On the Road to EDSA

by Manuel L. Quezon III

TODAY Newspaper EDSA Anniversary Supplement February 25, 1996

L'Audace

IN December, 1972, an execution-which, in retrospect, foreshadowed the elements that contributed to the rise of Ferdinand Marcos and his ignominious fall-took place. The person to be shot by firing squad was no hero of democracy; he was a Chinese "alleged drug dealer," Lim Seng. The execution was staged in the slick style of Marcos' propaganda machine. It took place in Fort Bonifacio, before the reviewing stand. It was broadcast on national television, an unprecedented event given unprecedented coverage.

The man had been sentenced to die by a military tribunal, demonstrating the preeminent role of military justice would play in the New Society, in contrast to the agonizingly fastidious civilian tribunals before martial law. That Lim Seng was to die, not in the hushed privacy of a national penitentiary, but out in the open, at the hands of soldiers, made it clear what martial law really meant. Not surprisingly, Marcos didn't like the idea, too much. The notion of a civilian shot by soldiers somehow bothered him. But Philippine Constabulary chief Fidel V. Ramos, flanked by generals who wore their trousers tucked into jackboots like Nazi officers, was insistent. He wanted the execution.

A volley of rifle fire rang out, and Lim Seng slumped towards the ground, tied as he remained to the post. But he was still alive. Traditionally after a prisoner is shot, an officer administers the coup de grace, discharging a revolver at point-blank range into the skull of the condemned man. According to one account, this did not occur. It was determined that another volley was necessary to finish the job, but the soldiers had not been provided with another round of bullets for reasons of security. Loaded with more than a single round, they might point their rifles at their commanders. Orders were given for another round of ammunition; but by the time the bullets had arrived, Lim Seng had expired. He had bled to death. Assumption schoolgirls rushed to his body to dip their kerchiefs in his blood to show off to their classmates the next day. Here was a grotesque combination of a display of mailed fist, military inexorability and disregard for details. A regime capable of displaying unbeatable cunning but a prey to a self-destructive contempt for its opponents. This odd melange of bluff, cruelty, casualness and tawdry showmanship would culminate in the final configuration of the Marcos reegime when it was toppled: a dictatorship propped up by a military composed of phenominally rich generals and common soldiers who did not have decent shoes; buttressed by frustrated technocrats who demanded social austerity while they charged their mistress's shopping to the Central Bank; and bled by cronies. A regime that believed its lies as soon as it made them up; smug about itself in the conviction that it had mastered all the tricks except the one about not being oneself taken in by them. The truth is that from 1972 to April 6, 1978-when the famous noise barrage took place in Manila on the eve of elections for the Batasan Pambansa-Marcos and his men had indeed mastered all the tricks and performed them flawlessly with the desired effect. He took in the Americans with his tomfoolery about a freely-elected dictatorship, and he took in the Filipinos who preferred not to think through the sham lest they be obliged to expose it-and themselves to risk. From a president insulted by a populace with acts of lese majesty unknown in this polite country, he had, with Danton's audacity but with more success turned the tables on them through "audace, et encoure de l'audace, et toujours de l'audace." Boldness, and again boldness and always boldness.

The Marcos regime was a bold show-gaudy, garish, prurient and fun-for a while for its beneficiaries. The supreme act of audacity was martial law: the mass arrest of his opponents, the shutting down of the proud, independently-owned media, and the castration of the traditional checks on executive abuse-Congress and the Supreme Court. He had done it in Asia's oldest republic, its showcase of democracy. He had done it in the teeth of the republican notables who had once scorned the shortness of his political pedigree.

As Lim Seng's body was hauled off the field, another execution of sorts was taking place. The Constitutional Convention, inaugurated in 1971, had been decimated of its integrity. Some of had fled into exile, others were rounded up and jailed. More trembled at the thought of the same fate. The rest were bribed with offers of safety and position, such as inclusion in the new National Assembly. Sign they did, killing all hope of a constitution that would usher in any change except for the worse.

In July 1973, in a referendum held without rules and without regulation, it was decreed that the people had ratified the Constitution. The business community applauded the fact, which the Supreme Court said it was powerless to dispute. The new order was in place. The American Chamber of Commerce hailed the dictatorship: "The AmCham wishes you every success in your endeavors to restore peace and order, business confidence economic growth and the well being of the Filipino people and nation. We assure you of our confidence and cooperation in acheiving these objectives. We are communicating these feelings to our associates and affiliates in the United States."

