SWIFT ACTION TO EFFECT REFORMS
[PHOTO - PRESIDENT NOYNOY AQUINO LEADS
26th EDSA RITES]
MANILA, FEBRUARY 26, 2012 (INQUIRER) By INQUIRER.net, Norman
Bordadora - Twenty-six years after millions flocked to Edsa to overthrow a
dictator, President Aquino on Saturday rallied Filipinos against a judiciary he
said was influenced by a few, and pushed for a system that favors no one and
calls to account who did the country wrong.
In a reference to the case of impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona, Mr.
Aquino urged immediate action, saying martial law happened and stayed for years
because Filipinos chose to remain silent until they could no longer bear with
the sufferings it caused.
"Our country is now at a crossroads. In one direction is the weedy path,
where the influential holds the scales of justice and those who manipulate the
law benefit," President Aquino said in a speech at the People Power Monument on
Edsa on the occasion of the 26th anniversary of the largely peaceful popular
uprising that ended Ferdinand Marcos' 20-year-rule.
"In the other is the straight path where the rules are clear, justice favors
no one and those who are at fault are called to account. Let us remember:
martial law happened because Filipinos kept silent for too long," he added,
speaking in Filipino.
As in previous speeches against Corona, the President urged Filipinos to take
action and speak out as the chief justice undergoes trial by the Senate.
"If you want to remain in the old system, go ahead and pretend to be
deaf. Pretend to be blind. Don't speak. Don't participate," he said. "But if you
believe that there's something wrong in the system and that this has to be
corrected, let's go and fight back. Let's participate. Let's make it right."
Mr. Aquino made the remarks as the impeachment trial enters its seventh week
and in the presence of three senator-judges on stage with him—Senate President
Juan Ponce Enrile, Majority Floor Leader Vicente Sotto III and Senator Gregorio
Honasan.
Enrile and Honasan, along with then Armed Forces Vice Chief of Staff Fidel V.
Ramos, holed themselves up at Camp Aguinaldo and Camp Crame, respectively, after
a plot to unseat Marcos was uncovered.
Summoned by then Manila Archbishop Cardinal Jaime Sin and Agapito "Butz"
Aquino, younger brother of the assassinated former Senator Benigno S. Aquino
Jr., opposition forces rallied behind the beleaguered mutineers, triggering an
outpouring of millions of Filipinos on the wide avenue between the two camps in
what became known as the People Power Revolution.
"As they said in those days: If you won't act, who will? If not now, when?
Let us act now before it is too late. Let us act now to quickly put behind us
the darkness of the past. Let us act now so that a brighter future would shine
on our race," Mr. Aquino said. "Yes, there are imperfections in our democracy.
But we now have an opportunity to correct the wrongs committed in the past and
fill the shortcomings in our history."
[PHOTO - SHOWER OF YELLOW CONFETTI AT EDSA 26th RITES]
In another speech Saturday morning, this time following the wreath-laying
rites at monuments in Manila to his parents – the late former President Corazon
Aquino and her assassinated husband Ninoy Aquino – and the late Cardinal Sin,
the Chief Executive pressed on against Corona.
"Now, after 26 years, it is clear that our fight is not yet finished," the
President Aquino.
"As we link our arms in the straight path, I trust that we can reach a
society that is free from a judiciary with two faces – one with a partial
justice system and another with balanced scales," he added.
In both speeches, President Aquino said Filipinos have an opportunity to
effect change. He asked them not to waste it.
"It is our obligation to take care of each golden seed of democracy that was
sown by the millions of Filipinos who marched on Edsa. These won't bloom if
these are taken for granted," the President at Edsa.
"Unity, concern and love for country. Let us use these for the legacy of Edsa
to be fruitful. Let us not waste this opportunity…. This is our time. This is
our time. Let's go, Filipino," he added.
Remembering Cory on the 26th anniversary of EDSA
PEOPLE By Joanne Rae M. Ramirez (The Philippine Star) Updated February 23, 2012
12:00 AMComments (0)
MEMORIES: My last photo with former President Cory Aquino, February
2009, Makati. Photo by JOVEN CAGANDE | Zoom
On the 26th anniversary of the EDSA people power revolution, the son of EDSA
heroine former President Cory Aquino is President, taking the country by the
hand through another highway, "the straight and narrow path."
