Home » Posts tagged 'Rizal Yuyitung'
Tag Archives: Rizal Yuyitung
Benigno S. Aquino, Jr. Man of the Year, 1971
Man of the Year
by Teodoro L. Locsin, Jr.
January 8, 1972–There was rice shortage again. Prices were never higher. Unemployment was appalling, lawlessness reigned. Justice was compartmentalized, with one law for the rich and powerful, another law, a sterner one, for the poor and weak. Graft and corruption in the government was more rampant than ever. Demonstrators against the administration were shot at by government troops as if they were game and the President shed crocodile tears. Lip service was paid to reform while chaos if not revolution threatened. Who could challenge the regime? It seemed irresistible, controlling as it did not only Congress but the local governments. How could the Opposition hope to win against the Marcos candidates in the senatorial election? Their victory would be taken as a national endorsement of the Marcos idea of government—and his perpetuation in power. Who would lead the resistance? The privileges of the writ of habeas corpus had been suspended and martial law continually mentioned if not actually threatened. Democracy was going down, down, down. Who would stop the fall? He would be the Man of the Year.
IN a conversation which took place about a week before the Plaza Miranda bombing incident on 21 August 1971, Sen. Benigno Aquino, Jr., said to this writer:
“President Marcos has threatened again to charge me with subversion. It’s a bluff, but who knows?”
“Can he have forgotten so quickly how the Yuyitung affair backfired on him?” one said. But then, one thought, Marcos is not a machine weighing dispassionately the chances of success in this or that adventure but a vain and ambitious man with a great deal of power.
“A very dangerous man,” said Ninoy. He went on to say that he had a feeling of something big about to happen.
Some Ilocano politicians were in the room, among them the young Chavit Singson. They were reporting the steep rise of violent incidents in the North. Army-trained professional killers had been unleashed on the population of Northern and Central Luzon in preparation for the elections in November. They spoke in particular of a certain “Major” whose expertise in the art of assassination had earned him a license to kill. This assassin did not have to answer for his deeds to anyone and could kill at his own discretion. He had done a fine job in the North and was moving south. According to the latest reports then, he was operating in Mountain Province. Soon, they said, he would be in Manila.
They looked apprehensive and had come to Ninoy to see what he could do for them. “Nothing,” Ninoy answered them. He had neither the money nor the muscle to help them with. But he wanted to know for certain if they would stick it out with the Opposition to the end or succumb to the threats of the authorities. So long as they identified with the Opposition they were marked men. He would not hold it against them personally if they backed out at that moment but he did not want to waste time with anyone who would have a change of heart later on. A little reluctantly they all agreed to stick it out to the end. “You are dead men on leave,” Ninoy said. They nodded their heads in acknowledgment of the fact.
“If Singson makes it in Ilocos Sur and Dy in Isabela, I don’t care if we lose everywhere else,” said Ninoy. “Our cause will have been vindicated. These are the two spots most cruelly oppressed by the Marcos military machine. If we win in them, then we know we have pierced his armor. That’s consolation enough.”
That far back, Ninoy Aquino was already drawing the lineaments of the persona he would assume after the Plaza Miranda bombing and the President’s suspension of the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus, when the country tottered on the brink of dictatorship: that of the resistance-hero. Within a week Ninoy would serve as the symbol of democratic man confronted with forces that seek to suppress his individuality and freedom.
Expressing his forboding that the forces of reaction and dictatorship were ready and eager to break out in a wave of repression that would sweep away all our rights and liberties, frankly, he said, he did not know how anyone could meet, with the hope of overcoming, the threat to the Republic.
“The secret is not to be afraid,” one said. Not that one knew for certain that courage overcomes all obstacles but that to be brave and defiant is the only way consonant with human dignity to face tyranny.
A week later two fragmentation bombs were tossed onto the stage of the Liberal Party’s proclamation rally held in Plaza Miranda. Nine persons were killed and 95 others were wounded. The leadership of the Liberal Party could have been wiped out that fateful night of 21 August. Not one politician was killed but many of those who stood on the stage were seriously hurt. One lost a foot and, for a week or so, Sergio Osmeña, Jr., and Senator Salonga fought for their lives on operating tables.
Upon hearing of the tragic event the first thought that occurred to one was that this was the perfect pretext to liquidate Philippine democracy “in the interest of order and security.” The question of who perpetrated the crime seemed irrelevant in the light of the knowledge that only the government had the power to use the incident to its own advantage.
One could suspect the Communists. How often had one heard them declaim that in the confrontation between capital and labor, between the bourgeoisie and the common people, discussion is futile and serves only as an intellectual sport for the upper class, peaceful reform is a pipe dream and society’s contradictions can only be resolved through bloody revolution! The Communist argument is logical enough. There may be other ways to improve social conditions but the Communist way has an impressive record of success. But what one should do is not necessarily what one would do—especially when the conditions are far from favorable. In the present context, a total breakdown of social order could only favor the “fascists”—if one may be allowed to use that term, with its strict historical associations, to designate all who are hostile to and have no use for the democratic way of life, holding it too inefficient—meaning to say, it breeds a climate that is not always healthy for rich thieves.
The Left is noisy but basically powerless. Were it not for the protection afforded it by the liberal bourgeoisie, the Left would be either dead, in jail or scratching out a bare existence in the mountains. It has neither the talent nor the muscle to command popular respect and obedience. It cannot, therefore, impose its kind of order on the country should anarchy break out and a power vacuum appear. Since constant self-criticism is the hallmark of the Marxist movement, no doubt the Left in this country is fully conscious of its limitations. What to do about them is the question.