These sentiments were at least shared by Filipino businessmen. If anyone did not, they were not talking; least of all the students of the First Quarter Storm who settled down to slavery with equanimity and some hope of a place in the new scheme of things. He had pulled the rug from under the republic, and left everyone on their backs except himself. This is the story of how the opposition-scattered by weakness, divided by jealousy, wavering out of fear, and deprived of safe and certain means of dissent and action-nonetheless pulled itself together to pull the rug from under the dictator's feet and left him lying, under a waxen image, in Paoay.

Depoliticization

IN his book "Filipino Politics: Development and Decay", David Wurfel writes that "Throughout the late 1970s, martial law prompted essentially three types of opposition: the reformist, the religious, and the revolutionary." A more detailed analysis can be found in a book published soon after EDSA: "Dictatorship and Revolution: Roots of People's Power", edited by Aurora Javante-de Dios, Petronilo Bn. Daroy, and Lorna Kalaw-Tirol, from which most of the facts here are gleaned.

Vanguard

ON the eve of martial law, the militant Left, composed of student organizations in the cities and the New People's Army, established in 1968, succeeded in making enough trouble to frighten conservative elements in society and give Marcos the pretext to declare martial law. The First Quarter Storm, the storming of Malacanang Palace, the 12-day Diliman Commune, transport strikes and the spectre of a peasantry revolutionized convinced some that perhaps some limits had to be imposed on democracy.

The middle class was disturbed by the students and disenchanted by its own peers in the Constitutional Convention, which was racked with scandals of delegates taking money from Malacanang. Bombs went off throughout the city, culminating in the grenade attack on the Liberal miting de avance at Plaza Miranda on August 21, 1971. That the government was suspected of most if not all of them deepened the public gloom. The people were revolted with Marcos, but revolted also with the students. Change could only be for the worse. It would soon boil down to a choice of the lesser of two evils, the lesser would impose itself anyway. Of reform, there was no hope for there was even less understanding. Reform was expressed in the language of the Left-angry, wordy, ungrammatical, incomprehensible. The language of the new thought and the new hope could not be understood by those against which it was shouted, and could not be coherrently used for mutual understanding by those who used it. Yet, when the night of mass arrests came, it was from these shouting mobs that the fighters in the hills came. Ready or not, those who escaped the sweep of arrests, began to fight the dictatorship on its terms.

Rigoberto D. Tiglao, in his essay, "The Consolidation of the Dictatorship," does not think the Left was prepared to fight a proper war, except they were willing to actually fight the military upon whom Marcos relied. In pathetic constrast was the traditional opposition, meeting in different houses after Ninoy Aquino's arrest to console themselves rather than to conspire. So reminiscent of the meeting of Filipino politicians in Speaker Yulo's House, as the Japanese were about to occupy Manila in 1942. During these meetings, the idea of convening a special session of Congress to declare Proclamation 1081 null and void was brought up-one of which was said to have taken place in Ninoy's cell (an unlikely story). The following day the legislative building was occupied by troops who "dismantled the offices, carting away equipment, tables and chairs." Someone had squealed or the rooms were bugged.

The Communist Party, too, was in disarray. Its ranks had been decimated by mass arrests, its unity broken by mutual suspicions of betrayal. The Party's Central Committee was not even able to convene for a year and a half; and while the Armed Forces of the Philippines swelled from 60,000 strong in 1972 to 250,000 by 1975, the NPA's ranks only increased from 1,230 in 1972 to 1,800 in 1974 -and actually declined to 1,200 in 1976. The difference, though, between the decline of the Left and that of the traditional opposition, is that the Left continued to fight and could therefore claim to be the vanguard of the fight for change and freedom. As, indeed, they were. Bouyed by this assessment of their own importance, the NPA had the audacity in 1980 to launch offensives and by 1983 had convinced US intelligence analysts that they had achieved strategic parity with the government in the field. This was a gross exaggeration, of course, but this was as much politics, where perception in all, as warfare. The Communist Party claimed a mass base of 40,000 people; the military itself claimed NPA membership totalled 16,000. How did it happen? Less through actual communist victories than through government demoralization. The troops were tired of fighting an elusive enemy that never grew bigger but never got tired either.

In hoc signo vinces

IN the case of the Churches, religious opposition was just beginning at the onset of martial law. The Catholic hierarchy had only just affirmed Vatican II's Gaudium et Spes , which "clearly delineated the Catholic commitment to social justice," in 1971. Jesuit Pacifico Ortiz's "Prayer for the Nation" at the Opening of Congress referred to a nation "on the trembling edge of revolution." After his speech, students in the streets flung a papier mache crocodile at the First Couple decending the steps of Congress.

