have deceived himself into thinking that the people were in EDSA, not for cory, but for him?  LOLZ.

TIGLAO: The Marcos military succumbed to the EDSA forces because they realized that they were helpless facing the huge crowds. Marcos had given them the categorical order which was impossible to implement — “Disperse the crowds but do not shoot them.”  Isn’t it Marcos therefore that made it possible for EDSA to be a “peaceful revolution”?

CHAROOOOOT!  by the time marcos staged that piece of performance art on TV around 10 AM on day 3 Monday, ordering ver “not to attack” (were his words), it was AFTER he had earlier ordered an all out bomb attack on crame, but which orders were defied at around 6 AM by sotelo’s 15th strike wing that landed in crame instead and joined the rebels, and at around 9 AM by balbas’s marines who found all kinds of reasons not to fire on crame from aguinaldo’s golf course.  tapos na ang boksing.  marcos had lost control of the military, so nag-drama na lang sila ni ver, kunwari ay nagpipigil.

In fact, when Marcos had that exchange with Ver on nationwide TV, he was just being his wily old self, making the best of a bad situation by pretending to be the good guy, hoping to fool Washington D.C. and the Vatican, if not the Filipino people, a little while longer. [EDSA UNO (2013) page 206]

TIGLAO: The US betrayed Marcos, shanghaiing him to Hawaii.

TRULILI!  but marcos had no one to blame but himself for trusting that the americans would stand by him and risk the ire of cory who started calling the shots the moment bosworth phoned to inform her that marcos had left the palace.

… it was the Marcoses themselves who had called on the Americans for help. What if they had not so distrusted the pilots of the presidential helicopters who were prepared, since Monday morning, to fly them to anywhere in the islands; or what if Marcos had motored to Paoay in his fully-equipped ambulance. And then, again, perhaps Marcos was just too sick for a long road trip, which would render impressive the fact that he was able to walk out of the palace on his own two feet.

Still and all, if they had snubbed the American offer, if they had left under their own steam, chances are they would have made it to Paoay, and People Power would have had to regroup.

So do we owe the Americans a debt of gratitude for taking him away into exile? The better ending would have been if the Marcoses had taken the presidential choppers, and the pilots turned out to be reformists and took the First Couple to Crame instead. With Enrile in charge, no harm would have come to them, but they would have had to face the judgement of the people in a revolutionary court, and maybe, just maybe, People Power would have levelled up to the challenge of standing strong for the greater good vs. the elite and crony interests represented by Cory and Enrile.

That would have brought closure, and ushered in a new order. [EDSA UNO page 320]

TIGLAO: Under both the 1935 and 1973 Constitution, Corazon Aquino was not qualified to run for president in the 1986 “snap elections.”

MOOT AND ACADEMIC (AND ANEMIC).  a case “that ceases to present a justiciable controversy by virtue of supervening events, so that a declaration thereon would be of no practical value. As a rule, courts decline jurisdiction over such case, or dismiss it on ground of mootness.”

TIGLAO:  Cory’s 1986 electoral campaign was handled by a US PR firm.

SO WHAT.  marcos’s 1986 electoral campaign was handled, too, by a US PR firm: black, manafort, stone & kelly.  as for sawyer-miller, read tina arceo-dumlao’s British lord recalls Cory Aquino campaign.

LORD MARK MALLOCH-BROWN.  I remember that it was about two days after that article [on Cory knowing next to nothing about the US bases, bylined by then New York Times executive editor Abe Rosenthal] was published that I flew to Iloilo to meet her (Cory) as she was campaigning.

… I have never done a campaign in an environment like the Philippines. Thank God for the Inquirer and thank God for Radio Veritas, too. Literally, they were the only two who would fairly cover us.

…  the group’s strategy during the snap elections was to often challenge Marcos to a debate since they knew that he could not be separated long enough from the machine he needed to keep his kidneys going to attend a debate.

MULLOCH-BROWN. … (Cory’s) main thing was this willingness she had to overcome the media problem by just going and campaigning everywhere. I mean she was formidable. She was just out on the road every day going all over the country and I have done an awful lot of campaigns since but I still say I learned my whole business on Cory’s campaign.

… during that campaign she was very strategic and disciplined about what she was doing. It was a real privilege to watch her.

Exit poll 

He said his final outstanding accomplishment during the Cory campaign was to produce an exit poll that indicated that she had won. It landed on the front page of the Inquirer and had a profound impact as it planted the idea that Aquino had won over Marcos, 55 percent to 45 percent.  

her stint as prez left much to be desired, but I love cory anyway for her gift of EDSA.  I think she was at her most wonderful and dazzling in the 10 days of the crony boycott that climaxed in marcos’s ouster. I think she handled ninoy’s jailers, enrile and ramos, quite brilliantly — i doubt that we could have freaked marcos out just like that if not for cory.

so please, if you machos must diss her, diss her for refusing to repudiate marcos debts or for having to ask the US for help in quelling the 1989 coup attempt or for exempting certain haciendas from agrarian reform, but please not for EDSA, and not for the sake of enrile and marcos, because that says so much more about you guys than about cory, who was in another league altogether at that point in time.

in fairness to cory

not surprisingly, social media are dredging up the libel case that president cory aquino filed vs. louie beltran in october 1987 and asking if maria ressa’s case is comparable.  but surprisingly, and dismayingly, the video i happened to catch on my facebook newsfeed, courtesy of ONENews #RushHour, opened with this:

V.O.  Rappler CEO Maria Ressa’s libel case may be the first of its kind against a Philippine president…

huh?  ressa filed a libel case against the president?  fake news ba ito o wishful thinking.  lol.  and here’s another booboo, a minute and some 40 seconds in.

