THE FLOODS OF ESPANA

By Philip M. Lustre Jr.

Whenever the rainy season comes, I couldn't help but reminisce the days when I had to wade through the flooded streets of Manila to go to school or get home. 

Manila is an anomaly; it is below sea level unlike most cities of the world. 

A slight drizzle is enough to cause floods in its streets. 

The phrase "flash floods" has been coined to refer to the all-too-sudden surge of water to its streets.

Espana, the two-kilometer stretch from the University Belt to the boundary of Quezon City, has been the perfect barometer to measure the floods of Manila. 

When Espana gets flooded, we can always be sure that most streets of Manila are submerged in punishing flash floods. 

We don't really have to go around Manila to know the extent of floods. Espana is enough.

As a high school student at the University of Santo Tomas, I encountered numerous instances of flash floods that tortured this thoroughfare. 

The school authorities were then quick to suspend classes at the sight of an impending flash flood. But going home was always an aggravation. 

Floods of Espana were waist deep. 

It wasn't easy to navigate its waters because of the open manholes and floating debris. 

One could never be sure what would happen next when he steps on an open manhole.

Nothing much had changed when I went to college. 

Espana was never the road of choice for us. But we had to live with its floods, as if it was God's mandate for us to suffer its imperfection. 

We had learned to take the floods of Espana as normal, whenever the dreaded heavy rains started pouring.

But Espana has one quality that makes it different or even outstanding from the other thoroughfares. 

Despite the heavy rains and the subsequent flooding, its cemented road do wear off. I couldn't believe with my own two eyes that it never had any cracks or craters, which characterize the many cemented streets of Manila. 

Its construction is almost perfect.

Espana was cemented sometime in 1964 or 1965. 

Then, Manila Mayor Antonio Villegas, the half forgotten successor of the famous Arsenio Lacson, who died of heart attack, had it rebuilt and cemented. 

I don't know the private builder, I don't even know if it had one. But all I can say is that its builder knew its craft.

Moreover, I could also say that not much public money was stolen during its construction.

Probably, it was not then the habit to lose much money to graft during those days, unlike today. 

Thus, its builder had made Espana sturdy and strong to withstand the rigors of flash floods. Its design is almost flawless.

While Espana is a testament to the vagaries of nature, it's also a monument for Filipino ingenuity. 

It shows the Filipinos' capability and political will to build infrastructures that can last long. 

Unfortunately, the builder of cemented Espana has long been forgotten and lost to posterity. What a waste.

RETRO MUSIC IS FUN

By Philip M. Lustre Jr.

Retro music, or the songs of the not so distant past, is back with a vengeance. 

In the seeming scarcity of quality contemporary music, retro music, or the sounds of the 1950s to the 1970s, has invaded the airwaves, as older generations of listeners relish old memories with nostalgia. 

Retro music fills up the ennui, which the global community appears to experience nowadays.

The Filipino audience has all the reasons to prefer retro music. 

The current hip hop sound is difficult for the Filipinos to appreciate. Whether it's Eminem's or some black rap artists', Filipinos could not relate to their inner city angst and anger. 

In contrast, retro songs have universal messages, which Filipinos find meaningful and relevant.

Whether it's Jo Stafford or Frank Sinatra, or the Beatles or the Beach Boys on the airwaves, older Filipinos could easily hum a note or two. 

They identify themselves with those old songs. 

They could easily relate to them, as they associate some memories with the songs of the yesteryears.

This is something that can not be said of contemporary music, which, despite the globalization and the emerging global culture, is paradoxically confined to the inner city ​​experiences of those rap artists. 

The insularity of their music is baffling.

Yesterday, I heard Jo Stafford singing You Belong to Me, which was a hit in the 1950s. Suddenly, old memories cascaded into my mind - the Chevrolets and Buicks that ran through the streets of Manila in the 1960s, those nameless and faceless persons, who graced through my life, the school where I spent my elementary school years I was too ... overwhelmed by those memories.

Then, I heard the Beatles' Yesterday, and I could not help but remember the things I had as a kid and a teenager. 

