Manolo Quezon is #TheExplainer Newsletter - Issue #11 (Aquino Memorial Issue)
Within three days, the nations has confronted losing Benigno S. Aquino and then bade him farewell. I hope you will take the time to read the obituary I wrote; there are other readings, too. I am sharing them in full so you don't have to click any links, though of course the publishers will thank you if you do.
Obituary for Noynoy Aquino by Manuel Quezon III — www.spot.ph
A tribute to former President Noynoy Aquino, who passed away on June 24.
The Impossible Dreamer
Benigno S. Aquino III dared to believe the Filipino could be different.
by Manuel L. Quezon III(SPOT.ph)
The writers among my former team obeyed former President Benigno S. Aquino III’s injunction to us, as his term was winding down, to write our memoirs only after he was dead. I suspect he’d read a piece I wrote in March 2015 that tried to understand him and, well, explain him. There is nothing I would say today that I wasn’t willing to say then; but to take off where I’d left that piece, here is how I’d ended it:
“Yet with the passing of that moment, he must continue to confront what he is: to his mind, someone not permitted the freedom of public emotion. For you will never be alone, never allowed to let go, never permitted to come to terms—until your own time is up, and the next generation steps forward to come to terms with what you had to live with all your life: neither joy nor grief are exempt from being public property.”
Benigno S. Aquino III is, briefly, public property again. Except for a short, abortive attempt by the powers-that-be to harass him—brief because his willingness to face public inquiry only heightened the contrast between himself, alert, informed, unafraid, and those who’d only appeared, grudgingly, in wheelchairs, waving medical certificates behind a screen of lawyers—he finally got to live a private life, but only for a few years. As the public knows, close to half of it was spent in increasing ill health, the joys of living one by one being taken away from him; near the end, it was his sense of taste; as I understand it, among the very last joys left to him was one of his deepest—music.
In this his taste was omnivorous, his knowledge encyclopedic, his approach, scientific: such is the nature of the audiophile as he glories in obtaining bargains on second-hand equipment and fusses around to get the placement of speakers right. But it can also be said to be a meticulousness reflected in such hobbies as he had: billiards, pistols, even cars. Fine-tuned in each instance. Take guns. Someone once tried to explain to me, what his pistol-shooting said about him.
In contrast to Ferdinand Marcos who was a sniper—which requires long periods of lying-in-wait in ambush, and a very personal yet clinical relationship with your chosen target—the kind of pistol shooting Aquino excelled in—and by all accounts, he did excel; one staffer proudly told me of how, during a visit to a firing range of the F.B.I., the then-President split a playing card in half with his shot—required quick reflexes, and extreme precision under pressure as you confronted unexpected challenges. The difference between the offensive approach of a sniper and the defensive one of a pistol-shooter, couldn’t be clearer.
I have written elsewhere of how, in the first crisis of his presidency, he saw what was coming. To summarize what transpired: he dropped by our office late in the afternoon, to alert us to the period of maximum danger that was approaching: the hostage-taker at the Quirino grandstand, he said, would be getting very tired and very frustrated, and so liable to go out of control. He had instructed the special forces to secure an identical bus and to practice their going in if necessary. Yet we know what transpired without realizing what later on, turned out to have transpired: the pecking order among classes in the PMA meant that one general could not fulfill the President’s instructions out of deference to an upper classman at the scene; and Mayor Alfredo Lim’s behavior ultimately sent the hostage taker into his fatal panic.
As it began, so it would end, in those fields at Mamasapano; a competent commander-in-chief arguably ill-served by bungling subordinates in uniform: the Filipino people, who pay better attention to what their institutions are doing, rewarded the ground commander of that operation with ignominious defeat in the polls, as he deserved. Yet in their sovereign might they too handed down their own verdict on the commander-in-chief; but I have already written on the traumatic divorce between the President and the Filipino people that took place in the wake of that tragedy, so let a small portion of what I wrote back in 2015 suffice:
“His strengths—an understanding of logistics, a long view with regards to the national interest, a vise-like grip on his own emotions, a reluctance to say things for the sake of saying something, and an insistence on rationality and facts when addressing the public—have also been his weaknesses. We (the people), who live life so vividly, are often confounded by dogged determination to do his duty behind the scenes when what we have come to expect is the grand gesture, the clichéd phrase, cathartic unfolding of a familiar script.”