V.O.  The Court of Appeals however dismissed the case in 1995 acquitting Soliven and Beltran, but it was too late for Beltran who died a year after the case was dismissed. [bold mine]

HUH?  too late indeed, but certainly not for the reason indicated.  sloppy work, ONENews #RushHour!  bakit nakakalusot ang blatant errors na ganyan?  walang nag-e-edit ng scripts, walang nagmomonitor ng taping, walang fact-checking, masyado kasing madalian, rush nga?

well, hindi naman sila nag-iisa.  also caught a phone interview (by some social media group) of a UP academic who said the cory case happened in 1989.  maybe his source was the online copy of another UP prof’s 2003 column/essay that has mercifully since been corrected.  at least #RushHour got that one right.

but watch the video anyway for cito beltran’s defense of his dad.

CITO BELTRAN. … the president herself pointed out that she could not possibly fit under the bed because there was no space under the bed.  logic lang will say, apparently that she was misled, that my father was calling her a coward….

and read Hiding under the bed, my reaction back in 1995, published in ISYU, jarius bondoc’s all-opinion tabloid, soon after the case was dismissed on appeal.  in fairness to cory.

enrile’s endgame

in my last blog i opined, in a spirit of reconciliation, that martial law was not all bad, and EDSA was not all good.  let me qualify that.  martial law was not all bad but it was mostly bad.  EDSA was not all good but it was mostly good.

i came out of the enrile-bongbong tete-a-tete feeling a little dirty, complicit, because i stayed to listen kahit obvious naman that it was more of the same spin, painting marcos a super know-all president and cory a wicked know-nothing witch.  i had been hoping against hope that the old man, for the sake of nation, would level up the discourse a little, get beyond insisting that everyone had a wonderful time noong martial law and finally admit that many gross mistakes were made on every front that continue to fester and rankle the body politic.

alas, the old man continues to disappoint (as does the silent FVR).  read randy david‘s An interview in quest of an audience.

It …  comes as no surprise that he would willingly lend himself to a project to rehabilitate Marcos in the public memory. Perhaps he thought he owed the Marcos family something for contributing to their downfall. Without sounding as though he regretted his participation at Edsa, it was obvious he was trying to patch up his relations with the family by praising the regime of which, after all, he had been very much a part. With the passage of more than four decades, many of his contemporaries who might convincingly contradict his recollection of events have passed on.

… This particular interview, videotaped and posted on social media to coincide with the 46th anniversary of the imposition of martial law, is barefaced propaganda aimed at “millennials,” who, having been born long after the actual events, are presumed to accept without question so-called eyewitness accounts of historical events. As a teacher, I would not take it seriously.  Still, propaganda like this, formatted as public affairs material, offers important lessons on what to avoid in the teaching of history.

The impact could have been different, however, if an interview like this were to be conducted by a panel of respectable historians and journalists, and the principal subjects were individuals who had been detained and tortured or stripped of their properties by the regime but never allowed their sordid experience to cloud their view of events.  I’m not saying that their accounts would be entirely free of bias. But a good impartial interviewer would have had greater success in teasing out the truth from personal narratives.

it was therefore a joy running into pop historian lourd de veyra‘s sept 20 special on my facebook feed.  watch and listen and share Martial Law Myths Busted | History, exactly the kind of martial law info and assessment that i was wishing for from historians of the academe.  de veyra should do a series, let’s hear what the economists and political and social scientists, the lawyers and the military, the artists, the communists, have to say.  let’s not ask the trapos, of course.

EPISODE 2 of the tete a tete, like episode 1, was obviously edited down — time constraints? or did the old man tend to wander and say things inconsistent with, or unsupportive of, the official story?  whatever, the EDSA episode is worth transcribing.  it’s the first time ever that bongbong has said anything about the four days.  the first time, too, (correct me if i’m wrong) that enrile has spoken up and rubber-stamped the claim that marcos did not give orders to shoot.  sabay show ng TV footage of marcos forbidding ver from attacking crame.

it would be great if de veyra could focus on that question in a special episode for EDSA 2019.  as far as i can tell from my own research for the EDSA books, marcos issued 3 kill-orders, as in, never mind kung madamay ang civilians — feb 23 tanks were ordered to ram through the crowd in ortigas (tadiar refused), feb 24 air force strike-wing gunships were ordered to bomb crame (sotelo defected instead); a few hours later marines positioned in aguinaldo were ordered to bomb crame with howitzers and other hardware (balbas managed not to, his family was among the people in EDSA) — this last around the time that  marcos was on tv telling ver not to attack.

my theory is, marcos was just being his wily old self, making the best of a bad situation by pretending to be the good guy to ver’s bad cop, hoping to fool washington dc and the vatican, if not the filipino people, a little while longer.

and then, again, is it possible that the orders did not issue from marcos himself?  then who issued them?  ver?  imelda?  bongbong?  all of the above?

time to get the story straight.  #HindiPaTaposAngLaban