The girls next door, the boyhood chums and the games we played, the fistfights I had with the other kids, the nights, where we chose to sing some lullabies to while away time, and the first drinking sessions and cigarettes I had with some trusted friends. 

I remember not the momentous and historic, but the inconsequential, which we usually take for granted.

I regard the computer and Youtube as the greatest inventions in my lifetime. I always make it a point to go to Youtube to watch and listen to some videos. 

Until one day, I had discovered that a local pop group, the Electromaniacs, has regrouped once more to play some of their greatest hits in the 1960s. 

To describe them as great is an understatement; They are amazing and unbelievable.

Through YouTube, I saw how Ernie Delgado, their aging but celebrated their lead guitarist, played hits like I Miss You So, Faithful Love, Lovers' Guitar, and Perfidia. 

I could only marvel at the human genius and say: Life is beautiful, is not it?

Listening to retro music brings the good old days. 

But on the second thought, I wonder why the old days are always good. 

I do not have any explanation to this except to take the belief that things are always good, when we're young. 

Our mental processes differ as as we get older. Those youthful experiences are more prominently etched in our mind.

Retro music is fun. 

Try to break the monotony of our lives and listen to artists of yesteryears. 

Whether it's the Monkees or the Rolling Stones or the Doors, or Cream, or Tony Bennett, or Elvis Presley, or the Temptations or the Four Tops, or the Supremes, or the local artists like Nora Aunor, or Tirso Cruz III, or Vilma Santos, or grandkids, or Hotdogs, we can rediscover the freshness and beauty of life. 

Then, we heave that deep, big sigh and say: Thank God, I'm alive l. Life is beautiful.

THE AFTERMATH OF NINOY AQUINO MURDER

By Philip M. Lustre Jr.

DICTATOR Ferdinand Marcos hardly anticipated the costly and prolonged public outrage over the Aug. 21, 1983 assassination of top opposition leader Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr.

Despite his reputed erudite and wily political ways, Marcos could not stop the escalation of the Aquino’s brutal murder into crisis proportions, threatening his dictatorship for the first time in a decade.

Ensconced in Malacanang after his kidney transplant surgery, the convalescing Marcos watched helplessly as the Filipino people responded swiftly, overwhelmingly, and decisively on the brazen way Ninoy Aquino was killed while under his military escorts.

Despite the dictatorship’s tight control over the local media, news about Aquino’s murder spread like wildfire, triggering what could be regarded the start of the downfall of the Marcos dictatorial regime.

Ordinary citizens could not contain their utter shock, disbelief, and disgust over his murder committed in broad daylight.

Henceforth, Marcos had to explain a lot since the opposition leader was killed while under military custody. Moreover, the circumstances of his brutal murder showed a direct military conspiracy.

Hours after his murder, Filipinos from all walks of life – rich and poor, young, old, and the not-so-old, formed long queues to pay their last respect to Aquino, whose body was put for public viewing at the Aquinos’ residence in Times Street in Quezon City.

The Aquinos neither changed the clothes he wore upon arrival in Manila nor cleaned his wound and dirtied face, enabling the world to see what they did to Ninoy.

Two days later, wife Cory Aquino and their kids arrived from Boston and decided to transfer his remains to a bigger and spacious venue to accommodate the people, who paid their homage to him – the Santo Domingo Church along Quezon Avenue in Quezon City, which is about two kilometers from their residence.

The crowd got bigger and the queues, longer, as more Filipinos started to perceive Ninoy Aquino as a martyr of the cause of Philippine democracy.

Despite the public anger and polarizing effects of the brutal murder, known supporters of the dictatorship attempted to go to the wake to show sympathy and condole with the family.

But because of the tense situation, some visitors were shunned. Their rebuff revealed the deep political wounds his murder has caused.

Carlos P. Romulo, the former foreign affairs minister of the Marcos dictatorship,was among them. Burial marshals politely told him to leave, hurting his pride.

Later, he showed a change of heart by quietly denouncing the dictatorship, claiming that Marcos used his “international stature” to get what he wanted from the Americans.