In 1976 Jaime, soon Cardinal, Sin replaced Rufino Cardinal Santos who had not cared a damn about social issues or anyone but his altar boys, it was rumored. Sin was not a firebrand when he donned the red cap, but he would change as others did. Wurfel writes that "Outrage and compassionate action required no liberation theology when a priest learned of the arrest without charge or the torture of a beloved parishioner... And when churchmen did condemn injustice or protest torture, and their activities were halted by the military, both the pastoral and the prophetic functions of ministry were constrained. Those constraints were resented even by the conservatives when government tried to control the progressives by threatening taxation of church schools or passage of a divorce law." This alienation was shared by Protestants as well, a group which "had also been strongly committed to constitutional democracy," having their roots in the American experience.

Of the major Churches, only the Iglesia ni Cristo was quiescent. Its radio station had been assaulted by government troops at the onset of martial law. It registered its displeasure with Marcos as late as 1975 with a resounding no in a referendum. But it would side with Marcos towards the end, perhaps as a reaction to the almost purely Catholic cast of the protest movement leading to Edsa. Catholic leaders would remain divided over the best way to deal with Marcos until the eve of Edsa, worried over the radicalization of some religious who took up the cause of armed revolution. Government provocation, however, served as the most effective catalyst in getting senior prelates to speak up. Cardinal Sin's case was a good example. One of his first acts as Archbishop of Manila was to issue a pastoral letter condemning the summary arrest of Frs. Jose Blanco and Benigno Mayo, Jesuits, during a raid on the Sacred Heart Novitiate in Novaliches, in 1974. He presided over a prayer vigil for those arrested," which more than 5,000 persons attended, the largest anti-martial law protest at the time." In 1975 Sin supported opposition to a Marcos decree "banning all labor strikes."

Catholic protests peaked when Pres. Gerald Ford visited Manila. Marcosbeat a retreat and limited the prohibition to strategic industries. The government's harrassment of the Church continued. Church-owned media, which had escaped closure in 1972 was shut down in 1976-77. Facilities that were closed included the weekly newspaper and radio station of Bishop Francisco Claver's diocese in Bukidnon,the diocese of Tagum, Davao's radio station, and, in Manila, Church magazines. Financial pressure was applied by the government's threat to implement a Marcos decree imposing taxes on church-owned property, another one setting up urban land reform. The result was growing appreciation by Cardinal Sin of more strenuous resistance to Marcos.

Sin's policy of "critical collaboration" during this time, was combined with increased indignation over the fate of citizens and religious brutalized by the government, and growing alarm over the "radicalization" of the clergy and other people in response to these abuses. While Protestant groups would start to rally against Marcos in 1978, Sin would, by 1979, was firmly on the path that would lead him to the preeminent role in the overthrow of Marcos.

"Unity and Struggle"

THE opposition, composed of leaders and politicians from both the major political parties was the hardest it. "The [political opposition's] highly personalized structures, based primarily on the expectation of material gain, were suddenly deprived of access to fuel for their machines. They faded rapidly, collapsed even, in the face of arrests, cooptation, and initially severe restrictions. The parties' fate thus contributed to the illusion, reported by the foreign press as late as 1973, that there was no significant opposition to the New Society." Marcos's most effective weapon against the politicians was, of course, money. He recruited them to his party.

At first the dissident voices were few, within and without the country. Lorenzo Tanada, elder statesman and lawyer to detainees; Jose Diokno, after Ninoy the one detained longest by the government; Jovito Salonga, who also became counsel for prisoners, then a prisoner himself; and Ninoy Aquino, Marcos' longest political detainee. Raul Manglapus and others in America denounced the dictatorship to no one who cared to listen in the United States. Adversity made these leaders men of far higher principle than they were thought to have been previously . Ninoy Aquino, in particular, transcended his past reputation as a brilliant, but too ambitious and fluid politician.

Aquino's trial for violations of Marcos' anti-subversion law and murder became a cause celebre after Ninoy declared that he would not participate in it. His case was temporarily shelved in 1974, resurrected in 1975, during which he undertook his famous fast. He ended his fast beyond the 40th day, having become the focus of international attention. The sham trial was started again in 1977, the sentence of death being imposed on November 25. Critical foreign opinion was again aroused, and Marcos held back the execution for another time.

To make up for lost ground, he announced elections for an interim National Assembly (Batasan Pambansa) as provided for in his repeatedly amended Constitution. He announced magnanimously that Ninoy could run for Assemblyman from his jail cell. Marcos sat back and waited for the opposition to prove that it could not win an election. A party, LABAN, was formed, under the chairmanship of Tanada, with Ninoy as its star candidate.