The accounts by people distant and close to him, in the main, are variations on the above. As far as they help to explore the foibles and quirks of a quirky man who had his share of foibles, they provide human interest. But he was a president, and a president can, at their best, or worst, define eras. As his mother began one era, he ended up closing it; and it is to that that my thoughts turn at this time.
As Leon Ma. Guerrero once wrote, today began yesterday. Until I was ushered in to meet him in preparation for a speech he was scheduled to make before the Makati Business Club, I’d only seen Benigno S. Aquino III twice in person, and briefly, before that.
The first time was in the immediate aftermath of the 2006 Philippine Army headquarters standoff; people had gathered at the home of Cory Aquino’s parents where she’d gone after the government had stopped her going to see the rebels. As Leah Navarro and I arrived, there was (then-senator) Aquino standing by the gate, smoking, and chatting with the guards; he told Leah, “Better go in, Mom’s inside.” The second time I saw him was the wake for his mother in the Manila Cathedral. He was quietly sitting off to one side, with his nephew Josh hanging on to him and I thought to myself what a doting uncle he was—and how his nephew’s great affection was in danger of breaking his uncle’s neck.
A note on that neck: lodged in it, near his carotid artery, was a fragment of one of the bullets that nearly claimed his life during one of the coups that tried to topple his mother’s government. It could never be removed precisely because of its delicate location. A permanent reminder that, like his father, and we forget, even his mother, he was always a marked man: liquidation was not a theoretical risk accompanying public service.
Every famous name carries its baggage and in Aquino’s case his was a matching set of luggage: he was an Aquino but also a Cojuangco. On both scores alone, he has been condemned in life and death. On both scores alone, before even getting to know him, he has already been prejudged.
In my mind, his being an Aquino meant a reputation for being willing to be contrarian—at its worst, in the punning quip of the pre-war generation to which my father belonged, “Aqui, no… Alli, si…” (“Here, no, there, yes…”: referring to how Benigno Senior he switched sides in the 1933 Osrox fight)—and at its best, the stubborn, lonely resistance and martyrdom of Benigno Junior.
As for his being a Cojuangco… Well, John Collins Bossidy penned a famous ditty on the Boston brahmins, as the WASP bluebloods were called, that always reminded me of what used to be said of his mother’s family—
And this is good old Boston,
The home of the bean and the cod,
Where the Lowells talk only to Cabots,
And the Cabots talk only to God.
So when I did finally get to meet him, as potential wordsmith, I thought I had a pretty clear idea of what to expect. In some respects I wasn’t disappointed: he had the famous Aquino temper, and the infamous Cojuangco ability to nurse grudges, but he was not so much the prisoner of history I expected, as he was a reluctant yet determined volunteer for a suicide mission.
Our political culture is a fundamentally violent one, whether merely rhetorically or that actual bullets ending disputes best settled by means of ballots. But power is characterized by another kind of lethality. Whether sinner or saint, statesman or racketeer, the one thing public office does is prematurely age the office holder. Ninoy Aquino liked to say he had to be in a hurry, because Aquino men do not live long; his father died of a heart attack before he could vindicate himself; Ninoy would die of a bullet to the brain in the airport now named after him; his son became president at the age his father was, when he died.
I am not convinced Benigno S. Aquino III, in his heart of hearts, ever expected to have a long life. What I do know is he had to undergo the kind of soul-searching a man of his family history cannot avoid; as they say, the first things torturers do is to lay out the instruments of their craft before their victims, to weaken their resolve. His family history was enough to lay out the instruments of his torture.