Ten days later (August 31, 1983), the longest funeral procession in Philippine history took place. An estimated two million people participated to bring Ninoy’s remains to the Manila Memorial Park in suburban Paranaque City.

Almost overnight, an alphabet soup of organizations mushroomed to lead the protest demonstrations against the perceived complicity of the Marcos regime in Aquino’s murder.

The late younger brother Agapito, or Butz, who later became a senator, led in the creation of the August Twenty One Movement (ATOM), to press for the prosecution of the people behind Ninoy’s murder and signal the rise of the middle class in the protest movement against the Marcos authoritarian rule.

The Justice for Aquino, Justice for All (JAJA), became the broad coalition of all opposition forces, including the Left and the Right, against the Marcos dictatorship.

The Aug. 21, 1983 assassination of Ninoy Aquino drastically altered the political equation.

It galvanized the political resolve of the democratic opposition, as they went to the extent of pressing for the resignation of Marcos, whom the opposition leaders thought had blood in his hands, the end for the one-man rule, and the transition to democracy.

It served as the single spark to enhance communist insurgency in the country, as rebels recruit more adherents, staged more ambushes against government troopers, and intensify armed struggle.

The Aquino assassination also provided the impetus for the middle class to join the protest movement against Marcos dictatorial rule.

It weakened the ruling Kilusang Bagong Lipunan coalition, as its members began to doubt Marcos.

Overall, Marcos never felt it so bad until the Ninoy Aquino murder took place.

Even the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Embassy in Manila, as represented by Ambassador Michael Armacost, were so surprised by the public outrage, prompting them to start distancing from Marcos.

Seeing the magnitude and depth of the collective public anger over Aquino’s murder, Armacost avoided getting cozy and warm with the dictatorship, as he treated them with ultimate formality.

Where before Armacost was photographed dancing with Imelda, the ambassador avoided her except on formal occasions.

It was a sharp contrast to the friendship which the Marcoses enjoyed with U.S. President Ronald Reagan and wife Nancy.

Marcos’s response for the crisis was fatally short of any brinkmanship. He failed to convince the people that Rolando Galman was a communist hit man responsible for Ninoy’s death.

Marcos formed a commission led by his loyalist supporter in the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Enrique Fernando, to conduct an independent probe of Aquino’s murder, but the people repudiated the commission, raising the public perception that were appointed to rig the investigation.

Marcos replaced the Enrique Fernando commission with a five man commission led by retired appellate justice Corazon Agrava. The other commission members were Amado Dizon, Dante Santos, Luciano Salazar, and Ernesto Herrera, who rose to national prominence to become a senator.

The commission held daily hearings for almost a year and confirmed the public view that his murder was indeed a military conspiracy that involved Gen. Fabian Ver, chief of staff of the Armed Forces during those days.

The protest demonstrations continued.

Perfumed elites from Makati, corporate executives like Jaime Ongpin and Ramon del Rosario Jr. joined hands with the great unwashed to press for Marcos resignation and a transition to democracy.

In 1984, Marcos was forced to call elections for members of the regular Batasang Pambansa, where the political opposition won a quarter of the seats.

In late 1985, Marcos called for “snap” presidential elections, which culminated in the EDSA People Power Revolution.

The ultimate question: Who gave the order for Ninoy Aquino’s assassination?

The late Cory Aquino had put the blame squarely on dictator Ferdinand Marcos, but in the absence of direct evidence and corroborative statements, it was difficult for her to pin Marcos as the one who gave the order for his assassination.

But pieces of circumstantial evidence showed that it was Marcos, who personally gave the order to Imelda and close confidantes to kill Ninoy if he insisted on coming home on the date he was convalescing from his kidney transplant surgery.

In the dictator’s mind during those days, he was only implementing in an extrajudicial manner the death sentence a military commission, which was no different from a kangaroo court, gave in 1974 on trumped up charges of murder and subversion against him.

Imelda’s warning against Ninoy that he would be dead if he were to come home indicated that the Marcoses had plans to liquidate him.

What took place on Aug. 21, 1983 was premeditated by shown by the clock-like precision of the operations.

