THE AUGUST 21 1971 BOMBING OF PLAZA MIRANDA

By Philip M. Lustre Jr.

FORTY FIVE YEARS ago, the bombing of the Liberal Party proclamation rally took place at Plaza Miranda, Manila’s version of Hyde Park. This is not one dirty little footnote in history, but a major antecedent to what could be regarded as the darkest chapter in modern Philippine history – the thirteen-year failed experiment in authoritarianism, or dictatorship.

Unidentified persons hurled two fragmentation hand grenades on the stage, where the Liberal Party’s senatorial and local candidates in Manila were being proclaimed for the 1971 midterm elections. At least six persons died and scores of people, mostly supporters, who went to Plaza Miranda to witness the proclamation rally, were injured.

The Plaza Miranda bombing almost decimated the Liberal Party, led by its president Gerry Roxas, father of Mar Roxas, and the entire eight-man LP senatorial slate. The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties that alternated in power in the two-party political system of the premartial law days. The other political party was the Nacionalista Party, to which Ferdinand Marcos and wife Imelda belonged.

President Ferdinand Marcos immediately denied any involvement or participation, blamed the communists instead, and suspended the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. The suspension allowed Marcos and law enforcers to detain suspects indefinitely even without court charges.

The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus protects ordinary citizens from indefinite detention. It mandates their release six hours after their detention whenever law enforcers fail to file any charges against them. Marcos lifted the suspension after five months, or sometime in January, 1972.

The intellectual ferment of those days made the political situation quite restive, triggering the rise of student activism and renewed trade unionism. Marcos could hardly contain the drift because the political system could hardly support itself.

Two main developments influenced the political environment of those days: the Second Vatican Council, which Pope John XXIII convened in in the early 1960s to reform the Roman Catholic Church, and the emergence of the Maoist-oriented Communist Party of the Philippines from the remnants of the old Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas (PKP) in the late 1960s.

The teachings of the Second Vatican Council finally reached the Philippines, influencing a number of religious clerics, who constituted the moderate faction of the anti-Marcos forces of those days. The Vatican 2 essentially identified the Church as the “Church of the Poor” to atone for its cowardly posture towards Adolf Hitler in Second World War. Hence, the phrase “preferential option for the poor” has come to define the modern-day Church.

Jose Ma. Sison, a young intellectual, gathered fellow disillusioned intellectuals and led the CPP in the creation of the New People’s Army (NPA) from the Hukbalahap remnants to become its military arm. Sison and his group earlier formed the Kabataang Makabayan (KM) and Samahan ng Demokratikong Kabataan (SDK), two youth mass organizations, which led in the creation of militant organizations in prominent sectors – labor, peasant, women, professional, Church, and civil society.

Because of the massive recruitment of members and their subsequent indoctrination, the campaign against Marcos and the United States, which anti-Marcos forces perceived as supportive of him, became more pronounced as series of mass actions rocked Manila after the reelection of Marcos in November, 1969.

The State of the Nation Address (SONA) of Marcos before the joint session of Congress on January 26, 1970 turned violent as thousands of student activists clashed with police. This started the First Quarter Storm, where student activists in a series of street demonstrations stormed Malacanang to protest the perceived social inequities. The violent mass actions somewhat subsided when classes ended in March.

Protest actions by student activists of leftwing and moderate groups became a common occurrence. By that time, Marcos was getting alarmed by the evolving anti-Marcos political forces, but he did not immediately take moves, as he carefully weighed his options.

I had a recent interview with Henry Mercado, then a 12-year old Grade Six student of Quiapo Parochial School, who gave an eyewitness account of the Plaza Miranda bombing. Henry, now a graphic artist at the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation (Pagcor), was at Plaza Miranda when the bombing incident happened because his school was beside the Quiapo Church.

At that time, the school was a few meters away from Plaza Miranda. Now, the school has relocated to a new site in Quiapo. His eyewitness account:

“The school authorities dismissed us at 5:30 pm, the dismissal time for afternoon classes. I went with classmates and friends to Plaza Miranda, where we saw the big wooden stage. We sat on the rows of rattan chairs a few meters away from the stage. Because we were noisy and haughty, those workers, who were doing finishing touches on the stage, drove us away. We did not know that we sat almost on the same place the assassins threw their grenades on the stage.

