I AM an apolitical grade schooler when Senator Ninoy Aquino died on August 21, 1983. But I was aware of that event early on. I could feel that most if not all people of Ilocandia (the Ilocos Region) just shrugged the event off as nothing serious as to distract President Marcos—yes, the Apo Marcos of us Ilocanos. And the old folks wouldn’t care! The Apo is a strong man, they said. That settled things then, the event would never be a distraction, even children of my age would agree.
But more than two years after Ninoy’s assassination, the “event” would lead to a monumental uprising, no longer a mere distraction of the strongman’s rule. After the snap election pitting Marcos against Cory, Ninoy’s grieving widow and a political neophyte, crucial episodes of our history unfolded before us. When the regime’s Defense Secretary and one of his trusted generals defected, citing massive cheating in the election as one of their reasons for their heroic act, hundreds of thousands of people had began to gather in EDSA to support them.
But more than two years after Ninoy’s assassination, the “event” would lead to a monumental uprising, no longer a mere distraction of the strongman’s rule. After the snap election pitting Marcos against Cory, Ninoy’s grieving widow and a political neophyte, crucial episodes of our history unfolded before us. When the regime’s Defense Secretary and one of his trusted generals defected, citing massive cheating in the election as one of their reasons for their heroic act, hundreds of thousands of people had began to gather in EDSA to support them.
I remember that fateful day of February 25, 1986. It was wee hour of the morning. I was stirred from my slumber by a neighbor calling on my father to go out and hear for himself a very important scope. “Awanen ni Marcos! Pimmanawen! (Marcos is gone! He’s left!)”
As I had been a captive listener to my grandfather’s radio and to gossips and serious conversations of adults who had been following the developments in EDSA since day one, I was interested to know the outcome of the said rebellion or revolution (whatever side you were in then). My grandfather was hoping early on that these rebel soldiers and oppositionists and opportunists alike, including the Catholic Church hierarchy, would eventually see the light and concede to the Apo’s election victory. My father, my neighbors and almost all Ilocanos shared the same sentiment, at least during those troubled times.
But now the Apo had given up the fight. I hurriedly went out with my father and proceeded to our neighbor’s house. Heard over the radio in crackling signals was a report about a US helicopter slipping Marcos out of the country while nobody was looking.
My father was speechless for a moment, so with our neighbor, and his sons who were also stirred from sleep like me. It was as if a light went off and a breath of life snuffed out. It was sad for my grandfather, my father, my neighbor and the rest of the Ilocanos.
When I went to school, where I was a high school freshman, an overcast air is evident in the campus. I could sense the somber mood among the students, teachers and school administrators while they discussed about our future. The school owner, a staunch Marcos supporter, after a moment of gloom would eventually shift its loyalty to Cory, as there was no more chance for the Marcos loyalists to fight back, and a support from the new government would be necessary for the survival of the private school. But even months after EDSA, political discussion would rather center on Cory as usurper of power; otherwise, Marcos loyalists, most if not all of them in Ilocos, would rather not talk about it. So I finished high school with no politics bothering my life again.
But my self-imposed ignorance was only short-lived. By the time I entered college, the Cory administration had been fighting tooth and nail to ward off rebel soldiers. The bloodiest of this series of coups happened in 1989 during my first year in college.
By then, I know what’s good and bad for our government. I had learned enough what Marcos had done to our democracy, and the excesses of the dictatorial regime. I would know then that the military cannot just grab the government from Cory. It helped that I regularly read the Free Press, which I bought almost every week with whatever I could save from my allowance. I started subscribing to the opinions of Teddy Locsin and other magazine contributors in their defense of democracy and the Cory administration, and their aversion to dictatorship and its clones. Gen. Rodolfo Biazon, the Marines commander during the series of Honasan-led coups, would become my hero for successfully defending the State against power grabbers.
There wasn’t a time that Cory became popular among us, at least in Ilocos. I heard people mumbling that they’re better off with Marcos, and they thought that if life wasn’t as easy as before, why would they have to embrace a new regime. Marcos was still and always be their guy.