It was inconceivable that Marcos did not know it. He gave the order.

Hence, his order emboldened the likes of Avsecom chief Brig. Gen. Luther Custodio, a notorious Imelda loyalist, to kill Ninoy.

To whom did Marcos give the order to kill Ninoy?

Imelda knew and implemented it along with Ver and, of course, his younger brother, Cocoy Romualdez.

It is a big cause for bewilderment that Cocoy did not bother to return to the country, while others took the gamble to return.

Cocoy returned only when he was ill only to die of cancer in early 2012. Nobody could say with certainty his participation, but it has been whispered that he was among those entrusted to carry out that plan to kill Ninoy.

Ninoy Aquino’s murder would go down in history as the single spark that altered its course. Without this outrageous development, it would be inconceivable how history has unfolded.

THE AUGUST 21, 1983 ASSASSINATION OF BENIGNO "NINOY" AQUINO JR.

By Philip M. Lustre Jr.

(Notes: I was among the journalists, who covered the Aug. 21, 1983 assassination of Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr. at the Manila International Airport, now the Ninoy Aquino International Airport. The following is my narrative of the Aquino’s murder from a journalist’s lens.)

THE brief news report buried in one of the inside pages of the August 3, 1983 issue of the New York Times did not catch fire for ordinary readers. The news report, datelined Manila, said dictator Ferdinand Marcos would take a “two week seclusion” to finish "writing" his purported two books.

But the news report was enough to perk up the ebullient opposition leader Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., then a political exile in Boston, Massachusetts since 1980. Ninoy Aquino immediately felt that something wrong was happening to his political nemesis. He knew Marcos was ill during those days, but he was not sure of the details.

Like the rest of Filipinos, Aquino had no direct access to determine the veracity of those wild talks that kept on swirling about the presidential health.

The dictator’s health condition was among the tightly guarded secrets during the martial law days. Talks of his illness kept on circulating uncontrollably, although Marcos was quick to deny them. He appeared on government television several times to insist he was healthy.

The joke of those days: Aside from hidden wealth, Marcos also had hidden health.

Marcos never disclosed the state of his health during his rule, although he was said to be ill of a kidney disease. Except for some allergy and failing eyesight, Marcos kept on insisting he was fine. The dictator felt that any public disclosure of his actual health condition could create political instability.

As a dictator, he enjoyed enormous powers, almost limitless indeed. He held the fulcrum of power; he was the law. He was the center of political gravity during those heady days.

                                                

Although the dictatorship was all about him, Marcos was unprepared for the perceived chaos that could follow his death or permanent physical incapacity; he was deeply paranoid on the grim scenarios of a post-Marcos era. He neither perceived nor understood that those scenarios sprang from his own political experiment on authoritarianism.

Ninoy Aquino had a fairly comfortable life as an academic at the fabled Harvard University in Boston. But he never felt comfortable in his exile. As a rule, nobody enjoys being away from one’s homeland unless he is willing to give up his place of birth.

Ninoy Aquino said in several interviews there that he preferred to return home and die here instead of being mowed down by a Boston taxicab.

Relying on his network of informants in Manila and the U.S., Aquino knew that Marcos was indeed ill during those days. By his own reckoning, the dictator could die anytime, as he was then suffering from renal failure brought by lupus erythemathosus, a systemic disease that affects the body’s autoimmune system.

Ninoy Aquino did not want to become politically irrelevant in the ensuing political vacuum and chaos that could arise upon the death of Marcos. Ninoy Aquino decided to return home at all cost.

His homecoming was his tryst with destiny. It was a winner-take-all situation for him, although history showed that his bold act could make him a winner whether he came out dead or alive from it. He wanted to come home to initiate a democratic transition and present himself as an alternative to wife Imelda in case Marcos died.

Although he was short on details, Aquino was correct in thinking that Marcos was ill. Marcos had a kidney transplant on August 7, 1983. A pair of American surgeons from New York City did the surgery. His son, Ferdinand Jr., or  Bongbong, a defeated vice presidential candidate in 2016 presidential elections and a former governor and senator, was the donor to lessen the risk of organ rejection.