“Some went home, but for others who stayed, we chose the place near Mercury Drug Store, which is about 100 meters away from the stage. We saw LP supporters, placing and fixing baby rockets, locally known as kuwitis, along the island at the middle of Quezon Boulevard, the main thoroughfare of the Quiapo. We knew those baby rockets were part of the proclamation rally and celebration.

“We saw dignitaries arriving at Plaza Miranda and alighting from their cars. They went to the stage. We saw Ramon Bagatsing, who was LP candidate for Manila mayor, and his running mate, Martin Isidro. We saw lesser known candidates for the Manila Council. We identified high profile candidates like Mel Lopez, but hardly knew the rest.

“Finally, LP senatorial candidates arrived one by one. Eva Estrada Kalaw, Eddie Ilarde, Sergio Osmena, Jr., Genaro Magsaysay, Jovito Salonga were easily identifiable. Sen. Gerry Roxas, then LP president, also arrived and alighted from his Mercedes Benz car. We did not know the rest. During those days, we did not exactly know what politics was. Neither did we know our political leaders.

“We heard LP leaders delivering their speeches. We heard them attacking Marcos for things we hardly knew and understood. By 8 pm, Roxas stood and spoke, called each candidate to join him on the front row of the stage, and proclaimed the LP senatorial candidates and the LP candidates for Manila mayor, vice mayor, and City Council. At about half an hour after 8 pm, the candidates formed a single line in front the people and raised their hands.

“Then, some people lighted those kuwitis. The baby rockets started chasing each other in the sky and exploded. We were looking at the fireworks, when two big explosions pierced our eardrums. We looked at the stage and saw pandemonium right there and below. People were screaming and crying. We did not fully understand the situation until somebody shouted, ‘naku, binomba ang rally, hinagisan ng granada.’” (The rally was bombed; somebody threw a grenade.)

“We did not immediately understand what happened. We never knew violence of that magnitude. It appeared that the assassins threw the grenades at the same time the baby rockets were exploding up in the air. They perfectly timed it when people were amused by the sights of those exploding rockets.

“We were very scared of what had happened. We saw many people running away from the scene, while others were picking up the victims to bring them to hospitals. We saw the gory sight of victims being rushed to hospital. We saw blood splattered all over the area.

“Because of the ensuing confusion and commotion, we chose to go home. Nervous and scared, we all took the next available jeepney ride. I hardly slept that night as I recalled the violent incident.”

The magnitude of the violence of the August 21, 1971 Plaza Miranda bombing could be aptly described as beyond description. While it is true that Philippine politics is anarchy of families as one political family vie with another family for political power, incidents of violence are normally isolated. Not a single violent incident in the past could match the attempt to decimate the entire LP senatorial slate.

Six persons died in the Plaza Miranda bombing, including Manila Times photojournalist Ben Roxas, while over 100 persons got injured or maimed in the explosion and the ensuing melee. The authoritative Philippines Free Press, the magazine of record in the premarital law days, said: “[The Plaza Miranda bombing] was most villainous, outrageous, and shameful crime in the annals of local political violence... a night of national tragedy and infamy... a democracy Philippine style bared itself in all its terrifying ugliness.”

Sen. Jovito Salonga, who was running for election after he topped the 1965 senatorial elections, was the most injured among the senatorial candidates. He lost an eye and an ear to pieces of shrapnel that pierced the left side of his body. His limbs were badly mangled. He was almost lifeless when brought to the hospital; even the attending doctors thought he would not survive the violent attack. But miracles do happen; he survived.

As a beat reporter who covered the Senate in the post-Marcos era, I personally saw those scars in Salonga’s upper limbs, nape and head, appearing as if they were his medals in the battle against the Marcos dictatorship. In meeting reporters, Salonga never sounded bitter about the incident, but he was always quick to draw poignant lessons from that attack.