The rumor that Ninoy Aquino had masterminded the bombing to rid himself of rivals for his party’s nomination for Presidential candidate spread swiftly throughout the country. The press in time discredited that rumor but what was puzzling then was the celebrity with which the story spread. The bombing and the rumor seemed connected, parts of one clever scheme whose aim was to destroy the Opposition. The Opposition was bombed and the Opposition was to be blamed.
On Monday, 23 August, President Marcos made the announcement that he had as of midnight, Saturday, suspended the privileges of the writ of habeas corpus. The reason for this extraordinary measure, he said, was that there was a Maoist rebellion in progress.
Twenty persons had been arrested and were being detained in Camp Crame. All but one of them could not by any stretch of the imagination be described as Maoist. That was an oversight on the part of the President none made a note of the. His suspension of the writ had stunned the nation. The people felt, anyway, that is was not a question of whether he was rationally justified in the action he had taken. The power at his disposal could “justify” anything he did. The question was how far could he go, how far would he go. Hardly anyone believed the President’s words, but everyone paid heed to his power. From the outset it was a contest of nerves between the power of tyranny and the courage without arms of democratic men.
From noon onwards, on the day of the President’s announcement, the hours passed slowly in deathly calm. It was like a foretaste of life under a dictatorship: a life of quiet fear. A little longer the nation might have becomed accustomed to the situation, so easy is it to acquire the habit of obedience!
Suddenly the tense calm was broken. The voluble and tireless Ninoy Aquino began his counter-offensive and the spell of fascism was broken. Wherever he appeared, he carried a submachine gun at a time when no one outside the Administration would have dared be seen with one.
At the Manila Medical Center, the milling crowd at the entrance parted to admit the rotund frame of Senator Aquino come to check up on the condition of his colleagues. He passed by the government troops without even glancing at them, tight-lipped and looking confident of his ability to stand up to the Administration.
It was that picture that crystallized the people’s timid resentment against the Marcos Administration into an unshakeable determination to resist. The people fixed their eyes on Ninoy. If he got away with defying the President, how much better would they—the whole nation—fare!
The Administration caught on fast. Before it could expect the nation to submit, it would have to break the will of Senator Aquino. An object lesson would have to be made of him.
On Tuesday, President Marcos went on television. He laid the blame for the bombing of the LP rally on the Communists, who were planning, he said, to stage a revolution, of which the first act was the bombing incident at Plaza Miranda. He charged Senator Aquino with lending support to the Communist insurgent movement. He had “reliable” information that Ninoy Aquino had frequently met with such Huk field commanders as Dante, Mallari, Alibasbas, Freddie and Ligaya. He brought out a carbine with telescopic sight and a nickel-plated grease gun, which, he claimed, had been given by Ninoy to Huk commanders.
President Marcos presented two men, Max Llorente and Hernan Ilagan, who had been, he said, close friends of Senator Aquino until they discovered what he was really up to. Neither of them spoke a word all the time they were on TV. They just stood before the cameras with blank expressions until the President motioned for them to go away.
The evidence against Senator Aquino, he said, was overwhelming. It was only because he had hitherto “erred on the side of generosity” that he had not yet arrested the senator. But his tone suggested that that was a fault he would soon correct.
A raid on a Communist camp in Tarlac had uncovered a master plan to raze Manila and kidnap or assassinate prominent persons, the President went on. The bombing in Plaza Miranda was merely the prelude to a wave of Red Terror and a general civil war. He warned the radicals that the armed forces could cope with any situation they might create. He asked them to abandon the rest of their master plan, since it had no hope of succeeding, anyway. To avoid a costly confrontation between the Communists and the army, he would not hesitate to declare martial law and crush the insurgents before they had time to stage their planned insurrection.
Once more the Administration had the psychological advantage. People started losing heart. It was rumored that before the night was over, Senator Aquino would be arrested. After him, it would be only a question of time and accommodations in the stockades before all persistent critics of the Administration were in their turn arrested.
Later that night, Ninoy Aquino appeared on Channel 13. For once he looked serious. Opposite him, Juan Ponce Enrile, secretary of national defense, sat, grinning.
“I have been charged,” said Ninoy Aquino, “with the most serious crime against the Filipino people by President Marcos. I have, he has charged, subverted the state and planned the overthrow of the government in a conspiracy with the Communists. I have armed and funded the Huks, he told a press-TV-radio conference earlier tonight. And he hoisted before the people what he asserted was military intelligence information to nail down these charges.
“I say to him now: these are devious lies. I deny them flatly.
“He also hauled up arms I supposedly gave to the Huks. These, I charge him back, are his fabrications. Likewise, he brought before the TV cameras two supposed witnesses against me, one a longtime friend. I tell him: I will confront his witnesses.
“I say his charges are fabrications. And I challenge him to prove they are not.
“I say these are part of a sinister plot to obliterate the Opposition. And his very act is my proof. I say his motive is, far from securing the security of the people and the Republic, rather to secure the politics of his Party. This—again—is proven by his unholy timing.
“He says he has had the goods on me—that I have armed, funded and comforted the enemies of the state since 1965 and 1966. Why did he wait until tonight to unwrap the bill?
“I say that where the black bombers failed to wipe out the Opposition at Plaza Miranda, he would now succeed. This is his motive.
“I tell him: Mr. President, don’t do me any favors. Do your duty—and file your charges against me.