His office used to be the Great Dictator’s bedroom. It was one of the few places in that claustrophobic bunker that is the Palace, where there were actual windows to let in real sunlight. From his desk, he had a commanding view of the river, and his (temporary! He reminded everyone) residence, Bahay Pangarap, just across. In quiet moments he liked to keep an eye out for a white heron that from time to time would perch on the riverbank to hunt fish. The fatalistic side of him liked to remind visitors, whenever a barge would pass by, that a 500-pound bomb hidden and detonated would knock a several-kilometer-wide radius completely flat; the message being, when your time has come, it’s come. This fatalism is a hallmark of our better presidents—it grants them the serenity to go ahead and do their duty.
But there is another moment I remember best, in that same room, in the twilight of a late afternoon, at the end of a cloudy, rainy, stressful day at work. The central air-conditioning had left the bulletproof office windows fogged up, the condensation leaving streaks and blotches on the panes. We had just walked in, he was sifting through a folder of papers, when, off-handedly, he pointed to the windows and the patterns of condensation on them.
“Look. Like monsters,” said.
I remember being startled not least by my whole-hearted agreement. The moment has never left me because it seemed to me then as now, it was representative of a basic truth about the existence of Benigno S. Aquino III. Indeed, not just of the palace, or the presidency, but of our nation can it well and truly be said, like the maps of yore, “here be monsters.”
He viewed himself as a man of the Center; in the ideological divide, his approach was inclusive: history did not operate on abstract, supposedly-scientific, predetermined tracks; it was cause and effect, on a person-to-person basis. A phrase he liked to use—"rattling the rice bowls”—to refer to his fight for reform, underscored how basic, and primal, the fight was—and the stakes involved.
He had an abhorrence of any behavior or statement that, to his mind, would be conducive to public panic or the unleashing of emotions that could spark a public conflagration. Reams have been written taking him to task for using this as a justification for language his critics found harsh or worse. We forget it was fear of our society reaching this point of no return, that brought his father back home; we forget the bullet in his father’s brain and in his own neck and yes, in the corpses at Mendiola and Luisita, were all testimony, one way or another, to moments of no return. I know for a fact something only guessed at and simulated in novels and films, which is the anguish he felt whenever giving orders that might potentially lead people, civilian or military, to risking their lives.
It will take many years before he is given the credit due, for taking the situation in hand and going to Zamboanga, there to firmly hold the line with his generals who were far more willing to risk and accept, casualties both civilian and military, in confronting the hostage-taking by Nur Misuari’s berserkers. Instead the top brass and the commanders on the ground had to closely coordinate, and act with patience deliberateness, to reconnoiter and then move, in a manner that saved lives. And it may never be fully recounted how behind the scenes, he faced down, and was horrified by, demands verging on proposals for ethnic cleansing, in retaliation.
He afterwards excused these reprehensible statements in his presence, to the trauma of urban warfare. It made me realize how utterly devoid of prejudice he was in several spectacular respects. Particularly since in so many other ways he was an unsurprisingly conventional example of his generation, class, and gender.
His bold decision to break an impasse in negotiations, by flying to Japan to secretly meet the head of the MILF; his steely navigation—this was the first time I would come to hear of, and understand, the concept of “strategic patience”—as he received brickbats from proponents of Reproductive Health and its religious opponents; his steadfast support for the concept and implementation of Conditional Cash Transfers for the poor; his fight for the implementation of K-12 in our educational system: these were all the products of having approached problems with an open mind, in listening to basic sectors and understanding, and then fighting for, profoundly nation-changing solutions, impossible to those with closed minds, as I came to understand seeing the criticism against each of these efforts.
The Polish journalist Ryszard Kapuscinski once wrote that “The most difficult thing to do while living in a palace is to imagine a different life—for instance, your own life, but outside of and minus the palace.” One of my favorite moments was a meeting in which the continuing nightmare the MRT-LRT was being discussed for the umpteenth time, and President Aquino asked why it was, there were so many different ticketing systems for a network that should ultimately be considered an integrated one. The bureaucrats hemmed and hawed, the lawyers helped produce a smokescreen of jargon that would (they hoped) starve the proceedings of oxygen. But the President wouldn’t relent and for every obstacle they put forward, he kept asking why anyone should accept that as an answer. That, much later, a more integrated system emerged at all, was testimony to the stubbornness of one man angry on behalf of commuters—an irony not lost on me, later.