Jose Diokno came out in favor of a boycott, as did the remnants of the old Liberal Party under Gerardo Roxas, who also called for a boycott on the urging of Salonga. At first Ninoy changed his mind and supported the boycott lest the elections legitimize Marco. But when he was interviewed by Palace hack Ronnie Nathanielzs and Juan Ponce-Enrile on television, he declared he would participate. "The fact alone that [Marcos] has allowed the opposition to speak for 45 days and to come out with their leaflets is already to me a tremendous opportunity. And I am taking advantage of that opportunity," Ninoy said.

As Emmanuel De Dios wrote in his essay ("The Erosion of the Dictatorship") after Edsa, "the people did seize that opportunity." On the evening of April 6, 1978, "at eight o' clock residents of the metropolis came out into the streets and banged on pots, pans, and washbasins, stoked bonfires in the middle of the roads, drove at random through the city in cars, jeeps, and trucks, honking horns and shouting above the din, 'LABAN! LABAN! '" "This urban phenomenon was unprecedented and surprising even to those who had organized it. Until then, the only open and large-scale resistance to the dictatorship had been put up by the armed underground movement [NPA AND MNLF]...

The noise barrage, on the other hand, not only added a new locus to the resistance but also succeeded in enlisting open support from the hitherto unorganized majority of the middle classes, apart from the underground mass organizations." This event heralded the rebirth of the "reformist" opposition, and the begining of the war for the hearts and minds of the people-actually, of their balls, for it was a question of making them brave-that would lead to the People Power Revolution. The results of the election showed it was rigged. The KBL slate, headed by Imelda Marcos, made a "clean sweep." Even Ninoy lost to "a nobody from the KBL." But something had been shown, the power of the common people could be mustered. And the communists had not done it. The Church saw an alternative to radical politics for the faithful.

Radicalization

STEVE Psinakis, brother-in-law of detainee Geny Lopez, summed up the attitude among those who never considered armed struggle, which became prevalent in the wake of the 1978 elections. "The April 7 election has made it clear to everyone that the Marcoses have left the Filipino people with only one solution: force."

The "Light a Fire Movement" ushered in a period of urban terrorism. From May to September, 1979, members of the group-supported by Filipinos in the United States-used incendiary devises to put "symbolic targets" to the torch. Their most famous exploit was the burning of the floating casino in Manila Bay. In December one of the group's couriers was intercepted, and by the end of the month, key members had been arrested and group's network smashed by the government. Worse was to come. "The measure of success achieved by what were obviously primitive and amateurish methods [this is when the term 'steak commandos' first gained notoriety] ... suggested that the same tactics should be attempted on a larger, more professional, scale." This was undertaken by the April Six Liberation Movement (ASLM), which had a "social-democratic ideology" and was led by "products of the moderate activism of the sixties and seventies."

Their exploits, which were heralded by the coordinated bombing of 9 city buildings, embarrassed the dictatorship (particularly when a conference of American travel agents was bombed soon after Marcos had given a speech). This was terrorism, pure and simple, with frightful consequences for innocent bystanders, such as the singer Nonoy Zuniga. But these feeble acts of violence eventually ceased, as Ninoy Aquino urged oppositionists to engage dialogue with Marcos. Psinakis agreed to a moratorium on bombings. "The activities of the urban guerillas did contribute to the cause of the traditional politicians. For it was the latter, hitherto shut out by martial rule, who were the most able and anxious to take advantage of whatever chinks of concession were opened in the armor of the dictatorship." The chinks indeed had started to appear. And nowhere more than in the economy, which starved its dive. A dive accelerated by the 1979 oil-price increase. Marcos himself started to show chinks, in his kidneys. People started to worry about the future with an ailing dictator. At the same time, the Armed Forces, its vigor sapped by corruption in the officer corps, and by what some analysts maintain was a deliberate policy of not fully engaging the NPA forces to keep alive the communist threat, scored a big success.

In November, 1977, Jose M. Sison and other important Communist leaders were captured, bringing the total number of captured members of the party's Central Committe to twenty out of twenty-six. But time had overtaken the regime. The need for an orderly transition was open discussed. At the inauguration of the Interim Batasan Pambansa Marcos said the era of normalization was about to begin.