“Your duty is clear. And don’t forget your oath to apply the law evenly—if harshly. I know Lady Justice has worn a peek-a-boo since you came to power, but let Justice be blind once again in my case and let Justice take her full course in the charges you have leveled against me.
“I demand, in fact, Mr. President, that you bring to court—and prove that I am guilty or be shown as the biggest liar in Philippine political life.
“I ask him to charge me formally so he and I can meet before the bar of Philippine justice.
“If I am guilty, I will pay for my alleged crimes.
“If I am innocent, he must face the people and account for the lies, the plots, the smears he has so freely and ruthlessly waged against me. But if this is the price I must now pay for having abided unflinchingly with the faith you have put in me, I say: So be it. It is a privilege, not a sacrifice.”
Aquino stood up. Enrile squeezed his arm and gave him a reassuring smile, as though to say it was all a game, a show, and no real harm would come to him. But Ninoy’s dark expression did not change. If the President was in earnest, he did not like being threatened. If the whole thing was a ploy to save the President from having to make embarrassing explanations concerning the bombing incident and the measures he had adopted, he did not like being used. He walked out of the room without saying a word. We drove to his house in his car.
“Jesus Christ!” he said, shaking his head in disbelief. “Imagine the canard he is trying to foist. Ako pa ang nag-bomba together with the New People’s Army.”
On the night of the bombing he had not been on stage with the other Liberals. He was at a goddaughter’s despedida de soltera. His absence had lent some credence to the speculation that he had planned the bombing.
“Christ’s sake, this guy is really determined to send me to jail,” he said.
He leaned back in the seat. The ordeal there was over. He looked contented. Now there was no more having to choose. He had flung the President’s threat back in the man’s complacent face and he was happy with his decision. All that remained was for the authorities to pick him up.
“So what? So one or two years in a stockade. At least I’ll died with my boots on.”
Had he plans of escaping into the hills? I asked.
“Ha, oblige him? Nah, I’ll stick it out here.”
If they came for him, what would he do?
“Aba, I’ll go. Christ’s sake! And tell your father not to forget the pocketbooks when he’s brought in, too. I’ll bring in the Philippine Reports and resume my law studies in jail and when I come out, take the bar. This is the only chance I’ll have.”
At this we started laughing.
“ ‘I erred on the side of generosity,’ did you hear that? Boy oh boy, what a shit of bluffer. He’s thrown everything at me, but I’m numb. I told you that even before all this, at the Inter-continental. I’m really numb.”
I asked him about the two witnesses Marcos had presented.
If one added up all the time he had seen Hernan Ilagan, it would amount to three hours, he said. As for Max Llorente, he saved the man’s life once and his skin several times over. This was how the man repaid him!
“The classic Filipino,” said Ninoy. It was a favorite phrase of his. He had used it in previous conversations to describe Filipinos who lived off the fat of the land but refused to pay for any of it.
I asked him about the affidavits made by other witnesses implicating him in the crime of subversion.
“All his witnesses are dead, anyway. Putang ina. Hahahaha. Naku linabas ang mga baril, ayong mga lahat na…. Hahahaha. Jesus, what a farce! Aye, God! Goddamned this guy, he’s good, this Marcos. He almost convinced me I’m a Huk.”
Every day from then on the Marcos Administration hurled a new charge or threat at the senator, who exposed every charge as a lie and met each threat with smiling nonchalance. And yet the threats were real enough. One night the PC ringed his house to frighten his family. Members of the medical staff of the Central Azucarrera de Tarlac were picked up and questioned by the PC, who tried to force them into signing affidavits implicating Ninoy with the Huks. Houseboys and cooks were also arrested. His brother-in-law, Antolin Oreta, Jr., was “invited” by the army and then detained.
That he had had dealings with the Huks, Ninoy did not deny.
“What can I do about that? I have lived in Tarlac where the Huks operate most. The point I’m driving at with my frequent mention of Huks is that as governor of Tarlac I tried to arrive at a condition of peace that was not reached through bloodshed. In my six years of governorship, I don’t think there were more than 21 Huk killings. It was not until Mr. Marcos arrived on the scene that these things began to escalate. From 1966 up the present about 1,500 have been killed. My policy as governor had been to let everyone come to my office and talk things over: Huk and non-Huk, Nacionalista and Liberal. I believed that was the only way I could maintain peace in the province. I told the Huks, ‘This is a free country. So long as you don’t kill anyone this is a free country for you. You can speak against me, attack me in the barrios. Go ahead. I believe in our democracy. You have the right to air your views. If the people should ultimately prefer your system to the one I espouse, who am I to oppose the people?’
“The Army calls this co-existence.
“I call it survival. Moreover I have extreme faith in our democratic way of life. I firmly believe that exposed to both the democratic and Communist ideologies, the people will opt for democracy.
“When the Huks complained about bad roads, I immediately repaired them. When the Huks said a landowner was abusive, I immediately approached the landowner, and if the Huks were speaking the truth, I asked him to mend his ways. The landowners have called me a radical but all I did was ask them, ‘Which would you prefer? To negotiate with the Huks or get your head chopped off?
“The Army called it co-existence. Well, they can call it anything they want, but the Army was happy then. There was peace.”
As for his frequent meetings with the Huks, he had arranged these meetings not to solicit Huks support for his candidates but, on the contrary, to ask the Huks not to interfere in Tarlac politics. One such meeting had been at the request of Danding Cojuangco, the President’s right hand man, who was then running for governor, according to Ninoy.
