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ninoy aquino, hero

ninoy aquino, heroWHO WAS this man, Ninoy, also known as Benigno Aquino Jr, who had become the hero of at least two million people, a real man, rather than a robot? Why had he been shot? Marcos’ ready answer was that either the communists or the rebels had planned his murder. But others began to say that it was in fact Marcos who had planned Ninoy’s death all along.

The LIBERAL PARTY is a political party founded in 1946 by Pres Manuel Roxas. In the 1970s, it was led by Ninoy Aquino, Gerry Roxas, and Jovito Salonga. They “would time and again hound the would-be dictator [Marcos] on issues like Human Rights and the curtailment of Freedoms” (“Liberal Party”).

The SENATE is the country’s Upper House of a Bicameral Congress (with the House of Representatives as the Lower House), whose primary purpose is to propose and make laws.

In 1967, when Ninoy became one of the youngest elected senators at age thirty-five and the only one in the Liberal Party to make it to the Senate, he also became the greatest threat to Marcos and his allies.

“He delivered fiery speeches denouncing every misdemeanor and every act of violence committed by the administration against its political enemies. He uncovered scandal after scandal involving Marcos’ men and warned of an impending ‘garrison state’ ”(Magno 259).

When Marcos declared Martial Law, Ninoy was one of the first to be imprisoned on charges of murder, illegal possession of firearms, and subversion (“Benigno Aquino”). In November 1977, he was tried by a military tribunal and would have been put to death by firing squad, but for protests worldwide (Sumpay 29). Instead he was allowed to remain in his prison cell and even vote for an interim parliament called the Batasang Pambansa. His friends and supporters ran under his political party called Lakas ng Bayan or LABAN.

It is interesting to note that Lakas ng Bayan could be loosely translated to mean People’s Power (a term which would sound new and wonderful in 1986). None in the LABAN party won, and many suspected widespread election fraud. In 1980, Ninoy left the country for heart surgery in the United States. Instead of coming back he spent three years in exile with his family, going around the country, joining symposia, speaking in freedom rallies, where he continued to denounce Martial Law, criticize the Marcos government, and urge the President to restore democracy. In 1983, he decided to return before the Philippines deteriorated beyond all help and hope, knowing full well that he could either be imprisoned or killed.

The BATASANG PAMBANSA was a distinct and special Unicameral Legislature composed of 120 elected members, created so that the Philippines would one day have a true parliamentary system as ordained by the 1973 Constitution. In such a system, a Prime Minister would be head of government and Commander-in-Chief of the army. It replaced the National Assembly in its legislative duties, and, based on all the amendments to the said constitution, was yet another body that legitimized and strengthened Marcos’ absolute power (Peralta v. Commission on Elections, et al.).

In a speech entitled “In the End We All Must Die,” dated 31 August 1983, the day of Ninoy’s funeral, Ninoy’s friend Abraham Sarmiento wrote:

Ninoy came back to reason with the dictatorship. He thought that the peaceful path leading to a return to democracy, no matter how risky, must be given a last chance. He set out to convince those who hold power that we must restore the rights of the people and trust them to know and decide what is good for them because they are intelligent enough and responsible enough and do not need the whip of a tyrant nor the singular intelligence of one man or one woman or a small group of men and women to direct them in the proper way. (151)

A DICTATORSHIP is a system of government run by someone with absolute authority.

A DEMOCRACY is a system of government run by the people through their elected representatives.

Our lives changed after this man’s death. My parents began to act and look really strange to me. From time to time, they would dress in yellow shirts instead of business attire, and come home at night all sweaty and grinning. When I asked where they had gone, they would reply with “to a rally,” which I began to understand as an event rather than a place. It was a gathering of a large group of people, usually at the Luneta, and there they would call for “justice” and “freedom,” flash L signs with their fingers, and chant “Ninoy, hindi ka nag-iisa.” I soon knew what they did in these rallies because they would sometimes take my sister and me along. There we would join other family friends and their children, and we would sit on mats on the ground, and eat sandwiches and drink juice. I would look around at all these crowds and crowds of people and think that the entire country had gone on one big picnic. The funny thing is that everyone looked happy instead of angry; there would be a stage where some people made statements about being oppressed or about loving one’s country, and everyone around me would cheer and clap.

Other times my parents did not take us. I remember a night when my mother came home drenched from head to foot. She said they had been tear-gassed by soldiers. Then I began to understand that despite the happiness in my family, there was something very wrong in the country where we lived. I began to understand what my parents had joined; it was not one big picnic. They could die, too, like Ninoy Aquino. And this was what they meant by “Hindi ka nag-iisa.” They had taken up his cause, along with so many other Filipinos, and they were willing to die for it. Many of my father’s writer friends, in fact, had lost their jobs because of what they had written against Marcos and his government. They now had very little money with which to feed and support their families.