Manila-based operatives of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) learned the identities of the two New York City-based doctors after they reportedly bribed an immigration officer, who stamped the doctors’ passports at the airport, a book about Marcos said.

In brief, Imelda did not go to New York only to shop and demonstrate to the world how she spent senselessly the people's money, but to negotiate with surgeons, who could perform the kidney transplant on Marcos. Most likely, the U.S. government passed the information to Ninoy Aquino without necessarily giving full details.

For their part, Manila-based opposition leaders, particularly Salvador “Doy” Laurel, who headed the broad alliance of opposition leaders under the United Democratic Opposition (Unido) umbrella, appraised Aquino of the local situation, firming up the latter’s decision to return home.

During those days, a kidney transplant was not yet a perfected medical procedure. Kidney transplant patients had higher risks unlike today.

Call it political naivete, but Aquino thought -and was convinced - that Marcos, his fraternity brother at Upsilon Sigma Phi, could be persuaded to start a democratic transition. But the dictator was surrounded by hardliners like wife Imelda, Armed Forces chief of staff Gen. Fabian, and businessman Danding Cojuangco, who were lusting for power too.

Ninoy Aquino, who represented the other half of the political dichotomy with Marcos, set his appointment with destiny on Aug. 21, 1983. Aquino left Boston to take a circuitous route to Manila on August 16, 1983.

Using a fake passport with his nom de guerre Marcial Bonifacio, Aquino went to Singapore, Tokyo, and Taipei before proceeding to Manila on China Air Lines 811 flight. Incidentally, Imelda Marcos met Ninoy Aquino in New York sometime in May, 1983 to tell him to cancel his plan to come home for a while and generously offered financial assistance.

Ninoy refused prompting Imelda to say: “If you come home, you will be dead.” Imelda categorically told Aquino that they (referring to the Marcos couple) might not control their supporters from murdering him.

Facing the five-man Agrava commission, which Marcos had created to probe the Aquino-Galman double murder case, Doy Laurel corroborated the May, 1983 meeting between Imelda and Ninoy and confirmed that Imelda told Ninoy he would be dead if he would insist to return home.

Prior to Aquino’s homecoming, Laurel, through his spokesman Tony Alano, gave a daily briefing to Manila-based foreign journalists about Ninoy’s movements and whereabouts. They flocked to the airport on the day of his arrival.

As a Filipino journalist working in the Manila bureau of Jiji Press, a Japanese news agency, I was among the throngs of journalists, who went to the airport to cover Aquino’s homecoming.

I did not have any inkling that I would have a front seat to history and chronicle a tragedy of unimaginable magnitude, an event that could be the tipping point in the struggle against the Marcos dictatorship and all evils associated with it.

While going to the airport with the Shuji Onose, the Manila bureau chief, we witnessed the yellow ribbons tied to the trees and lampposts along Roxas Boulevard and Airport Avenue and throngs of people, who, I was told, came from Tarlac, to grace his homecoming.

Upon arrival, airport authorities herded us to the holding room, which was normally used for foreign dignitaries, who issued either arrival or departure statements. At first, we thought Aquino would give his arrival statement there.

Manila-based journalists working with foreign news organizations were mixed with opposition leaders and Aquino family members, whom we hardly knew during those days because they did not involve themselves in politics and, ergo, were low key.

I saw the likes of Dona Aurora, the mother, and siblings Paul, Butz, Maur Lichauco, and Tessie Oreta, although we came to know their identities later.

Doy Laurel, wife Celia, and their kids were there along with Senators Lorenzo Tanada, Rene Espina, and Mamintal Tamano and human rights lawyer Joker Arroyo.

I personally felt that the Aquino homecoming would be different from previous events that I covered and chronicled at the airport, when I saw an inordinate number of fully-armed soldiers deployed in the airport terminal building.

No one among the journalists, opposition leaders, and Aquino family members were allowed to go out of the holding room the very moment we entered into it.

We were completely locked in that room; we were sequestered there. We did not know anything that had happened outside the holding room.