Covenants for Freedom

With the yet-unreleased National Security Code, signed on June 11, 1978, amended by the inclusion of the Public Order Act in September, 1980, in his pocket, Ferdinand Marcos declared, on January 16, 1981, that he was going to lift martial law. The announcement was carefully timed; it helped distract the attention at a time when (Wurfel notes) "the flight of Dewey Dee, Chinese millionaire, had just triggered financial crisis;" besides it coincided with the inauguration of a Marcos friend, Ronald Reagan, and was meant to augur well for the coming visit of the Pope, a month later. The next day the suspension of martial law was formalized. Marcos also signed an order which mandated that all his martial law decrees and instructions would remain valid, meaning, in effect (as Wurfel quotes the New York Times , "He retains all his emergency powers; he can restore martial law at any time. This is the hard substance beneath the welcome symbol.") that he was as powerful as ever. The restoration of habeas corpus (exce The "interim" Batasan Pambansa was prodded into making wholesale revisions to the Marcos Charter, which had envisioned a patchwork, quasi-parliamentary (French Fifth Republic-style) government to be voted into office somewhere between 1984 and 1987. Marcos declared on Janauary 29, 1981, that we would seek reelection. By February 27 the amendments he required had been passed, not without a little bellyaching on the part of the Assemblymen. The president was to be elected at large (and not by the Assembly), hve a six-year term with no bar to any number of reelections; he could dissolve the Assembly but not be removed from office by it; the office of Prime Minister was reduced to being something like that of a glorified Executive Secretary; and an "Executive Committee" was to be established to rule the country in the event of FM's demise. A plebescite was scheduled for April 17, to ratify the amendments, and FM said the opposition could campaign during both the plebiscite and the presidential election scheduled for June 16. In fact, they had to.

As De Dios writes, "the pelebiscite also served as a test run for the dictatorship's electoral machinery and as a guage of the people's susceptibility to threats. A boycott of the plebiscite as well as of the coming presidential election was to be treated as a serious crime." A presidential decree existed which specified imprisonment as the penalty for any citizen convicted "for failure to cast his vote."

But this was exactly what the opposition had decided to do as far back as April 17, 1980, when Ninoy Aquino, Lorenzo Tanada and Salvador Laurel (head of the Laurel wing of the Nacionalista Party, which had parted ways with Marcos in the late 70s) had agreed to demand, as conditions for their participation in any election, "a minimum campaign period, a purging of the voters' lists, equal time and space for the opposition, and a reorginization of the COMELEC," conditions which Marcos refused to meet. These stringent conditions reflected differences in view among the opposition which would persist for years to come.

Initially, UNIDO President Gerry Roxas had been completely against putting up a candidate at all, a view shared by the Civil Liberties Union, Diokno, and other "persons thought to be ssociated with the National Democratic Front." Doy Laurel, Ninoy Aquino (who said he could return to the Philippines as Doy's campaign manager), and Reuben Canoy (of the Mindanao Alliance) argued in favor of participation. UNIDO, formed in ----, first decided on qualified participation, and even held a rally on March 21 at Palaza Miranda, with 8,000 people in attendance; a rump session of the old Con Con was convened by Diosdado Macapagal, which proclaimed the Marcos Constitution null and void, in another attempt to chip away at Marcos' legality.

On april 24, UNIDO decided to support the call for a boycott. The reformists united in assuming the moral high ground in response to Marcos' schemes. Comments De Dios, "The boycott decision... revealed, especially to the traditional political leaders that it was... more effective, not to mention morally just, to seek forms of resitance outside the realm of electoral politics. the display of unity among all opposition forces, from the old political parties to the communist Party, in rejecting the election was also unprecedented." An opposition opinion poll indicated that fifty percent of voters boycotted the election.

A carpet, woven from the thread which Ninoy, during his hunger fast, and Tanada, and other oppositionists had begun to spin in the early days of Martial Law, was in the making. This was the rug that would sweep the dictator off his feet. The presidential campaign turned out to be a bloody one as protesters were harrassed. Of course Marcos won "overhwelmingly" against his token opponent, Gen. Alejo Santos (who's campaign manager was the now out of grace Kit Tatad). and the inauguration of his "New Republic" (which replaced the New Society) on July 2 was a stupendous one, marking the Apotheosis of Marcos -at least in his mind, as he listened to the Hallelujah Chorus, whose performance during the ceremony, struck observers as near-sacriligious.

Decline and preparation for the Fall

Marcos seemed to be secure in his power, save for the skittish situation of the economy, which was experiencing, more clearly than ever, the deleterious effects of crony capitalism, particuarly in the sugar and coconut industries. His dictatorship, though, was already losing steam. The expansion of the government and military, which had been growing at a phenomenal rate, which therefore gave bureaucrats and soldiers good prospects for rapid advancement, slowed down. Promotions didn't come as often as they did anymore, which was made worse by a tendency to keep senior officers, in particular, in their commissions way past their scheduled date for retirement.