But to those moderates, or those who would rather embrace Cory administration and its shortfall than to revert to martial rule, believed that there were other factors beyond the control of the Cory administration that kept us from progressing as a nation, such as these tragic calamities (Mt. Pinatubo eruptions, earthquakes), series of coups, and the fact that Cory inherited a bankrupt government. That Cory wasn’t popular in the region was also true at least with student leaders and campus activists. For them Cory was a “tuta ng Kano” because she had wanted to extend the stay of the US bases in the country. But the magnificent 12 in the senate, headed by then Senate President Jovito Salonga, thwarted her when they rejected a proposed bases treaty that would have given the U.S. more years to maintain its bases here.
While in college, I also joined some student movements, campus demonstrations and forums against US bases and everything that stinks of neocolonialism. As part of the student publication, I became a member of a militant writers’ group.
Immediately after college, I went back to my high school alma mater to teach for a year. There my third year students would remind me of the usual apathy that most Ilocanos had for Cory. I remember that class we had in February that year. A day earlier, the Ramos government had just declared the EDSA anniversary as non-working holiday. Now my brief discussion on the date as part of my motivation for the lesson, turned out to be a question-and-answer forum. “Do we really need to celebrate the People Power?” somebody asked. That started it all. Then they barraged me with questions centering on Ninoy, Marcos and Cory. Is Ninoy a hero? Was Marcos really bad? Did he really order the assassination of Ninoy? Or was it Imelda? Why a revolution happened in the first place?
I was surprised that I could tell them in simple words and with conviction about what I know and felt about the People Power. I narrated the events that preceded it, and saying in summary that Marcos was bad, that Ninoy had good reasons to go against Marcos, and that Cory was brought to the fight, by a stroke of God’s hand, to save our democracy from the dark reign of a dictator.
From that day on, I affirmed my admiration for Cory and my political conviction, that everything contrary to democracy is bad.
That, I admit, must have started my real political awakening, and the burden that I must bear until now. It pains me to see our country still wallowing in extreme poverty many years after that euphoria and exhilaration of the success of People Power of 1986. I feel nothing but utter disdain to our present leaders. It upsets me to see politicians doing everything to perpetuate themselves in power, obviously by nepotistic and patronage type of politics, and by charter change. It disturbs me to see leaders of rebel soldiers who wanted to grab power by force, disregarding our Constitution in the process, but who are now so eager to join democratic elections just to continue their greed for power.
But what disturbs me more is to see deposed President Erap Estrada raring to run for president again. Erap even becomes an admirer of Cory, something he didn’t hide during the wake of the former president. He even extolled the heroism of Ninoy and his ideals. Now this pardoned convict wants to run again. For what? To go back to the government that he plundered from 1998 to 2001?
Well, we are in a democratic country. It’s damn complicated living on it. But even with the kind of political leaders that we have right now, I never regret living with this country. There’s always hope, as Cory, the plain housewife, had shown us during trying times after the death of her husband.
As I had been a captive listener to my grandfather’s radio and to gossips and serious conversations of adults who had been following the developments in EDSA since day one, I was interested to know the outcome of the said rebellion or revolution (whatever side you were in then). My grandfather was hoping early on that these rebel soldiers and oppositionists and opportunists alike, including the Catholic Church hierarchy, would eventually see the light and concede to the Apo’s election victory. My father, my neighbors and almost all Ilocanos shared the same sentiment, at least during those troubled times.
But now the Apo had given up the fight. I hurriedly went out with my father and proceeded to our neighbor’s house. Heard over the radio in crackling signals was a report about a US helicopter slipping Marcos out of the country while nobody was looking.
My father was speechless for a moment, so with our neighbor, and his sons who were also stirred from sleep like me. It was as if a light went off and a breath of life snuffed out. It was sad for my grandfather, my father, my neighbor and the rest of the Ilocanos.
When I went to school, where I was a high school freshman, an overcast air is evident in the campus. I could sense the somber mood among the students, teachers and school administrators while they discussed about our future. The school owner, a staunch Marcos supporter, after a moment of gloom would eventually shift its loyalty to Cory, as there was no more chance for the Marcos loyalists to fight back, and a support from the new government would be necessary for the survival of the private school. But even months after EDSA, political discussion would rather center on Cory as usurper of power; otherwise, Marcos loyalists, most if not all of them in Ilocos, would rather not talk about it. So I finished high school with no politics bothering my life again.
