KNOWING NINOY AQUINO

By Mauro Gia |Samonte

(Author's Final Note: Twenty-nine years to this day, the questions remain: Why was Ninoy killed? Who killed Ninoy? What did Ninoy's death accomplish?)

Part 4

Legacy on Video

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To the  fortune of us all, there has been a wealth of speeches and revealing utterances by Ninoy preserved on video. With Ninoy gone and with the volumes of literature and journalistic records about him rendered not absolutely reliable due to the nature and circumstances of their publications, there can be no better proof of what he really was than the words he spoke, how he spoke those words and in what context he spoke them. Perhaps the producers of these video presentations had never intended it but their works now constitute a most precious legacy by which the discerning may attain a true unadulterated  understanding of Ninoy – forever.

A case in point, a video clip taken of him aboard the China Airlines jet prior to its landing  at the Manila International Airport that fateful noon of August 21, 1983. Ninoy explains to those in front of him (presumably journalists, not in camera) the features of the bullet-proof vest he would be wearing when he disembarks from the plane, after which he enjoins his listeners: “You have to be very ready with your hand camera, because this could become very fast. It could be all over in a matter of three, four minutes, you know… (laughs) And I may not be able to talk to you again after this.”

From the video clip, three astounding elements stare us in the face. Firstly, that Ninoy knew he was going to be shot, hence the protective bullet-proof vest. Secondly, that he knew he was going to be shot not on a spot elsewhere in the airport but right as soon as he steps down from the China Airlines plane, hence his injunction: “It could be all over in a matter of three, four minutes...” Thirdly, that he knew he would be picked up by whoever not on any other plane but the China Airlines jet.

On the first element, while he took the precaution to protect his body from gunshot with the vest, he admitted that he was defenseless if he would be shot on the head. In any case, he was sure death was coming, not elsewhere, not later, but here and now, and yet he went on with the journey back home and walked right into his death.

In another video clip, a text precedes the presentation proper: “What do you call a man who knowingly walks into his death? Where I come from, we call that a… MORON!!!”

Greatest Political Magic

No, that’s foul. Ninoy was an intelligent man, oh, too intelligent to be fathomed by ordinary mortals. That despite knowing he would be walking into his death yet went walking right into it only demonstrates the exceedingly high level of intelligence Ninoy possessed. It was a superhuman kind of  intelligence, one that gave him a full grasp of the wondrous workings of dialectics which enabled him to be strong at his weakest, to turn failure into success, and execute  that divine magic of springing back to life from death. Because magic, none of us non-supermen ever noticed it, but it was there that midday of August 21, 1983, the greatest political sleight of hand transpiring right under our very eyes.

From Boston, Ninoy flies to Los Angeles, then to Singapore, then to Johore, then to Hongkong, and finally  to Taipei for the final flight to Manila. The idea is to lose anybody monitoring his moves and thereby assure his successful return to Manila. In the Tina Monzon Palma AVP, Ken Kashiwara, Lupita Aquino’s husband who accompanied Ninoy in the trip, quotes Ninoy’s words to the effect that just for him to be able to land in Manila would be victory enough. That sufficiently explains the vest – to protect him from getting killed before reaching Manila. As soon as the China Airlines jet stops on the tarmac, uniformed Avsecom soldiers together with security personnel clad in barong tagalog board the plane, search down the aisle until they pinpoint Ninoy whom they accost and lead out of the plane, not through the customary tube that leads to the arrival lounge but down the stairs, with the exit door being closed and secured by the men in barong tagalog to prevent anybody else from following. And then, presto! A shot rings out, followed immediately by successive bursts of gunfire. The next thing  people realize is that Ninoy is sprawled on the tarmac, visibly dead, close by the dead body of the “man in blue,” who days later will be identified as Rolando Galman, the supposed assassin of Ninoy.

Going back to the Ninoy interview, we shudder at realizing that everything perfectly fell into place as Ninoy had cautioned: the soldiers’ precise zeroing in on the plane (“…this could be very fast…”); the swiftness (“It could be all over in three, four minutes…); the shot in the head

(which Ninoy admitted having no defense from at all.)

            It was like a brilliantly-scripted movie finale, where each and everyone of the partakers did their parts precisely according to the instructions of the director. There was no way Ninoy,  the soldiers and the barong-clad security personnel could have reacted to one another if they were not acting from the instructions of a single, common director.