Lower-ranked officials turned more and more to petty corruption, following the lead of their seniors. Marcos' ill-health became a favorite topic for gossip, which eroded his "strong man" image. Harrassment of existing and potential opponents continued unabated, though. The regime, as it continued attempts to improve it's image, still kept governing the old-fashioned way, through the use of the mailed fist. In 1981, having variously considered appointing Ninoy Aquino (who had hinted in December, 1980 that if Marcos made concessions he might consider taking on the job), Emmanuel Pelaez, and Arturo Tolentino, not to mention a "gallant proposal" by Enrile that Imelda Marcos be given the job, Cesar Virata was made Prime Minister. This was meant to give the impression of things going back to normal.The media was so tightly controlled that even Juan Ponce Enrile quoted as having urged the press to "snap out of its timidity and sycophancy." Naturally those that did, beginning with Ma. Ceres Doyo's landmark eyewitness account of Macli-ing Dulag's murder, featured of all places in the crony-controlled Bulletin's Sunday magazine, which led to her interrogation by the military and the forced resignation of its editor.

Churchmen and women, heartened by the pope's messages during his visit, which praised attempts to safeguard human rights and social justice (although the more politicized religious were not too pleased with the pope's condition that activism should not include class struggle or the use of violence). Efforts to live among the poor grew; seemingly symbolic acts, such as Sr. Christine Tan's decision had moved in lo live with the poor with five other nuns, were echoed by the rapid growth of Basic Christian Communities in rural areas, which bean to cause irritation to the regime. These communities served to focus attention on the plight of obscure peasants, whom the military felt could be arrested and liquidated with impunity. Investigating or demanding official action in response to liquidations were now the focus of efforts on the part of prelates, notably Bishop Antonio Fortich, to redress injustice. the military responded with escalating savagery, particuarly in Mindanao. The Left, which had suffered temporary setbacks, benefitted enormously from the weakness of the economy. They had never lost their capacity to maintain the fervor of their stentorian rhetoric, even when conditions were not necessarily in their favor.

In 1977, the same year that their founder was captured by the military, the NDF had unveiled a revised program. It had had its most notable successes in recruiting wide support in the wake of the economy's growing feebleness in the early 80's. The party said that from 1980 to 81 alone, its presence was extended from 300 to more than 400 towns in forty seven provinces from forty provinces; this marked the start of their "advanced strategic offensive," involving assualts on outposts and other sustained actions. They claimed 40,000 cadres and the loyalty of 10% of the population, i.e. six million souls. The NPA's growing offensive capabilities were buttressed by government propaganda, which tried to disguise its own excesses as "NPA attacks."

The NDF, the CPP's above-ground organization, became bolder, too. It organized rallies in town centers and made alliances with labor groups which seceded from the government -controlled trade union, the TUCP to join the Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU) formed on May 1, 1980; it's efforts were even more succesful in the provinces where the collapse of the sugar monopoly and the coconut industry caused disenchantment; resentment also arose becuase of the lack of implementation of Marcos' land reform, which was restricted to rice and corn lands. Steady successes, and the CPP's ability to come up with leaders of ability to replace those who had been captured, killed, or coopted by the government buoyed its moral, but also began the process of self-assurance that would lead to the dogmatism that would lead to its mrginalization.

Prescriptions for change

As the Left felt increasingly assured of its premier role in antidictatorship efforts, a new sector began its transformtion from being enthusiasts of the regime to critical, and then uncompromising, opposition to FM. This was the sector of people in business, Filipinos and foreigners alike. Marcos had plied businessmen with pro-business decree after decree, and while the economy hummed along no one complained. When the economy, which had grown by an average of over 6% in the first seven years of martial law, began to falter (down to 5.4% growth in 1980, 3% in 1981, and 2.6% the year after) and profits began to shrink, the businessmen began to have qualms about a future tied to Marcos. It also became evident at this time that Marcos policies were themselves contributing to the unraveling of the economy. Government-controlled corporations mushroomed, directorships being farmed out to people close to FM and Imelda.

Monopolies were established to benefit cronies: Disini and Silverio in manufacturing; Floirendo in bananas; Benedicto in in sugar; Cojuangco and Enrile in coconuts. Plunging prices for coconut products and sugar (down 30% in 1980), and the spiralling cost of fuel oil didn't help matters. Bankruptcies rose, as did unemployment, and some foreign investors pulled out their investments ($100 million worth of equity capital was taken out in 1980). To make things worse, local businessmen who had been protectionist in before martial law and who had kept mum during the early years of martial law, began to show their true colors again. They resented the consideration given to foreign firms while the locals suffered from the government's policies. Whatever their inclinations, businessmen began to pay attention to politics and the implications of the continuation of a government which had been given their support for providing the sine qua nons of good business: stability, efficiency, and continuity in policies. These were all in a questionable state.

