Today we are on a non-working holiday, we devote one of the 365
days in a year to commemorate the 34th death year anniversary of Senator
Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr.. Many historians would like us to believe that this
is the final straw that ignited the Philippine nation in toppling the
dictatorship rule of former President Ferdinand Marcos.
An article was published today by the Manila Times written
by former Ambassador Rigobero Tiglao , titled "Ninoy: Hero or political opportunist and US pawn?" which tells us –very interesting point of
view as to the former Senator what he was doing in the United States of America during
his exile and just what happened before he was assasinated when he landed in the Manila
International Airport.
I have fully quoted the article below:
AFTER three decades, we can look at Benigno (“Ninoy”)
Aquino, Jr., the Yellow Cult’s central figure it worships as a hero and martyr,
with unjaundiced eyes.
Peruse the following facts and decide for yourself if he
indeed is a hero for whom we devote a holiday, as we do for only two other
historical figures, Jose Rizal and Andres Bonifacio.
Or whether he was the quintessence of a wily opportunistic
Filipino politician, made a pawn by the US, who made the bet of his life, but
lost.
In May 1980, Aquino had a life-threatening heart attack. He
refused to be put under the knife at the Philippine Heart Center, built by the
Marcos regime in 1975.
Even as the hospital had developed into Asia’s best
specialized center for cardiac surgery, Aquino claimed that since it was a
government hospital, Marcos would easily be able to kill him, under the guise
of a botched operation. While that was a slap not on Marcos but on the Filipino
surgeons at the Center, it was a clever move on the part of Aquino for him to
escape the country. You couldn’t blame him: he had spent seven years in prison,
convicted by a military tribunal of several crimes, including subversion, and
sentenced to be executed by musketry.
The Marcos regime of course feared that if Aquino died of a
heart attack in prison, it would be blamed. Dented would be the semblance of
stability it had built after the 1978 interim Batasan Pambansa elections, in
which the opposition leader ran and lost.
Marcos though extracted from Aquino, in a message relayed
personally by his wife, Imelda, two conditions: 1) that he return to the
country when he was fully recovered; and 2) that he refrain from speaking against
Marcos during his stay in the US. Aquino himself said he told Imelda he
accepted these terms.
Pact with the devil
I can just imagine Aquino in his government hospital bed smiling wryly after Imelda left. A month after his operation in the US, Aquino told a Dallas reporter: “A pact with the devil is no pact at all.”
I can just imagine Aquino in his government hospital bed smiling wryly after Imelda left. A month after his operation in the US, Aquino told a Dallas reporter: “A pact with the devil is no pact at all.”
Aquino managed to stay in the US after being given the
status of “Visiting Fellow” at the Center for International Affairs at Harvard
University in Cambridge, and then in the nearby Massachusetts Institute of
Technology (MIT). A Harvard official explained that such Fellows “pursued their
own research and are expected to present their research findings to the other
fellows and interested faculty”. Aquino never did these things during his stay
at Harvard and MIT.
Aquino was certainly not an academic and in those times
hardly had the kind of stature for Harvard to bend its strict academic rules
just to be a refuge for an opposition figure from some Third World country.
I learned though that it was President Carter himself who
asked then Harvard President Derek Bok to get some excuse for Aquino to stay in
the US as a fellow of the university. Carter actually had been trying to get
Aquino to be exiled to the US much earlier, in 1978, so that the Harvard Law
School invited him as a visiting scholar.
The US’ eagerness to get Aquino exiled to the US could be
partly explained by Carter’s very well-known human rights advocacy. But the
more likely reason is that as has been its practice, the US routinely befriends
opposition figures that have the potential of succeeding an incumbent one.
In the Philippine case, though, there was another more
compelling reason: The US military bases in Clark and Subic, the terms for
which were scheduled for review in 1983. Marcos had been demanding more
concessions from the US for the use of the bases, asking for higher payments
that he wanted to call “rent.”
Message to Marcos
Having Aquino in the US sent the message to Marcos that if he insisted on such high demands, it might just as well help overthrow his regime, in the guise of championing democratic rule, and install the opposition leader whom they were indoctrinating at Harvard. Harvard had been known at the time to be a locus of the Central Intelligence Agency’s activities, with several of its professors fired in the 1980s after being exposed to have accepted CIA money for their projects.
Having Aquino in the US sent the message to Marcos that if he insisted on such high demands, it might just as well help overthrow his regime, in the guise of championing democratic rule, and install the opposition leader whom they were indoctrinating at Harvard. Harvard had been known at the time to be a locus of the Central Intelligence Agency’s activities, with several of its professors fired in the 1980s after being exposed to have accepted CIA money for their projects.
Aquino, in short, became a US pawn in its geopolitical
strategies and, smart as he was, he knew this.
Aquino apparently was in continuous contact with US
officials, most probably even intelligence officials while he was at Cambridge.
Proof of this is a “Top Secret” National Intelligence Daily dated June 27, 1983
issued by the CIA head, which reported; “Moderate opposition leader Benigno Aquino
told senior US officials on Thursday he plans to leave the US and return to
Manila in August.” At the time, nobody else knew of Aquino’s plans to return
home.
Rather than becoming a scholar, Aquino used his fellowship
at Harvard and then at the MIT as a cozy refuge. While his fans claimed that he
was writing two books at Harvard, no drafts for these were ever found, not even
an outline. Reflecting his non-academic vein, Aquino left no written work at
all, except a purported speech he was to deliver on his return to Manila. (I
doubt if it is genuine: It surfaced only in 2014 on Ninoy Aquino day, released
by MalacaƱang under his son Noynoy, without any explanation how it was
discovered — after three decades.)