In a similar manner he listen to, and was convinced by, urban-poor organizers who petitioned for the provision of public housing to the homeless, not in far-off places of exile, but where they had set down roots and formed communities. He brought government funding and presidential support to projects and infrastructure in the provinces only to learn the electoral lesson that Metro Manila is jealous and demanding, that provincial affections are fleeting, and the permanent interests of incumbents in every instrumentality and branch of our public and private institutions could outlast any administration.
Ultimately the fate of Benigno S. Aquino III was to end the era his mother began. Thirty years, bookended by his mother’s and his terms of office, is a phenomenally long run, by the historical measure of any society or nation. It was one that was not uninterrupted: in 1992 only the division between Imelda Marcos and Eduardo Cojuangco Jr. prevented a Marcos restoration, and 1998 would be our first flirtation with populism. The era of People Power came to its end between 2001-06 in three acts (Edsa Dos, Tres, and State of Emergency); the Filipino people in their schizophrenia have always alternated between crying out for a liberator, and pining for a dictator. It is why Rizal said as a people are, so is their government; why Quezon posited the people prefer good government to self-government and that ultimately, their expectation from the presidency is the maintenance of order; and why Ninoy Aquino once told a friend he who would be a leader of his people must learn to forgive them.
There was once a member of the cabinet who mightily disappointed the President, who like his mother, never hid it when he disliked someone. The cabinet member in bad odor responded by refusing to go into prudent self-exile and instead, at meeting after meeting, would stand off to one side as the President arrived or left, with the meekest, mildest, most humble demeanor you ever saw. Week after week he did this, until, one day, as the President passed him by, the cabinet man caught his eye and gave the sheepiest, goofiest, smile you ever saw and the President couldn’t help but laugh and motion him to join him. All was forgiven. The President had been disappointed because he’d failed to meet his targets; there were those with even thicker faces who committed actual transgressions who got short shrift for which there would be no redemption. Yet sometimes they would be the loudest in their protestations that the President and all he stood for was being betrayed—by others.
We, who were the President’s people, that is, people who answered the call to serve his administration, upon his personal invitation and not because of old ties to his mother, her administration, or his previous service in the House or Senate, witnessed all of this playing out inside government as it played out in our larger society. We were, after all, the perennial targets of those who alternated between condescending to the President because they were big shots when he was a young man, and slavishly pandering to him to gain access, all the better to hiss intrigues into his ears; at least, of course, that is how we saw it. They were for the maintenance of old alliances, the perpetuation of old ways of trafficking in memories; we were on the side of data, and systems, and reform.
The President’s greatest failure was his inability to hold his coalition together but it was one so pre-ordained one has to at least suspect it was as much a necessity for national evolution as it was the closing manifestation of a process predictable as far back as 1992.
Every organization has factions and the hallmark of executive management is the balancing of those factions. It seems to be there is an instinctive appreciation of this among our people because if you ask the professional pollsters, one basic truth they will tell you, is that the public weighs the presidency according to a different standard than the rest of “the government” or “the administration.” It is a reason why so few of the hangers-on of a popular or effective president reap any benefit from the association, while most presidents tend to remain more popular than their administrations.
Conversely, it is why presidents weighed down with the disappointments they have caused in their time in office, are usually ineffectual in determining who will ultimately succeed them.
Edwin Lacierda liked to repeat the famous quote that you campaign with poetry but govern with prose. Our presidents are called upon to weigh in, one way or another on questions of policy, so too is the public called upon by presidents to weigh in for or against defining questions of the day; some political scientists have described this continuity from Quezon to Aquino (the mother; but arguably it still applies today) as “plebiscitary democracy”; Benigno S. Aquino III recognized it himself and without any mental reservation or evasion, bluntly told the people themselves that 2016 was a referendum on the path the country had taken.