The Makati Business Club, composed of the Philippines' top 1000 corporations, was formed and shortly after its creation, it issued a plenary paper titled "Issues and prescriptions." This called for "an environment of honesty, integirty, peace, and greater confidence in the government; a curb to military abuse and government corruption; a stop to red tape, graft, corruption and cronyism; the definition and pull-out of government roles from private sector concerns and business; the removal of lopsided competition from government; and the protection of media in its crusade against injustice and the curtialment of human freedom." These were uncharacteristically strong words which stuck.

In 1982 the businessmen had summoned up the nerve to try and present their complaints during the Eighth Philippine Business Conference in 1982. They invited Marcos to be their guest speaker, and were rewarded with a bravura performance by FM who thundered, "This government will, and has the capability to protect itself. The country is presently reeling from world-wide recession and export price slump... but let me warn those who opt to provide further misery to our people: tax evations and frauds in remittances of export earnings will be seriously dealt with the full force of the law. These people are known to me and I have a list of companies right here with me."

The dictator had bared his fangs, and the businessmen recoiled in horror to discover that the treatment which had been given to rabble-rousers, assorted socialist and communist types, and juramentado Muslims from the South could just as easily be given to them. They hadn't even proposed that Marcos be replaced, but to swing him back to the path of good government. Even as businessmen like Joe Concepcion still fretted about "the danger of punitive action of some kind" as a result of their mild criticism of Marcos, within them the realization that the only prescription for renewed prosperity was the removal of Marcos, began to grow. Foreign business had become apprehensive, too, demanding more and more guarantees that the government would cover any losses on their part or issue risk guarantees. This was not only a sign of the hemmorhaging of foreign business support for Marcos; it irritated local businessmen as well, who thought that the government should look after them first and their foreign competitors second (if at all).

Lone Ranger and the technocrats

The growing feeling of revuslion among businessmen was strengthened by the fate of the idealists whom they had hoped would temper the regime's excesses. The fate of Marcos' technocrats added to his undoing. Marcos had, in the beginning, swept away those irritating creatures, politicians, and welcomed into the highest ranks of government highly-educated, honest and competent men who only cared about running their departments -a style of administration dear to businessmen's hearts. When these men began to defect from the regime or were increasingly deprived of influence, it became obvious that here was a return to the old-fashioned style of government by extortion; and if this was the case, why put up with it when you could put into office the thieves of your choice, as was the case before martial law?

The fate of Cesar Virata was a signal case. Together with Gerardo Sicat, Roberto Ongpin, and Placido Mapa, Virata was the compleat technocrat. They were considered honest. Marcos had capitalized on this image by appointing Virata Prime minister in 1981, after he had made sure that the office would be nothing more than an adornment for his administration. He even appointed him to be a member of the 14-man Executive Committee, whose ranks took years to fill, which would supposedly run the country in Marcos' absence or in case he simply died; raised to these lofty positions, the business community was supposed to feel that "one of them" was in a position of great responsibility and significance.

In 1982 Virata asked that the Central Bank stop discounting loans for sugar planters, who had been hard-hit by the collapse of the sugar industry. The planters grumbled that this was all Benedicto's fault, since he was the head of the sugar monopoly, and they had to keep getting loans to stay afloat. Virata said that such loans could not be continued after a certain level had been reached. Virata's action had raised the hackles of the cronies, and Marcos allowed them to strike back in 1983. In April of that year a KBL caucus was held in Malacanang in preparation for a revue of the country's fiscal performance by its creditor banks. A scene reminiscent of China's Cultural Revolution took place. Leader after leader stood up to shout at Virata and Central Bank governor Jaime Laya, accusing them of incompetence, stupidity and cowardice in the face of creditor banks and the IMF. Then Marcos stepped in and chided Virata to "learn to defend himself." He had humiliated the chief technocrat and demonstrated that their positions depended purely on his good will.

Virata offered to resign, but was convinced to soldier on, FM diplomatically suggesting that the Prime Minister should go abroad for a little vacation. Thus these great brown hopes of reform were exposed as toothless tools, necessary for the running of the government, but nothing beyond that. When Marcos issued instructions saying that he had left confidential orders to Gen. Ver to undertake should anything happen to him, even the densest observer realized that the only entity Marcos fully trusted was the military, and only under the archnasty Ver.

Marcos' Nightmare Year

In 1983, on the anniversary of the Plaza Miranda bombing, which Marcos had attempted to use to raise a cloud of doubt over Ninoy Aquino's integrity, Ninoy Aquino came home to die. The man who was hustled down the side stairs of the MIA tunnel where his China Airlines flight had docked was a man far different from the ebullient senator of 1971. He was a man of unshakeable conviction and the very exemplar of the moral high road the opposition had chosen to take. Unlike former Vice President Emmanuel Pelaez who had been nearly killed in an ambush in the early 1980s because of his opposition to Marcos' coconut policies, the assassination of Ninoy would succeed, and gain international coverage. Marcos, true to form, after emerging from seclusion, blamed it on a communist hitman.The middle class wouldn't fall for Marcosian red herrings anymore, after it had finally understood that such things existed when Marcos had lumped intensely burgeouis businessmen and professionals with Leftist sympathisers and even true Leftists.