A renowned political scientist, the late Howard Wiarda, who
shared an office with Aquino at Harvard, wrote in his book Adventures in
Research (Volume III: Global Traveler): “(Aquino) wanted to talk constantly,
while I was at Harvard to write a book, and in our year together I never saw
him read or write anything.” Indeed in the three years he was in Harvard and
MIT, he wrote nothing, not even an essay, a journal or an article for US
newspapers denouncing Marcos. It is astonishing that Aquino, who was supposedly
a scholar at Harvard and MIT for three years didn’t write anything, not even a
journal, an essay, or an article in a newspaper denouncing Marcos.
No matter, Aquino galvanized the opposition against Marcos
there, the Yellow Cult has been claiming.
I haven’t seen any evidence nor testimony to support that
claim. It was the Movement for a Free Philippines headed by another former
senator in exile, Raul Manglapus, that was more active and went around the US
rousing the Filipino community there to denounce the dictatorship. Aquino
rarely left Cambridge.
No anti-Marcos diatribe
A fawning article on him a month after his assassination published in the newsletter The Harvard Crimson quoted well-known academic Lucian Pye: “He understood the meaning of a university: “He did not use [his academic position]to denounce the [Marcos] government.” Another famous academic at Harvard said, “He was not one to offer a sharp, anti-Marcos diatribe.”
A fawning article on him a month after his assassination published in the newsletter The Harvard Crimson quoted well-known academic Lucian Pye: “He understood the meaning of a university: “He did not use [his academic position]to denounce the [Marcos] government.” Another famous academic at Harvard said, “He was not one to offer a sharp, anti-Marcos diatribe.”
Aquino appears to have been militant only during the year
after his heart surgery. The video of Aquino’s philippic against Marcos – which
was widely distributed after his killing as proof that it was the dictator who
wanted him silenced –was in February 15, 1981 before a Filipino community. In
his June 1981 interview with evangelist Pat Roberson, Aquino talked more about
his getting closer to God as a result of his incarceration, and said
practically no bad word about Marcos.
Another video was sometime in 1981 in Dallas, where rather
than ranting against Marcos, he explained his ideas for getting Saudi Arabia to
build a gas pipeline in Mindanao. “If I will be able to sell this (idea) to Mr.
Marcos, the Philippines will be able to find an end to our insurgency in the
South.”
I haven’t found any video or report of Aquino making fiery
speeches against Marcos after 1981. Had the anti-Marcos fire in his belly gone
cold as he and his family enjoyed their stay that lasted three years in a fine
house in Newton, Massachusetts, an upper-class district near Boston?
In fact, the report by the CIA mentioned above implied
Aquino’s slide to irrelevancy: “Aquino’s political position has been hurt by
his long exile. He probably believes (now) he has to return home if he is to
play a role in the post-Marcos era.”
Major factors
Other than that reason, there were two major factors that prodded Aquino to leave his tranquil life in Newton in 1983.
Other than that reason, there were two major factors that prodded Aquino to leave his tranquil life in Newton in 1983.
First, the Philippines’ economic crisis unfolded that any
observer would see as a very serious threat to Marcos’ survival, and Aquino
knew this. The Latin American debt crisis broke when Mexico defaulted on its
foreign loans in August 1982, and would hit the country to trigger its worst
economic crisis ever. It would have been impossible for Aquino, with his wide
network, not have been informed about this.
Second, Aquino thought, and was convinced of the certainty
that Marcos was dying. He had to rush home to wrench the leadership from others
who were active in trying to topple Marcos, especially Salvador Laurel.
This is disclosed in an audio tape of his conversation with
Steve Psinakis a few days before his return to the country. I narrated this
conversation in my column December 4, 2016 (“Ninoy Aquino: Hero or
miscalculating ‘throne’ gamer?”)
In that conversation, Aquino said: “Marcos is a man now:
Terminal…now that he (Marcos) is about to meet his Maker, I am almost confident
that I can talk to him and sell him something.”
Aquino told Psinakis his information came from Cardinal
Jaime Sin. I suspect it came from his American intelligence friends, which is
why he was so confident of his information.
Risked life
But still he risked his life, as he was told by Imelda herself that there were serious threats to his life, the Yellow Cult would claim. Yes, but that’s been Aquino’s well-known trait: He takes huge risks.
But still he risked his life, as he was told by Imelda herself that there were serious threats to his life, the Yellow Cult would claim. Yes, but that’s been Aquino’s well-known trait: He takes huge risks.
He managed to fill the China Airline plane he flew on with
correspondents, practically from every continent (with not a single Filipino)
thinking they could be his human shields, and the intelligent Marcos wouldn’t
risk his foremost critic to be killed in front of the world. In a TV interview
in his hotel before the flight, he showed his bullet-proof vest that sent the
message to whoever was planning to kill him that he had such protection.
Except for his brother-in-law, ABC newsman Ken Kashiwahara,
the foreign correspondents were as meek as sheep, and didn’t question the
unarmed military men who fetched Aquino to escort him to the tarmac, nor tried
to be with him as he was brought down. His killer after all was alerted that he
was wearing a bullet-proof vest, so he was shot in the head.
Aquino terribly miscalculated, reminding me of that now
famous quote from the hit TV series: “When you play the game of thrones, you
win or you die.”
Did his death trigger Marcos’ fall? It helped, no doubt.
But after his funeral parade in August 1983 that was attended by a million
people, the protest crowds dwindled. Marcos became so confident he fell for the
US ruse to call for snap presidential elections. Then and now, perceptions that
the people were robbed of their sacred votes makes them so angry, enough to be
the basis for a coup attempt. And when that failed, human shields were deployed
to protect the bungling plotters, which metamorphosed into what was mythicized
as “People Power”.
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