President Benigno Aquino III has in his hands the power to make the Filipino
people, half of whom were not yet born during EDSA '86, reap the dividends of
the bloodless revolt that restored democracy and many civil liberities to the
land.
Another EDSA hero, then Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile, is now Senate
President. Enrile has the power, as presiding officer of the impeachment court
trying Chief Justice Renato Corona, to see to it that justice is served in the
historic trial. Before EDSA, nobody dared dream of hauling a top government
official to court for his alleged transgressions. If anything, EDSA emboldened
the citizenry to make their public officials accountable to the people, from
whom they derived their power and their paychecks.
This impeachment trial of 2012, whichever way it goes, is already a legacy of
EDSA: for it taught, and is teaching, the citizenry that public service is a
public trust, not a ticket to the big time and to the big bucks.
[PHOTO - ENRILE (middle) WAS FOR MER PRESIDENT CORY AQUINO'S SECRETARY
OF DEFENSE]
Aquino and Enrile — the former, a descendant of one of the leading EDSA
heroes, and the latter, an EDSA hero still sharp at 88 — are perpetuating EDSA
26 years after it unfolded.
Whatever the outcome of the Corona impeachment trial, the fact that we are
undergoing this process — the purging, the cleansing, the reckoning, the
invocation of one's right to defend oneself — shows that EDSA was not in vain.
We will all have our day in court, and among EDSA's legacies is that whether
you are Malacañang's friend or foe — you will have your day in court.
***
I am reprinting below a column that first came out on Feb. 26, 2009. Cory
Aquino was fighting cancer at the time but was still up and about and Noynoy
Aquino was senator. During my interview with her in her office at the J.
Cojuangco Building in Makati, Cory did confide in me who among the aspirants for
the 2010 presidential polls she was likely to support, but she asked me not to
write about it first.
She had also written exclusively for the STAR her own account of what
transpired during EDSA, because she was concerned that people were giving
erroneous versions of what she was doing during those historic three days. She
typed her story on her computer, printed it on yellow paper, signed the
manuscript and handed it to me. I sent it to the STAR editorial desk, and the
STAR carried the exclusive on its front page the following day.
At the time, I think Cory also wanted to set the record straight about EDSA
and was not certain if she would still be around the next year (2010) to
celebrate it.
Cory died six months later but she lives on, especially as we mark the people
power revolution that she inspired with her quest for democracy and helped
ignite with her courage.
***
Cory Aquino is wearing a fuchsia pink suit as she meets me in her office on
the 23rd anniversary of the first EDSA people power revolution. She has just
undergone six hours of chemotherapy, and is wearing a portable chemo drip bag
over one shoulder.
But the Cory Aquino who meets with me is in high spirits, energetic and at
times, nostalgic. Despite her chemo treatments, she walks briskly around the 7th
floor of the family-owned Cojuangco building in Makati, where she holds office.
The persistent cough that she had a year ago is gone. She has lost weight,
and her hair is thinner. But otherwise, life seems very normal, I tell the
former president.
"At a certain point, I think, Lord, I don't want to complain, but there are
times…" her voice trails off. Then she continues, "I have my good days of
course, but I also do have my bad days. This last time I had an episode of
nosebleed, and the last time I had a nosebleed was when I was a teenager!"
What keeps her going through the bad days is not just her legendary courage —
it's her total surrender of her illness to God.
"Jesus Christ never committed any sin and had to suffer all the way until he
died," she rationalizes.
We are interrupted by the melody of Bayan Ko, the anthem of the EDSA 1
revolution. It is the ring tone of her phone. She gets a message from her doctor
Dr. Romy Diaz and she nods.
"In the beginning, when my doctors first told me the news, they all looked so
glum. I was prepared to go. I've lived a full life. I have been President. And
then that night, one of the radiologists called another doctor for a second
opinion and they told me about this oncologist Dr. Romy Diaz. He looked at all
the CT scans and said, 'I can take care of you'."
It's been a year since the discovery of her cancer and there has definitely
been progress in the shrinking of the tumor in Cory's colon.