To deprive the Liberals of support from any sector, the Marcos Administration continued its smear campaign against the spokesman for the Liberal Party. The charge of Communism dangling over Aquino’s head kept the Chinese, for one, from giving him any aid. The memory of the fate of the Yuyitung brothers was still fresh in their minds. To deny the Liberals American support, President Marcos invited a New York Times correspondent to interview him. He repeated his charges against Ninoy and said that if the Communists fielded a candidate in 1973, meaning Ninoy Aquino, he would be compelled to field his wife, Imelda, as his party’s candidate for President.
In answer, Ninoy said that eight years of Marcos are enough and to inflict six more years of Imelda on the country would be unthinkable! Addressing himself to the President, Ninoy said:
“If Mr. Marcos is fielding his wife in ’73 just to stop Ninoy Aquino, I’m telling him now, I’m not running. Keep your wife home, Mr. Marcos, do not tire her out with a gruelling campaign. I would like to spare her the hardship. I will not run in 1973, so long as Imelda’s doesn’t run either. Let Imelda and I make a blood compact, vowing not to run in 1973 as Presidential candidates.”
Asked to comment on Ninoy’s proposal, President Marcos answered:
“I refuse to comment on a speech by a comedian.”
Ninoy Aquino’s audacity and defiance bore fruit on November 8. The Liberal senatorial candidates swept the elections. In Ilocos Sur, Singson won as governor and in Isabela, despite the presence of Task Force Lawin, Dy won as well. Ninoy’s cause had, indeed, been vindicated. Even the poorest and most downtrodden emulated the example he had set. In Tarlac, the barrio folk themselves went out to protect the ballots they had cast, forming long processions to escort the ballot boxes to the municipalities. The senator had given a new lease on life to the democratic idea, which cynics had dismissed as an empty catchphrase incapable of firing anyone’s imagination, let alone convincing anyone to risk his life for it. The “people’s victory,” as Ninoy called it, of November 8 proved them wrong.
Because he stood for the people’s will to resist tyranny, drawing upon himself all the fury of its wrath without flinching, Sen. Benigno Aquino, Jr., did more than anybody else to make that victory possible and is, therefore, the Man of the Year 1971 in the Philippines.
The Choice, August 28, 1971
The Choice
By Teodoro L. Locsin Jr.
August 28, 1971—“WATCHING them live,” said Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr., “I wonder why I do it at all.” With a sweep of his right arm he had described an arc that took in, symbolically, the area below us. We were standing before a large picture window that commanded a handsome view of the Makati villages.
“President Marcos has threatened again to bring charges of subversion against me. It’s a bluff, but who knows?”
“Would he pull something as stupid as that?” I wondered. “Has he forgotten how the Yuyitung affair backfired in his face?” But then, Marcos is not a computer but a man and, therefore, capable of making errors, which do more harm to his victims than to himself because of his power. Senator Diokno called him the most dangerous threat to freedom in this country.
“A very dangerous man,” Aquino said.
“And the secret is not to be afraid.”
“And all for them!” he said, indicating once more the villages. “Do they care at all about what is happening outside of their houses and clubs?”
“I suppose they do,” I answered. “The miserable condition of the common people must be affecting their businesses adversely.”
I knew he did not mean caring in that personal sense, but it is nonetheless true that it is only in that sense that the businessman cares at all. Nothing wrong in that, of course. The most natural thing in the world is for a man to be concerned only with what he owns and what benefits him exclusively. That is the essence of the bourgeois. If he grumbles about the deplorable state of the nation, all he is really complaining about is that others of his social class are getting a disproportionately larger share of the national loot and only because they are more intimate with the politicians in power than he is. That is why any movement for social reform that relies in any significant degree on the propertied class for support will betray its program. The victory of such a movement will mean only a change of masters and a new vocabulary to mask the same old exploitation of the common man.
Only the proletariat is capable of effecting a radical change, a permanent improvement. The condition of the proletariat being that of total destitution with regard to material possessions, the working man may pin his loyalty and sympathy only on his equally suffering fellowmen and not on objects that he alone can enjoy. All the proletariat has is his comrades, with whom he shares material poverty and spiritual alienation. He alone is, therefore, capable of creating a new society free from contradictions and held together by the bond of virile fraternity such as is forged in battle and not by the constricting web of greed. Communism is not about the equal redistribution of money but about the total abolition of money itself—the very concept of it and the society it has spawned.
Such, at any rate, is the radical view.
“But they are not all like that,” he said, “or I would have given up long ago. Some of their children have left comfortable homes and secure futures to work for the cause of social reform. Have you seen the Holy Spirit girls who volunteered to tend to the needs of the demonstrators before Congress? If you see them, you regain your hope.
“There are others, the radicals. They seem to have quieted down. Do not be fooled. They are not yet beaten. There are many who, given the means….Young men, timid in school, but now they are in the mountains. There is something about holding a gun in your hand….”
“Frantz Fanon said somewhere that for the oppressed of the Third World to regain a sense of human dignity it is necessary to put a gun in their hands,” I said. “But, perhaps, they will scatter with the first shot.”
“Do not underestimate them.”
“I shouldn’t,” I said. “In Shanghai in 1927 communist cadres like the youthful Chou En-lai defeated the reactionary government even though at the outset of the hostilities most of their armaments were still in the possession of the police.”
“If the government cracks down on dissent, the Left will go underground.”
“You mean individual acts of terrorism? The repression will be even harsher and if you think that will arouse the upper classes against the government, you are sadly mistaken. If fascism surfaces in this country, the businessmen will rally to its support.”