Senatorial candidate Ramon Mitra Jr., who later became the speaker of the House of Representatives in the post-Marcos 8th Congress, told me in an interview how he developed diabetes after a shrapnel hit his pancreas, adversely affecting its production of natural insulin necessary for the management of sugar in the body. Manila mayoral candidate Ramon Bagatsing Sr. lost a leg; the same fate befell John Osmena.

Sen. Sergio Osmena Jr., father of Sen. Sergio Osmena III, almost died after his body was tossed up in the air like pizza by the loud grenade explosion. He had his share of grenade wounds, which affected his health and led to his death ten years later. Senatorial candidates Eva Estrada Kalaw, Genaro Magsaysay, Edgar Ilarde, Salipada Pendatun, and Melanio Singson suffered shrapnel wounds in the body and lower limbs.

Although the entire LP senatorial slate survived the carnage and won six of the eight senatorial slots (only Pendatun and Singson lost) , they all had shrapnel wounds. In the political campaign that led to the November 1971 elections, the senatorial candidates led by LP president, Sen. Gerry Roxas, spoke to the people with heavily bandaged bodies, crutches, and wheelchairs. It was an emotional election. Ernesto Maceda won among the close lieutenants Marcos fielded. Juan Ponce Enrile and Blas Ople lost miserably.

Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr,, who was LP secretary-general, escaped the violent attack after he attended a dinner and arrived late. Ninoy Aquino said he earlier received a call from an unidentified person, who warned of a possible attack. After his dinner, he went home to don a bulletproof vest.

Aquino’s absence in the LP proclamation rally did not escape the attention of Marcos, who promptly sowed intrigues. Marcos threw innuendoes Aquino could be behind the bombing to get rid of rivals in the 1973 presidential polls. Appearing in a television interview, Aquino flatly denied the accusation, saying that if he wanted to get rid of his partymates, he would instead poison them as they frequently had dinners and lunches with him.

Subsequent police investigations did not yield results to name suspects. But some quarters, including the political opposition and nosy US intelligence agents and Embassy officers, did not buy Marcos’s explanation that the communists were behind the carnage. The CPP had about 100 cadres during those days; they were scattered mostly in rural areas to stage a revolution along the Maoist dictum of “surround the city from the countryside.”

In 1988, a group of disgruntled renegade party members led by Ruben Guevarra surfaced to claim that Jose Ma. Sison, CPP chair, ordered and planned the Plaza Miranda bombing to hasten the creation of a revolutionary situation and advance the party interest. They told a Senate committee public hearing that Sison thought of the bombing as a way to pit one group of political elites with another group.

They claimed Marcos would be blamed for the ensuing carnage. They claimed that the person who threw the grenade was killed in a violent party purge. But their claim did not attract interest because the insurrectionary tactic did not fit into the Maoist model of a peasant-led, rural-based revolution.

Even Victor Corpus, the young army lieutenant, who defected to the NPA in 1972 only to return to the Armed Forces six years later, made the surprising claim at the height of the “God Save the Queen” plot in November, 1986. Not one could explain his motives to make the claim, although some observers believed it was his way to rehabilitate himself as he was reinstated as a reserve army officer.

Until now, the August 21, 1971 Plaza Miranda bombing, just like any other violent incident, has yet to have a closure. Hearsays continue to fly thick. But the Plaza Miranda bombing is not a dirty footnote in Philippine history. On the contrary, it significantly influenced the flow of political developments in the country.

The LP-dominated results of the 1971 senatorial elections deeply stunned Ferdinand Marcos, leading him to alter his earlier plan to field either wife Imelda or Juan Ponce Enrile as his anointed candidate in the 1973 presidential elections. But the elections results showed to Marcos that no one among his trusted leaders could beat Ninoy Aquino or Gerry Roxas in 1973. Only he could beat the LP presidential candidate. But the 1935 Constitution was his biggest problem because it barred him from running for a second reelection.

Marcos began looking for other options, which included the gamechanging declaration of martial law in 1972. He had to touch the nerve of history to perpetuate himself in power. In short, the Plaza Miranda bombing was a major antecedent to martial rule.