Between rumors of his failing kidneys, lupus, and the bewilderment with which he first greeted the news of Ninoy's murder, and the inevitable conclusion in the minds of many people that a cabal composed of Imelda Marcos and Gen. Ver were in the ascendant, the regime lost much of the bark that had intimimidated ordinary people for so long. They began to probe and see if the bite was as bad as they had previously thought. From the first timid testing of the waters demonstrated by the people who lined up to view Ninoy's remains, and who marched in his funeral procession or lined up in the streets in an act of quiet defiance (which may have seemed so timid to those who had been involved in the opposition from the start, but which signalled the gathering momentum of politicization on the part of the middle class), it became obvious that the year had the makings of an annus horribilis for the Marcoses.

Just a few days after Ninoy's death oppositionists came together and formed JAJA - Justice for Aquino, Justice for All, whose position paper stated: "We demand the immediate resignation of President Marcos, the entire Cabinet, the Executive Committee, members of the Batasang Pambansa, and top generals of the military. A responsible transition government composed of men and women of unquestionable integrity should be established to pave the way for the realization of genuine democracy in this country. We demand the immediate restoration of the writ of habeas corpus throughout the country, the immediate release of all political prisoners, and the grant of unconditional amnesty to all political dissenters and dissidents. We demand a fair, open, independent and impartial investigation of the assassination of Ninoy Aquino. We demand the complete restoration of freedom of speech, the press, of peaceful assembly, and all other constitutional rights and civil liberties. We demand a stop to US or any other foreign intervention in Philippine affairs. We demand an end to the militarization of our society and to repression and terrorism.

These objectives would remain the aim of the opposition from then on. It contains within it ideas which served to unite the opposition accross party lines, and divide it along ideological ones; it expressed thoughts that owed much to the rhetoric of past resistance to Marcos on the part of nationalist and socialist groups which would remain too extreme for the middle class, which embarked on a crash course in the political techniques of those it considered radicals. The fruits of this crash course would be Cause oriented Groups, and the Parliament of the Streets. The gulf left open by the refusal of the middle, professional classes to participate in sordid political affairs was now closed, and opposition to Marcos now included every possible grouping from one end of the political spectrum to another. FM would try to make use of his tried-and-true strategy, to divide and conquer, embarking in a race against time which he lost as the ranks of his opponents closed in faster than he could divide them.

Writing after Edsa, Ma.Serena Diokno summed up this period as "a movement of unity and struggle -of oneness in opposition to the Marcos regime, it's authoritarian apparatus, and its abuse of the Filipino people; of differences within a movement colored by various shades of political understanding, at times sadly marked by personal political ambition; and of unrelenting struggle against a dictatorship propped up by the government of the United States." All this is true; it took some groups longer to get over their cautious inclinations than others, but at least all the key players were in place. The Church was there, as the primate (in fact if not title) of the Philippine Church officiated at Ninoy's Funeral Mass; the middle class was there, the old fighers, too, in complete sympathy with the loss that was well-nigh national in scope.

In retrospect this process seems to have been a continuous march, along city streets lined with buildings raining yellow confetti, to the tune of ati-atihan drums and the wailing of the military's sirens. In reality it was a series of skirmishes and crises, of exhilerating advance and painful retreat and reconsolidation.

Industry's state of the nation --- stage set (David Brinkley interview with FM)

Edsa, the apotheosis of the middle class (in contrast to Marcos' hollow self-apotheosis in 1981), was ahead. The inauguration at Club Filipino, which the more Socialist-oriented grumbled was a mere restoration (as well they should, their having felt that the Left had been deprived of the just rewards for its years of agony and struggle), which of course, it was.

But the people who had marched in isolation in the early 70s and 80s, should have expected nothing less from those who had swelled the ranks of the opposition at the time of Ninoy's murder; these people had decided that the time for involvement had come precisely becuase the things they valued -order, decency, the burgeouis values and principles- had been taken away. And had to be given back. They, who had always been skeptical of politics, politicized themselves and made possible the return to the politics they understood, with a crucial element added: morality. Morality, to be precise, of buregouis sort. This was the rug that pulled Marcos of his feet, and ironically, left many others puzzling over the way they had suddenly become irrelevant.

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