I LIKE it that the timidity is on the wane. I am referring to Liberal Party (LP) leaders, who got shell-shocked by the searing social media assault of so-called diehard Duterte supporters (DDS) since the 2016 presidential elections until the first few years of the Duterte administration. Yesterday, former president Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III said he will lead the opposition campaign next year.
Noynoy made the announcement during the commemoration of the 35th death anniversary of his father, Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr., who was assassinated by minions of the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos on Aug. 21, 1983. The occasion prompted the reminiscing of the Marcos years and the heady years of the anti-dictatorship struggle leading to the Edsa people power uprising three years later.
The announcement is interesting considering the significance of yesterday’s commemoration.
Marcos was able to rule the country for long by declaring military rule in 1972 to skirt the provision of the 1936 Constitution that barred him from running for a third four-year term as president. He closed Congress, made the Supreme Court malleable and faked the ratification of the 1973 Constitution. The rightist coup saw Marcos rule the country for 14 years more until the Edsa uprising ousted him.
To strengthen his rule, Marcos went after the political opposition immediately after he declared martial law, jailing its leaders including Ninoy. International and local pressure forced Marcos to allow Aquino to have a problematic heart treated in the United States. It was good riddance in a way considering that Ninoy remained a symbol of the political opposition even in jail.
But instead of staying in the US, Ninoy chose to return to the country in 1983, disdaining to wage abroad the struggle against the dictatorship. He was shot in the tarmac of the airport that now bears his name. What Ninoy may not have been able to do while alive, he did so after he was assassinated. His death galvanized the political opposition, whose unity and struggle eventually did Marcos in.
The commemoration of Ninoy’s death thus serves as a reminder of how far the pendulum has swung back to the right after it moved left of center. To illustrate: the Marcos version of impunity is rearing its head in the Duterte version with its incarnation of “salvaging” as “EJK” or extra-judicial killings. And the Marcoses are back with Ferdinand Marcos Jr. almost winning the vice-presidency and Imee Marcos acquiring the gall to tell Filipinos to move on.
The current rightist shift actually got pushed further with that Duterte win in the 2016 presidential election and the demonizing in social media of his predecessor, Noynoy, and everything that he represented, even the yellow color of the Edsa uprising (in the word of the DDS, “dilawan”). That act was partly engineered by the Marcoses, who were at the forefront in promoting a revisionist presentation of the Marcos years.
It helped that the “yellow” leaders became timid amid the DDS assault and for a while lost their voice. With the Duterte administration being gradually exposed for its ineptitude, it is time for the opposition to the Duterte administration to reacquire its mojo as the 2019 midterm polls near.