            Several planes were landing that day. Why didn’t the soldiers board any other planes? Ninoy could have been aboard any of these. Bear in mind that Ninoy was travelling under an assumed name: Marcial Bonifacio. This meant the soldiers could not determine which plane Ninoy would be taking based on passengers’ manifest. The normal move would be for the soldiers to search every plane that came in and check the identity of every passenger aboard

But we must admit that surely good intelligence work could easily identify early on in Taipeh  which plane  he would be on then convey the information in advance to operatives at the Manila International Airport.  The prudent thing to do, once the plane was pinpointed, would be for the soldiers to take him, as they did, rush him to the waiting Avsecom van, whisk him away, and if they must finish Ninoy, finish him in some isolated nook, away from the eyes of witness. But no, they shot him in midday, under the prying eyes of  a throng of witnesses and the glare of cameras, and in the presence of thousands of Ninoy’s supporters who could easily turn the event into a violent rampage.  And  the most disturbing thing about it really was that Ninoy knew it would be “very fast” and would be “all over in three, four minutes”, which discounted every possibility of him getting shot elsewhere. Ninoy knew to the littlest detail that things would turn out the way they did.

And Ninoy could not have gained such exquisite prescience  unless, first, he was God, which he was not, or second, he was, indeed as in a movie shoot, the director of the show.

To Sacrifice a King

 The video presentation, “Beyond Conspiracy: 25 Years After” by the Worldwide Foundation for People Power, gives us an astonishing hint on the issue. Hosting the AVP,  Tina Monzon Palma likens the Marcos-Ninoy conflict to a chess match. After an engrossing series of valuable documentation and testimonials by respectable personalities in Philippine business and politics, which depicts what are described as the brilliant moves the two traded in the political chess game, Tina makes the staggering conclusion: “In the end, Ninoy won his political chess game with Marcos by doing the unthinkable – in a manner of speaking, he  sacrificed the King.”      

Now, in chess, sacrifice is a maneuver in which a higher-value piece, say, a knight or a bishop, is exchanged for a lesser-value one, i.e. a pawn, for the purpose of gaining a positional advantage leading to victory. Along this concept, the highest sacrifice that could be made is that of the Queen, the point of triumph being the survival of the King.

But that’s in chess, where you play with inanimate objects – and the king never gets sick or operated on for heart ailment and so remains capable of ruling, cannot be sacrificed  until captured.

 In political struggles where the stakes are high and alive – economic fortunes, like the biggest sugar land in Asia; political power, the awesome Philippine presidency;  and the social respectability that goes with the two, like the heroism of Ninoy and the sainthood of Cory – and more so when the attainment of  high and living stakes must be made in a frenzied race against time, battles are won through unorthodox – truly indeed, unthinkable – methods.

In one of his speeches in the United States, Ninoy had declared: “The Filipino is worth dying for.”

The romanticism endemic in the phraseology and the imagery that as though in a sudden burst of brilliance was crystallized in Ninoy’s  photo as he laid lifeless on the MIA tarmac instantly turned the quote into the battle cry in surges upon surges of indignant masses in protest rallies and demonstrations, in prayer meetings, and in other sorts of mass protest actions, each one of which contributed to the final pressure upon Marcos to call for a presidential snap election. Marcos won the count but Cory cried “Cheat”, and continuously armed with the battle cry, Cory went on to mobilize millions in her civil disobedience campaign, culminating in EDSA 1. And as the cliché goes, the rest is history.

Cory became president.

Supreme Arrogance

As to Ninoy, he had the privilege of  executing an act of supreme arrogance. In that celebrated speech in Los Angeles February of 1981, Ninoy declared, voice quivering with grim confidence: “But while I have vowed never to enter the political arena again, I shall dedicate the last drop of my blood to the restoration of freedom and the dismantlement of your (Marcos) martial law.”

For whom did Ninoy sacrifice his King? For the Filipino worth dying for? Or for the Filipino coward? Either way, the words amount to nothing but salt to injury. The hard fact is, whether courageous or coward, Filipinos continued to wallow in misery. But Cory proceeded to bask in the power and the glory of the presidency. That’s the harder fact.

Ninoy sacrificed the King and by so doing caused the ascension of the Queen to the throne. Greeks call it “good death”, translation of the medical term euthanasia.

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