“Probably big business.”
“Because they are all in debt to the government.”
“But the small businessmen are being ruined by the policies of the present government. We know with whom they will side.”
“Do we? The backbone of the reaction has, strangely enough, always been the ruined middle class. Instead of gravitating toward the proletariat as one would expect them to, history has shown that they have always preferred to side with the fascist reaction. The horror or emptiness, of a totally uncertain future is worse than the rigors of familiar poverty and police terror. Remember how General de Gaulle exploited that fear of nothingness after the Paris riots? The middle class quickly rallied to his standard. I’m not comparing de Gaulle with President Marcos.”
“A few months ago your father told me that the country simply wasn’t ripe for a revolution. Now I’m not so sure I agree with him.”
“I’m not sure about anything.”
“If that were the case with all of us, how could we continue to fight?”
“Habit.”
“Yes, I sometimes think I do it out of habit myself,” he said, massaging a swollen wrist the result of an accident he had encountered as a result of one of those “things” he did that he knew would benefit chiefly those worthless ones in their flashy cars and mindless pursuit of pleasure.
Marxism is a mixture of determinism and voluntarism. As Lenin did in 1917, setting the precedent, the communist would split a society wide open even before its time was up—if he had the power.
Each day that passes brings a further worsening of the condition of the common people and a progressive narrowing of our political choices down to two: communism or the capitalist reaction, that is—fascism. There will come a time when men will have to choose either of these two and there will be no third alternative. There are no neutrals in wars and revolutions. “Those who are not with me are against me because their diffidence in joining me amounts to a criticism of my position, a criticism that can only benefit my enemies.” That is how the communist will reason. And it is true because the fascists benefit from the apathy of the people. Communism is dynamic. For it to thrive everyone who considers himself for it must serve it to the limits of his capacity and ability. Because it is truly popular, of the people, no one can avoid active involvement without forfeiting his role as a communist. But the fascists are content if the people are indifferent, so long as they pay their taxes and do not protest the frequent abuses of their civil rights.
To side with capitalism amounts to accepting responsibility for all iniquities perpetrated by that system. Capitalism meant the extermination of whole races that had stood in the path of its expansion. It means the inhuman exploitation of millions, hundreds of millions of Asians, Africans and Latin Americans. And the most galling part of it is that all this is carried out under the banner of democracy. All for the benefit of a few hundred families all over the world.
The Communist Practice
To side with the communists, on the other hand, one must accept responsibility for the starvation of the kulaks, the liquidation of eminent communists by the Soviet government, the betrayal of the communist cause in the Spanish Civil War and the invasion of Czechoslovakia by the armies of the Warsaw Pact. A movie like Costa-Gavras’s The Confession raises once more the question that plagued the intellectuals of the immediate postwar period: Is it possible to serve the communist cause without having to condone some of its atrocious practices or must one serve blindly without scruples in order to avoid the charge of objective treason?
Arthur Koestler was one of the first to explore this problem. In his novel, the protagonist falsely confesses to crimes he had never committed against the Soviet government so as not to discredit that government before the world. If he had insisted on his innocence, no communist would have believed him. Only the capitalist press would have taken his side. They would have played up his opposition, and, thus, ultimately, he would be serving their purposes. He would have become, in fact though not in motivation, a traitor.
In the 1930s, when top Russian communists were arrested, tried and executed, the communist press enjoined all antifascists to refrain from protesting the apparent injustice done to these men who had served communism so well. Any criticism of the Soviet purges would only weaken the communist cause and shore up the fascist position, the argument went. “To criticize the Moscow Trials is to say that the fascists never intervened in Spain, that the capitalists never broke up strikes and murdered workers in the United States, that there is no such thing as imperialism.” That was the formula.
In The Confession, Artur London, on whose memoirs the movie is based, finally admits his guilt and foregoes his right to appeal the apparently unjust decision of the communist tribunal because his defense attorney has informed him that the arch-capitalist party in the United States has won the presidential election. Eisenhower is president of the United States and communists must do everything in their power to strengthen the communist camp in the coming contest for world domination. They can do this best by not questioning the decision of the tribunal. To do so would be tantamount to questioning the integrity of the Revolution and would only serve the imperialist cause.
In the 1950s, at the height of the Cold War, when the United States was girding its loins for imperialist adventures and Western Europe cowered in fear of the massive communist forces deployed along its borders, the French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote an essay called “Humanism and Terror.” In it he sought to justify the mystifying character of communist justice. (In two previous articles, we have tried to show what this justice consists of.) In a situation fraught with danger, communism may be allowed to use any means to preserve itself since it is the last hope of humanity. Stalinist Russia was surrounded by deadly capitalist foes, principally Nazi Germany. To criticize the policies of Stalin amounted to treason since not only did it fail to change his policies, prompting Stalin to resort to ever more repressive measures which further unsettled the country, but it also weakened the government. The Nazi invasion of Russia showed that Stalin’s policy of forced industrialization was correct, no matter what the cost in human suffering. If Stalin’s critics had been allowed to govern Russia, they would have taken their time industrializing the only socialist state in the world, which would have consequently perished under the Nazi lance.
Question, Please!
Now the question is raised, when are the communists going to stop using that line?
