Wonder of Tarlac

Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. was born on 27 November 1932, thirty-eight years to the day before the Bolivian artist Benjamin Mendoza tried to assassinate the Pope at Manila International Airport. But it was not Pope Paul VI who was destined to die while disembarking from his plane in the Philippines. On 21 August 1983, Ninoy would perish, a martyr from a single bullet wound to the head, gunned down as he returned from exile in the United States.

The alleged perpetrators who, many believed, included Imelda Marcos, and her husband’s cronies, Eduardo Cojuanco and General Fabian Ver, were never punished for the crime. But there was little doubt in the minds of some U.S. State Department officials and the Philippine judiciary committee, set up later to uncover the truth, that they were the guilty parties.

Since his murder there have been many glowing tributes, a good many myths and a great many lies written about the young Senator from Tarlac, Pampanga. Most Filipinos believed he was the strongest candidate to become the next President when, in 1973, Marcos would be legally forced to step down after serving his second term. And there are still many Filipinos today who truly accept the myth that Ninoy would have made a benign President, a far cry from the dictator that Ferdinand Marcos became. To those who had suffered for so long, Ninoy represented a new era of hope, of integrity, of justice, a healer of the devastating wounds inflicted on the country and its people by almost two decades of Marcos’s rule.

In fairness to Ninoy, by 1983, after his seven years in prison, his self-confessed spiritual awakening and his three-year exile, maybe he had changed radically and things might have been different. But whether his supporters at the time liked to admit it or not, Ninoy and Marcos had much in common. They both came from similar family backgrounds. From an early age they both possessed an inherent aptitude for politics and an unswerving belief in their own destiny. They shared a boundless energy, an immense ego and a single-minded ambition. They were each blessed with a charismatic personality. Both were braggarts, liars and bullies, having little sympathy for anyone who opposed them. They both studied law before entering politics. As politicians they spoke the same language. They talked about when, not if, they became President of the Philippines. In politics, too, they masqueraded as nationalists when, in fact, they were both authoritarians. They instinctively knew how to win support and favours within the U.S. government. In fact they probably knew more about the inner workings of the Pentagon than most officials working there.

[Draft] By Jeric Arellano