But the woman who has had to endure seven years of her husband's
incarceration, his assassination and subsequent attempts on her own life (in the
1989 coup attempt, rebel soldiers had gotten close enough to her house on
Arlegui street) does not hide her pain.
"It's there. I leave it up to God. It's up to Him. But I'm not dying to live
long. I never even expected to live this long. I am 76 years old and I was
widowed at 50."
She thinks of God's purpose for her with the gift of every new day. "I
wonder, what else is there for me to do, especially with helping the poor
through microfinance. Ano pa ba ang kulang? What else should I do?"
Politics is the least of her concerns, and she has told her only son Sen.
Noynoy Aquino that his choice for President in 2010 is up to him.
Privately, she tells me which of the aspirants she thinks can be a good
president, but she has not committed to support that person yet.
[PHOTO - THE EDSA 'PEOPLE POWER' MONUMENT]
Since we are having our talk on the 23rd anniversary of EDSA, we talk about
those perilous, exciting and heady days and the serious challenges that followed
her assumption of the presidency.
She recalls she had no security except for those provided by relatives. So,
she thought of someone whose professionalism was tested in crisis, then Col.
Voltaire Gazmin, who was in charge of the camp in Laur, Nueva Ecija where Ninoy
and Pepe Diokno were kept in solitary confinement. As a backgrounder, Cory did
not even know where Ninoy was during those days — some said he was on an island
somewhere. Some unscrupulous soldiers would tell her they saw him in this or
that place and out of gratitude for the information, Cory would even give a
generous tip to the soldiers.
One day, a soldier gave Ninoy's sister Tessie Oreta another tip: Ninoy was
with Voltz Gazmin.
"So Ninoy is in Laur!" Cory concluded, because she somehow knew that Gazmin
was in charge of Laur. Finally, this was one tip that was genuine. Cory and her
children motored to Nueva Ecija to see Ninoy for what Cory describes today as
the "most traumatic experience of my life."
Behind barbed wires, she saw her emaciated husband, who was sobbing when he
finally saw his family. Cory was amazingly composed — her sister Terry had given
her Valium before her trip to Laur.
Back to Gazmin. Apparently he had told prisoner Ninoy that he couldn't set
him free, but he would do his best to make his stay in the military prison as
humane as possible. Ninoy took up Gazmin's offer and asked him for a can of
powdered Nido, because he did not want to eat the food being served by the
soldiers, for fear that it was poisoned. And so Ninoy survived, thanks to Gazmin
and to Nido.
After EDSA, someone handed an envelope to Cory with the card of Gazmin inside
— just in case she needed his help. So she called him and entrusted her life to
him just like Ninoy did a decade before.
Her first orders to him, she recalls, was to purge the ranks of the
Presidential Security Group of the officers of the RAM (Reform the Armed Forces
Movement).
It was just gut feel, according to Cory, and Gazmin was surprised. Later on
during the seven coup attempts against her, Gazmin would tell Cory that her
instincts were right.
One of the best decisions she made, recalls Cory, was to tell then Armed
Forces Chief Fidel Ramos in a heart-to-heart talk that she trusted him even if
there were moves to discredit him. Ramos would reciprocate by defending the
Constitution every time it was threatened during Cory's presidency. In 1992, she
endorsed him for President.
I asked Cory how she resisted temptations to be corrupt while she was in
power?
"I guess it is inborn. Besides, I never wanted the presidency and I never
desired to prolong my stay at Malacañang. I am a simple and conservative woman.
When I was President, I repeated my clothes even in public functions. When I
went on a state visit to the US, I wore simple suits because I was representing
a Third World country. Maybe I like a good pair of shoes, but I will survive
without them."
Finally, she looks me in the eye and says, "Look, Ninoy died for our country,
how could I steal from it?"
STAR photographer Joven Cagande arrives to take Cory's photos. And, in what I
think is the clearest manifestation that she is well, Cory tells me, "Can I put
lipstick on first?"
Chief News Editor: Sol
Jose Vanzi
© Copyright, 2012 by PHILIPPINE HEADLINE
NEWS ONLINE
All rights reserved
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