A few years ago, the armies of the Warsaw Pact occupied Communist Czechoslovakia and deposed a popular government for one subservient to the Soviet Union. The familiar reasons looked much too frayed along the edges from overuse and antifascists throughout the world have been at a loss to justify the invasion. Up to now I haven’t come across a good justification for it. It is fortunate that Communist China has emerged to represent communism in this part of the world. Unlike the Soviet Union, China has not up to the present abused its position. It has not invaded on the pretext of preserving the Revolution. It has not sacrificed foreign revolutionary movements for its own security. On the contrary, it has, whenever possible, committed itself to the revolutionary struggle everywhere in the world, from Africa to North Korea to Vietnam. But we cannot close our eyes to the fact that one major communist country has, time and again, abused its privileged position in history. For the position of the communists is, indeed, privileged. Only they are justified to use violence, says Merleau-Ponty, since like surgeons they resort to bloodshed to save the patient, not to exploit or kill him. The capitalists, on the other hand, use violence as a means of exploiting men for the benefit of a favored few.
Choice?
The time is not yet here when we will have to choose between these painful alternatives. But it isn’t far off. In the meantime, what we can do is to weaken tyranny with whatever means we have at hand. It is true that both political parties are fundamentally the same. Both serve the interests of the upper class, especially since their composition derives mostly from that class. But at the moment there is only one of the parties in power and the man who heads it has done more than any president before him to further fascism in this country. Never has the army been used so often to crush dissent. Tales of political assassination have become too rife to be dismissed as mere political gimmicks of the opposition. Perhaps, the present government is not half as bad as it is made out to be by its foes, but half is bad enough. And why take the risk? While one still can, one must do everything to cut it down to manageable size and nothing less than the defeat of its candidates can accomplish that. [This article was written before the opposition’s overwhelming victory in the 1971 senatorial election that came after the Plaza Miranda bombing.] Our liberties, such as they are, are what’s at stake. In issue is bourgeois democracy or One-Man Rule.
Ferdinand E. Marcos: An Appreciation, August 29, 1970
Ferdinand E. Marcos: An Appreciation
By Gregorio C. Brillantes
Don’t lose heart, folks—as The Man said, this nation can be great again!
August 29, 1970—CERTAIN Liberals and Nacionalistas with presidential ambitions, and scores of other Filipinos, including many who once idolized him, will likely dispute it; but in our time, in our country, Ferdinand E. Marcos remains destiny’s favorite son.
The trials he has had to endure, the fearsome obstacles he has encountered and overcome—tests of manhood which would have reduced lesser mortals to quivering blobs of jelly—have only added, it would seem, to the zest with which he has pursued, as the song puts it, his glorious quest. Charged with murder in his law student days, he defended himself with such flourish and skill as to win acquittal from the High Tribunal and went on from there to pass the bar exams with highest honors—a twin feat probably without parallel anywhere in the world. (It has been the sad fate of other men as great and as brilliant to meet an early end, behind bars, on the gallows or before a firing squad, their full potential unrealized, the noble promise of their lives unfulfilled, mankind thus rendered so much the poorer.) From his daredevil exploits in the last war, he merged with a chestful of Fil-American medals, the most decorated soldier of his country. The pride of his generation, he has since continued to win, with undiminished energy, the honors and prizes that the nation sees fit to offer only to the brave and the true, not the least of these rewards being the love of a fabulous lady. As everyone knows only too well, he became the first president of the Republic to be reelected, an awesome triumph which, true to form, he achieved with an unprecedented majority of two million votes over his LP rival, who, by the way, still thinks he wuz robbed.
That was but less than a year ago. Forward with Marcos and Lopez—the unbeatable Performance Team! Remember the tumult and the shouting, the sense of a vast master plan carried out without a hitch, of irresistible destiny fulfilling itself? Remember J.V. Cruz on TV working suavely for his ambassadorship, explaining what “extrapolation” was all about, and Serging Osmeña hoarse and tired in defeat, and then the morning after, the outcries about goons and massive fraud and vote-buying all the rest of that exciting week? Barely 10 months have passed—yet it seems like ages ago. Was it only last November that the Second Mandate dawned upon an expectant land? So much has happened since then that it feels as though not months but years separate us now from President Marcos’s day of victory. Propelled as it were by a combustible concentration of changes and events, the nation has moved forward, as President Marcos himself loved to predict, although he could not have guessed the precise direction—and such has been the distance we as a people have covered that Eelction Day 1969 seems much more remote in time than it really is.
The President, of course, is not one to stand still or lag behind while history is in the making; and since the auspicious first month of Marcos II marked by unusually festive fireworks in the vicinity of Malacañang, he has been striding with the usual confidence and vigor toward more achievements, more honors and distinctions. The gods who watch over the Filipino race must have reserved their fondest benediction for the likes of him, for it seems there is nothing that he wills or does, nothing that he encourages or allows to happen which does not exalt him, does not distinguish him from the common run of men. His is a light that was never meant to be hidden under a bushel of mediocrity; his life indeed is the stuff of legend, and he can no more evade fame and distinction than he can renounce his sworn duty to his people, which is to serve them and make the country, if not “great again,” at least not hostile to the idea of greatness. (He did say, after all: “This nation can”—not shall—“be great again.”)
Thus to the scroll citing President Marcos’s many achievements has been added some more honors earned in the six or seven months following the riotous celebrations of January. He has, for instance, in less than a year of the Second Mandate, merited the distinction of having the deepest and widest credibility gap ever to yawn at the feet of a Philippine president. (“If Marcos were to run today, Racuyal would beat him!” swears our barber from Pampanga.) Amazingly, for all the disgust and skepticism he has spawned, he has at the same time aroused the increasingly passionate attention of the populace, including even those citizens who normally pay no heed to politicians. (“What is Marcos up to? What will he do next?” wonder radicals and moderates, natives and aliens, labor and management , laymen and clergy.) Above all, his is the distinction of being held solely accountable, by more and more of the people, for the multitude of troubles that have of late descended upon the country.