I saw the stern-looking Col. Vicente Tigas, a ranking official of Gen. Ver’s Presidential Security Command, walked back and forth just outside the holding room with his hand held walkie-talkie radio, as if he was checking if all journalists were locked in that holding room.

Journalists of the crony papers were assigned in a different area, but because they knew the airport terrain, they went to the area where they could see the China Air Lines plane that brought in Aquino.

Recto Mercene of the crony paper Times Journal took those iconic shots of Ninoy Aquino’s body being dragged by soldiers to a waiting van.

The combined group of journalists and civilians felt bored and restless when at around 2 pm, a moon-faced, bespectacled American national with a pair of slit eyes barged into the holding room and went straight to Dona Aurora, the Aquino siblings, Tanada, and Arroyo to tell them nervously that Aquino, while in the custody of soldiers, was shot.

I was just a few meters away when Ken Kashiwahara of U.S. network ABC, husband of sister Lupita and Ninoy’s brother-in-law, tearfully said these words that continue to resonate into my mind: “They shot him... Yes, they shot him.”

A stunned Tanada asked: “Is he dead?” “Yes, he’s dead,” Kashiwahara replied as he recounted how the soldiers dragged his body to the van. Then, the Aquinos, Tanada, Arroyo, and others broke into tears.

Kashiwahara was too overwhelmed by emotions to narrate details of Aquino’s murder. But because he was a journalist too, he took pains to explain what exactly transpired when China Air Lines Flight 811 touched down at the airport and soldiers of the Aviation Security Command (AVSECOM), under Brig. Gen. Luther Custodio, took Aquino from his seat. Kashiwahara was our first source of information.

We did not know at that time that an unidentified guy, whom the military later alleged as Aquino’s gunman with communist links, was also killed on the airport tarmac.

Kashiwahara traveled to Manila to accompany Ninoy Aquino. His wife, Lupita, earlier arrived in Manila to prepare the homecoming. Jim Laurie, Kashiwahara’s colleague at ABC, also traveled with Ninoy Aquino’s party to do the coverage with his crew.

Other journalists in the China Air Lines flight included Sandra Burton of Time magazine, Max Vanzi of United Press International, and the controversial Kiyoshi Wakamiya, a freelance Japanese journalist, who earlier said he saw a soldier shot Aquino but later recanted it.

We went back to our office in the Ermita district to file the news report about Aquino’s murder. I called up various sources – opposition leaders, defense and military officials, Malacanang, and fellow working journalists (it was customary for us to share information) – for updates.

By 5:30 pm, we went back to the airport for the press conference of Maj. Gen. Prospero Olivas, PC-INP Metrocom chief, who told newsmen that the unidentified gunman (later known as Rolando Galman) shot Aquino with a 357 handgun.

At that point, Marcos had firmed up the theory that Aquino was killed by an alleged communist hit man.

By nightfall, more details trickled in. Aquino was brought by his military escorts to the Army Hospital in Fort Bonifacio.

When told, Doy Laurel, Dona Aurora, and Aquino’s siblings went to the army hospital, but were stopped at the entrance of Fort Bonifacio, forcing them to walk for an hour under the boiling sun because the soldiers did not allow them to use their vehicles in going to the hospital, and, of course, the confirmation that Aquino was dead.

By late evening, I had an idea that Aquino was a victim of a military rubout, a conspiracy of the lowest kind.

I consulted my media colleagues by telephone and the emerging consensus was that a military plot to kill him was implemented the moment he arrived in Manila.

By midnight, I felt the extreme exhaustion of our coverage. It was a long day indeed. Suddenly, I felt tears started rolling down my cheeks.

I am a journalist trained to take distance from my coverage. But I am also a Filipino, who felt indignant at the way they killed Aquino.

It was most repugnant for me to see a patriot being murdered in broad daylight.

My Japanese boss saw how I felt. He did not say a word, although I felt he sympathized with me.

He allowed me some minutes to compose myself out of respect for my feeling. Then, he gently told me we should go home for tomorrow’s coverage.

By 8 am the next day, I was in the office for another day of hard work.

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.