But my self-imposed ignorance was only short-lived. By the time I entered college, the Cory administration had been fighting tooth and nail to ward off rebel soldiers. The bloodiest of this series of coups happened in 1989 during my first year in college.
By then, I know what’s good and bad for our government. I had learned enough what Marcos had done to our democracy, and the excesses of the dictatorial regime. I would know then that the military cannot just grab the government from Cory. It helped that I regularly read the Free Press, which I bought almost every week with whatever I could save from my allowance. I started subscribing to the opinions of Teddy Locsin and other magazine contributors in their defense of democracy and the Cory administration, and their aversion to dictatorship and its clones. Gen. Rodolfo Biazon, the Marines commander during the series of Honasan-led coups, would become my hero for successfully defending the State against power grabbers.
There wasn’t a time that Cory became popular among us, at least in Ilocos. I heard people mumbling that they’re better off with Marcos, and they thought that if life wasn’t as easy as before, why would they have to embrace a new regime. Marcos was still and always be their guy.
But to those moderates, or those who would rather embrace Cory administration and its shortfall than to revert to martial rule, believed that there were other factors beyond the control of the Cory administration that kept us from progressing as a nation, such as these tragic calamities (Mt. Pinatubo eruptions, earthquakes), series of coups, and the fact that Cory inherited a bankrupt government. That Cory wasn’t popular in the region was also true at least with student leaders and campus activists. For them Cory was a “tuta ng Kano” because she had wanted to extend the stay of the US bases in the country. But the magnificent 12 in the senate, headed by then Senate President Jovito Salonga, thwarted her when they rejected a proposed bases treaty that would have given the U.S. more years to maintain its bases here.
While in college, I also joined some student movements, campus demonstrations and forums against US bases and everything that stinks of neocolonialism. As part of the student publication, I became a member of a militant writers’ group.
Immediately after college, I went back to my high school alma mater to teach for a year. There my third year students would remind me of the usual apathy that most Ilocanos had for Cory. I remember that class we had in February that year. A day earlier, the Ramos government had just declared the EDSA anniversary as non-working holiday. Now my brief discussion on the date as part of my motivation for the lesson, turned out to be a question-and-answer forum. “Do we really need to celebrate the People Power?” somebody asked. That started it all. Then they barraged me with questions centering on Ninoy, Marcos and Cory. Is Ninoy a hero? Was Marcos really bad? Did he really order the assassination of Ninoy? Or was it Imelda? Why a revolution happened in the first place?
I was surprised that I could tell them in simple words and with conviction about what I know and felt about the People Power. I narrated the events that preceded it, and saying in summary that Marcos was bad, that Ninoy had good reasons to go against Marcos, and that Cory was brought to the fight, by a stroke of God’s hand, to save our democracy from the dark reign of a dictator.
From that day on, I affirmed my admiration for Cory and my political conviction, that everything contrary to democracy is bad.
That, I admit, must have started my real political awakening, and the burden that I must bear until now. It pains me to see our country still wallowing in extreme poverty many years after that euphoria and exhilaration of the success of People Power of 1986. I feel nothing but utter disdain to our present leaders. It upsets me to see politicians doing everything to perpetuate themselves in power, obviously by nepotistic and patronage type of politics, and by charter change. It disturbs me to see leaders of rebel soldiers who wanted to grab power by force, disregarding our Constitution in the process, but who are now so eager to join democratic elections just to continue their greed for power.
But what disturbs me more is to see deposed President Erap Estrada raring to run for president again. Erap even becomes an admirer of Cory, something he didn’t hide during the wake of the former president. He even extolled the heroism of Ninoy and his ideals. Now this pardoned convict wants to run again. For what? To go back to the government that he plundered from 1998 to 2001?
Well, we are in a democratic country. It’s damn complicated living on it. But even with the kind of political leaders that we have right now, I never regret living with this country. There’s always hope, as Cory, the plain housewife, had shown us during trying times after the death of her husband.