Never before in our history have so many blamed so much on one man.
But so-called public opinion, the same history would testify, has not always been as enlightened as it should be; it has committed many gross and costly errors, and the living proofs of these blunders may be found today delivering privileged speeches in Congress. The voice of the people, in this country anyway, is seldom, alas, the voice of God; in the instances it has reflected divine wisdom, goons in the hire of the devil have been quick to silence it at the polls. Popular tastes and convictions are more often than not suspect, especially in so confused and clamorous an activity as politics, Philippine style. Public sentiment is rarely infallible, and as it applies now to the much-maligned President, it is wide off the mark, quite petty, misinformed, ungrateful, unjust, disproportionate, lacking in perspective. The accusation, spoken harshly where detractors of the President gather in rebellious force, as in Plaza Miranda or along Mendiola—the charge that he is a fascist, a fake patriot, a power-crazed, money-obsessed operator with the mentality of a small-town politico, is surely anything but a sane and reasonable conclusion. It is the emotional judgment of a people who believe, mistakenly, that they have been robbed of their faith and hopes in a man of destiny.
The course, the direction of Ferdinand E. Marcos’s destiny belies the indictment of public opinion, his motives and ideals repudiate it, his actions disprove it. True, his greatness has dimmed somewhat, as if the general dissatisfaction with his regime had formed a smog that the radiance could scarcely penetrate—but the greatness is still there, in the man, for those who seek it, a guiding light for all seasons. Even the elect of God, we are told, don’t arrive at divine knowledge without undergoing what mystics call the dark night of the soul; they must fast and pray for illumination. The perception of certain forms of greatness a notch or two below the Almighty’s likewise calls for some effort, but the strain would be well worth it in terms of inspiration, splendor of vision and peace of soul. It goes without saying that such irreverent cynics as columnists Maximo V. Soliven and Amando Doronila—O ye of little faith!—are denied the spiritual rewards bestowed on the pure and humble of heart, like Teodoro Valencia or Emil Jurado, who are reportedly in constant communion with the power and the glory.
Let us then follow the example of the truly wise and contemplate, without partisan rancor, dispassionately but with all the powers of intellect and will, as Jesuit retreat masters are wont to remind us, the issues that the people’s parliament has raised against President Marcos.
The President and his party, it is charged, spent P168 million in so-called barrio improvement funds and untold millions more in God knows what funds to “buy” his reelection, in the process of which he debauched the currency and brought down upon all our anxious heads a host of evils—ever-soaring prices, shrinking incomes, strikes, mass layoffs, business and industry in a state of suspended animation. Because of the economic dislocation—compound fractures is more like it, according to the President’s more cantankerous critics—there is now an upsurge of graft and corruption, violence and gangsterism as the low- or no-income sectors of the population strive to cope criminally with the rising cost of living.
The President, it is further charged, is a champion of imperialism, feudalism and fascism. He has demonstrated nothing less than canine devotion to the imperialist cause in Asia, as witness the infamous Philcag deal with what Senator Aquino brands the “Americanization” of his regime. He has conspired with the rapacious landlord class to perpetuate feudalism, depriving the land reform program of needed funds, so his accusers say. He is a veritable Hitler who relishes the use of force to smash dissent in the streets and resistance to fascism in Central Luzon, charge student militants. At the same time, he has proved to be the tuta of a tuta with his administration’s brutal deportation of the Yuyitung brothers to Taiwan.
The President, insist his persecutors, supports political warlordism—just think, they tell us, what a strong and moral president would have done after somebody’s goons burned and shot up that barrio in Bantay! He has not acted to stop rampant deforestation, his critics claim, and at the rate our forests are being destroyed—three hectares a minute—this nation before long will be a desert, a wasteland! And how many of the promises he made way back in 1965 has he fulfilled? (“Bring down high prices. . .Rule of law. . . Economy in the government. . .Nationalistic policy. . .Heroic leadership,” etc.) More savage questions are flung at us: Isn’t he already the richest man in Asia, but still insatiable, wanting more loot, at least half of PLDT, shares in Benguet, a TV station, choice real estate in various parts of the country? When will he renounce his worldly possessions, as he promised, and set up that foundation? Isn’t he just biding his time to impose martial law and install himself as the Great Dictator? Isn’t he plotting to rig the Constitutional Convention so he could run for a third term or become president for life? And so forth, and so on, a litany of outrage and apprehension.
Is President Marcos as detestable as these unkind critics, uncharitable detractors and irresponsible radicals have painted him out to be?
Could a man so favored by destiny and embodying a special greatness be such an abomination to his people?
One recoils from such malevolent thoughts. No! Of course not! Impossible!
It is time we put those wild-eyed and long-haired accusers of the President where they belong—in a padded cell and under sedation—and restored calmness and objectivity to the so-called public opinion of our disjointed times. This must be done in justice to the President, who has suffered enough in his mission to lead his people to peace and prosperity. The President is a man of heroic qualities, as we have seen; but he remains a man, vulnerable to the ailments that flesh is heir to. We gather from Luis Beltran of the Evening News that the President suffers on occasion from a curious disease which “makes tears fall from his eyes, renders him deaf and makes his throat hurt.” We could help ease the President’s aches and pains, help lighten his grievous burdens by reassuring him of our loyalty and our faith.
