ARTURO TOLENTINO'S CLAIM TO PRESIDENCY

By Philip M. Lustre Jr.

(Author's Notes: Rabid supporters of ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos have not stopped their ridiculous claims that Cory Aquino should not have been president had they pursued their camp's claim to the presidency in 1986. When confronted with idiocy, it is best to explain everything clearly. The rule is simple: Put up or shut up.)

ALLOW ME to interject on the ludicrous claims of certain Marcos loyalists that Arturo Tolentino could have claimed the presidency and taken it away from Cory Aquino in 1986, i.e. immediately after the fateful EDSA People Power Revolution that toppled the Marcos dictatorship.

Albeit its premises, mostly unfounded and baseless, the ultimate fact is that it was something that did not happen. Allow me to give the historical antecedents. 

Dictator Ferdinand Marcos and Cory Aquino faced each other in the Feb. 7, 1986 “snap” presidential elections. Marcos and Arturo Tolentino, his running mate, won in the Comelec official count and the Batasang Pambansa, which was the legislative body of the Marcos dictatorship, proclaimed him and Tolentino as winners. 

But Cory Aquino and Doy Laurel, her vice presidential running mate, were leading in the private sector-led parallel count when Namfrel stopped it at some point because it could no longer retrieve copies of certificates of canvasses from the field.

The four-day EDSA People Power Revolution intervened and took place on Feb. 22-25, 1986. It succeeded; it kicked the Marcoses out of Malacanang and installed Cory Aquino as president. 

Two or three months after the EDSA People Power Revolution, I covered as part of my work as a Manila-based correspondent of the Japanese new agency, Jiji Press, a Rotary Club gathering, where Tolentino spoke and announced his claim to the presidency. He told the startled civic leaders that he was making a claim on the basis of the 1973 Constitution. 

Tolentino claimed that the Filipino people elected him as vice president on the basis of that constitution; the Marcos-dominated Commission on Elections (its chair and commissioners were all kicked out when Cory took over) announced that he and Marcos won in the snap elections; and the Batasang Pambansa proclaimed them as winners. Since Marcos was on exile in Hawaii, he was staking a claim on the presidency, he announced.

Tolentino went to belittle the 1986 EDSA People Revolution. I remembered him saying that the fateful political upheaval was participated by “a few thousands” and that it could not be considered reflective of the national sentiment because people in the provinces did not participate in that event. 

The Rotary Club people were polite; they did not openly oppose Tolentino’s assertions. They neither talked nor reacted to his claim, but I saw some people squirming on their seats and smirking on what could be described as Tolentino’s march of folly. 

Tolentino did not disclose to which forum he would make his ridiculous claim. Whether he would go to the Supreme Court (it was also reorganized when Cory Aquino took over) or go straight to the Filipino people was unclear.

The Manila Bulletin (it was called Bulletin Today, when it was part of the crony press, but was renamed to its present name when the Cory Aquino took over), picked up the English version of our dispatch and subsequently published it on its front page. 

Despite its publication and the consequent public awareness of Tolentino’s claim, I never knew if he indeed actively sought it. 

Weeks later after his Rotary Club speech, the Cory Aquino government, through a 50-man commission (it became 49 when the late Lino Brocka withdrew as commissioner), started working on the drafting of the 1987 Constitution. 

Sometime in February, 1987, the Filipino people overwhelmingly approved in a referendum what is now known as the 1987 Constitution.

Weeks after Its ratification, I saw Tolentino in another gathering and promptly asked him on what had happened to his claim on the presidency. He told me that he had abandoned it because of the ratification of the new constitution. 

Tolentino clarified that he had made the claim on the basis of the 1973 Constitution. But with the ratification and enforcement of the 1987 Constitution, the issue had become “moot and academic.” The basis of his claim was superseded by the new charter. 

I wrote the story of his withdrawal of his claim in one of a dozen local newspapers that proliferated after EDSA Revolution. By that time, I had rejoined local media and I was a staff reporter of a daily that later closed shop because of financial issues.

I have to make this issue clear because of the unparalleled desire of certain misguided elements to revise our history. 

I was there; I saw it; and I wrote it. I am still around to belie those stupid, ridiculous, and unfounded claims. It is my civic duty to correct those revisions. And I won’t stop so long as I could pound my keyboard.

P.S. Tolentino's claim was a topic in the drinking sessions of media colleagues. An editor jokingly told us that what Tolentino did was a product of "a very legalistic mind." We laughed and bantered on that statement.