Mercado: Poker chip mummy

Saturday, October 15, 2011

PRESIDENT Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III nixed graveyard volleys, horse-drawn caisson, taps, etc. for an overdue funeral of the late Ferdinand Marcos. The dictator’s corpse has been embalmed for over 22 years now, ala Mao Ze Dong.

Then President Fidel Ramos agreed to return of Marcos’s cadaver from exile, subject to conditions. One was a direct flight from Hawaii to Ilocos Norte. Another was that the funeral would be within a week of arrival.

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The Marcoses welshed. They’ve pressed for official honors ever since. PNoy, who agreed to study the petition, decided: Not under my watch, he informed the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines.

Aquino was pabago-bago ng salita or indecisive, griped Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., who was among Cebu Gov. Gwen Garcia’s guests this week. The President wasted a very good opportunity to unify the nation.

In the PNoy decision, family reunions of the wife lost a traditional and often spirited discussion topic. May we explain.

Our family debates revolved around a Cebuano fighter pilot. His tomb and Marcos’s grave would have shared Libingan ng mga Bayani.

Salvador Manlunas and siblings resided along Mango Ave. of pre-World War II Cebu. (How that street morphed into today’s treeless Maxilom Ave. is another story.) Bading’s father was a harbor pilot.

There was no TV then. Internet was 55 years away. Between classes, the young Manlunas moonlighted as pianist on radio KZRC. Restless, he signed up with the fledgling Philippine Air Force.

President Manuel Quezon bestowed the McMiking Award on the new aviator. As flight instructor, Manlunas periodically flew Spirit of Cebu, a Stearman bi-wing. Donated by Cebuanos, the plane parked at Lahug airstrip, now Waterfront Hotel.

As World War II loomed, Lt. Manlunas was among the young pilots welded into a fighter squadron by a gungho Capt Jesus Villamor. Today’s airbase that abuts Ninoy Aquino International Airport, bears Villamor’s name.

Married a few days before the Pearl Harbor attack, Lt. Manlunas was killed in action. Family reunions would quietly recall Bading--until the Marcoses bid for a Libingan burial. Then, all hell broke loose.

Lt. Manlunas’s elder sister, Victoria Manlunas-Mansueto, gave a piece of her mind to then president Joseph Estrada, groggy from furious reaction to careless agreement to a Marcos state funeral. Excerpts:
“My younger brother, Lt. Salvador Manlunas and others fought, in obsolete P-26 planes, against modern Japanese Zeroes. He was one of the first casualties.

“Bading never had a Swiss bank account. Nor did he own vast lands. All he has today is a quiet tree-lined street in Villamor Airbase that bears his name. He has a simple Libingan grave, along with veterans from the Bataan Death March and other conflicts.
“Now, you’d bury next to Bading, as a hero, someone who the Guinness Book of Records credits for massive theft, human rights violations, let alone bogus war medals.”

This was not an isolated reaction. Former senator Rene Saguisag, for example, announced his family would exhume remains of his officer-father-in-law if Marcos were interred in Libingan.

Mama Toyang didn’t live to hear PNoy scrub Marcos’s state funeral. Just as well. Imee Marcos says they’ll take a chance with the next president.
"Will they refrigerate Marcos on the off chance Bongbong will be president then?" a reader asked. Wouldn’t that use a mummy as political poker chip?

Search me. We’ll probably have gone the way of all flesh by then.