Assuming, for the moment, that the malicious charges leveled against the President are true, men of good will and unflinching faith in the Marcos destiny—and this unfortunate country is not bereft of them—would still perceive that whatever harm might have been done is far outweighed, rendered insignificant, by the national blessings resulting from these presidential “crimes” rashly condemned by a disenchanted, short-sighted people. It is all a matter of point of view, of angle and depth (or shallowness) of vision: what is so outrageous from a certain vantage point is revealed, from another, as good and desirable in its true nature. Filipinos who now view President Marcos as a sort of calamity—not a few even blamed him for those earthquakes—should change the slant of their perspective, regard the object of their ire from a different plane.
Then will they understand what they in anger or prejudice or despair have failed to comprehend: that the President, even in committing what appear to be crimes against the people, or refusing to act for their benefit, has had only the people’s welfare at heart. He knows that without the people, he would not be where he is today: at the seat of supreme power, his heart’s desire, his destiny. It is simply inconceivable that a man of such charisma, sensitivity and intelligence should willfully deliver them to disaster; their doom would be his own as well, for is he not one with them? Did he not fight and bleed for them in the crucible that was Bataan? And despite the expense and the hazards, didn’t he become congressman, senator and finally president the better to serve them?
No Filipino loves his country more than President Marcos—a truth that will reveal itself after the prescribed shift in viewpoint.
Consider anew the spending orgy during the last elections—was it not actually a laudable attempt to redistribute wealth and bridge the gap between the rich and the poor? As Senator Lagumbay, statesman and artist and one of the more perceptive of our solons, said recently concerning budgetary deficits caused by wanton election spending: “The father of children who are sick will not hesitate to go into debt to give them the medicines they need.” The fiscal and economic consequences of the President’s compassion for the electorate are not without their positive aspects—for has the price spiral not encouraged the people to give up vain material things and prodded them to practice austerity which, everyone will agree, is good for the soul and cuts down on cholesterol? “Do not lay up for yourselves treasures on earth, where rust and moth consume…” As for the President’s alleged servility to imperialist America—is it not merely expressive of Filipino gratitude for American tutelage in the arts of democracy? And is not the “Americanization” of his administration the next best thing to the statehood that many Filipinos still dream of? And regarding the Yuyitung case, for which certain benighted sectors of the press would consign the President to the innermost circle of hell, didn’t the magnificent show of collaboration between Taipei and Malacañang further strengthen the ties that bind two “Free World” nations committed to the defense of freedom and democracy?
The President has a soft spot in his heart for the students, especially the nationalistic activists, and he has taken pains to provide them with issues to rouse them up and keep them from physical, mental and ideological stagnation. Suppose the President never bothered to give them cause for pickets and demonstrations—they would all be smoking pot and watching smut movies instead, languid preoccupations that would not predispose them to any politicalization. The rise of youth radicalism, which promises to restructure and revitalize our ailing society, the nation owes to President Marcos.
With regard to the Bantay case, the simple-minded had expected the President to do something dramatic, like helicoptering down on the burned barrio of Ora and poking among the ruins; but he wisely chose to maintain a statesmanlike distance from the protagonists, lest his presence be misconstrued as lending aid and comfort to one party or the other. It is true that he was photographed in a conspiratorial huddle with his Ilocano friend, Congressman Floring Crisologo, but that was nothing but a pose arranged by a weekly magazine for a promotional gimmick. If he has shown little enthusiasm for land reform, as he has been repeatedly charged, that could be due to his determination to spare long-suffering farm tenants the troublesome capitalistic burdens of ownership. As for the Philippines turning into a desert because of his alleged reluctance to stop illegal logging, has it not occurred to his simple-minded critics that rock and sand exports may yet resolve our balance of payments difficulties, and that as the Sahara of Asia, we shall probably strike oil and banish poverty for good from our underdeveloped shores?
True, he said he would renounce his worldly possessions and establish a foundation, but he didn’t say when; great men have their own timetables, and will not be rushed by vile insinuations. Possibly the President has decided to postpone his philanthropic endeavors to a future term in office, a prospect that alarms his detractors, who have been issuing dire warnings that he will pack the Constitutional Convention with his men. But why should anyone be alarmed by his desire to be president longer than eight years or perhaps for life? Isn’t it all of a pattern, the extension of the glorious quest, the irresistible command of that destiny which has brought us so many blessings?
If he wants to go on serving his people for as long as he can climb the grand stairway in Malacang unassisted, the least a grateful nation can do is let him. Ten or twenty years more of nation-building may sap his strength and make climbing that starway an ordeal, but neither age nor infirmity should deter him from his noble mission; Salazar of Portugal, one recalls, presided admirably over the affairs of his country from a wheelchair, if not a sickbed, for the better part of his reign.
“Politics galvanizes into action all the beautiful hopes that a man can nurture in his heart for his country and for his nation. Politics is my life,” Hartzell Spence quotes Ferdinand E. Marcos in his biography of the President, For Every Tear a Victory, a book we keep on a special shelf of inspirational reading, along with the works of Norman Vincent Peale and S. J. Perelman (not a Jesuit).
No President has done more for his people. Never have a people owed so much to their President.
Tadhana, fate, has decreed it: Ferdinand E. Marcos, the sixth president of the Republic, will long be remembered for what he has done, and for what he will yet do.
The Philippines Free Press Online 