This day

The Good Life with Eli F.J. Tajanlangit

Ninoy Aquino was shot dead on this day, 29 years ago, on the tarmac of the international airport that, years later, would be named after him. He was presumed to have fallen and slumped on the soil of his native soil, as though the gods gave him the opportunity to kiss the earth of his country as his last human act.

The news reached Bacolod in trickles at sundown, the gathering darkness a poetic reflection of how the Philippines would sink into one long night of anguish and rage, and then see the golden yellow of dawn years after.

To appreciate this day, and what it meant to the country's history, it is wise to work back to the days or years before, to understand why the shots that rang out at the tarmac that killed Ninoy also unshackled a country. “His death,” his widow Cory would later tell the United States Congress, “was my country's resurrection in the courage and faith by which alone they could be free again.”

In 1983, the Marcos dictatorship had so entrenched itself in power, many of us did not know any other political system that did not have them. It was billed, in fact, as a “benevolent” dictatorship, a smiling iron-fisted rule, where the citizens enjoyed peace and prosperity even when many of their freedoms had been taken away from them.

The Marcos administration so controlled the country, it even determined what kind of an opposition there would be – just a handful of critics in the entire Parliament, for example, got elected and one or two publications with limited circulations were allowed to publish.

The judiciary was functioning but the definition of legal principles blurred and bended according to the dictators' needs. “Subversion” and “Insurgency” were two favorite words whose meanings oftentimes covered even the personal enemies of those in power, especially the Marcoses. The lines, in fact, between Marcos as politician and Marcos as president were so blurred even criticizing him could mean subversion, or trying to overthrow the government.

The corruption of our democratic institutions was done with so much sophistication, even the opposition, to which Ninoy belonged, was effectively marginalized. In fact, as Imelda so emphatically declared in many of her interviews, Ninoy was suspected as an Amboy, an American lackey, on the one hand, and a Communist on the other – and no one seemed to question the logic in these two conflicting suspicions.

When the opposition cried there was no press freedom, Marcos paraded the opposition publications he allowed to circulate in a limited scale – but kept secretly harassing journalists who dared question him in the bigger newspapers. Nobody, for example, knew whatever happened to Primitivo Mijares, the mediaman who had turned against Marcos during this time.

When his critics said the political opposition had been demolished, Marcos would point out his few critics he had allowed to get elected. Of course, these were critics whose political weight did not extend outside of their provinces.

It was in a political and economic situation like this, of apathy and fear and almost total control by the dictatorship, that Ninoy came home to 29 years ago today.

I can recall how the news came in whispers, which eventually grew, and finally became legitimate news. And then, palpably, we saw and felt Filipinos stirring, then mobilizing, and then marching down our highways to demand the return of democracy.

This is what makes this day important: it is the day one Filipino died, and the entire country rose to reclaim its destiny.*

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