His answer was a repudiation. And with it, the end of an era. It will take time to recognize that the fundamental nature of that repudiation was as much an act of omission—the inability or unwillingness of the Aquino coalition to hold together—as it was of commission, by which I mean the different disappointments and resentments, not all of them self-inflicted, that created a constituency of the disgruntled slightly larger than any subset of what had once been the defining Middle of our electorate. But I believe he knew, as only a fundamentally democratic man and leader can know, that the people had decreed the end of an era.
He had tried to offer a competing vision: modernity as the antidote to nostalgia. In the increasingly apocalyptic closing days of the 2016 campaign, Aquino took to repeatedly, even stridently, warning of what could be in store for the country. Again it may be a long time to come before we get to recognize how complete calamity was averted, because somehow, more of the old Middle held together for the vice-presidency than the presidency. But we should recognize him for recognizing we were on the cusp of change and pleading with the public to take up the fight for democracy themselves because his family had already given up so much for the country.
The official calendar never ceased to refocus our minds on the theme of sacrifice. On one occasion, as we went over the draft for one of his speeches, I passed on to the President, a passage from Cynthia Ozick’s essay on Christian heroism. Writing of the holocaust, she said three participant categories are often named: murderers, victims, and bystanders. She asked her readers to ask themselves which of the three they might be, or be likely to become. And then she concluded, “…When a whole population takes on the status of bystander, the victims are without allies; the criminals, unchecked, are strengthened; and only then do we need to speak of heroes. When a field is filled from end to end with sheep, a stag stands out. When a continent is filled end to end with the compliant, we learn what heroism is. And alas for the society that requires heroes.”
To my delight the President liked the quotation very much and used it in a National Heroes’ Day speech. I have to wonder if it informed his thinking as he kept seeking ways to convince the public of not just the need, but the possibility, of being a society that could do for itself what it had formerly demanded of its heroes to do.
Soon after the news of the former president’s passing started circulating, Gang Capati tweeted me an icon of a broken heart, and I replied to her, “The Aquino way. They did their duty, and then they are done.” And we cannot doubt they’re done, in the world-historical sense, though others of the name or other branches might step in, or step up, from time to time to offer themselves up for public office. But an era is done; and done, in the only way Benigno S. Aquino III knew as practiced by his parents.
In the same passage by Kapuscinski I quoted above, he said the fundamental question of politics was that of honor; and to this, he offered up the example of Charles de Gaulle of France who resigned the presidency after losing a referendum: “He wanted to govern only under the condition that the majority accept him. The moment the majority refused him their trust, he left. But how many are like him? The others will cry, but they won’t move; they’ll torment the nation, but they won’t budge. Thrown out one door, they sneak in through another; kicked down the stairs, they begin to crawl back up. They will excuse themselves, bow and scrape, lie and simper, provided they can stay—or provided they can return.”
To the President and his family their fundamental aspiration was to return home. Some of you who read this will be old enough to remember “Tie A Yellow Ribbon,” with its story of a convicted man going home, and waiting for a signal if he should rejoin his family or accept his disgrace and move on. Eva Estrada Kalaw suggested it as the right song for the homecoming of Ninoy who’d been sentenced to death by a military kangaroo court. For his widow and son, the presidency was a one-way street, with no return to power.
When the debacle of election day came and went in 2016, I contrasted Aquino’s reaction to that of his predecessor. By all accounts, she had thrown herself into a tornado of activity, stacking the bureaucracy and the courts with allies, complete with lurid tales of her appearing in the Presidential Management Staff to personally fill out suitably back-dated appointments. In contrast, Aquino went into seclusion; a democrat at heart, he knew and took the message. When he emerged from seclusion it was with the instruction to make the transition for his successor as easy as possible—even as his bags were being packed.
Winston Churchill, after saving his nation during World War II, was immediately thrown out of office as soon as there was an election. His wife famously tried to cheer him up suggesting it might be a blessing in disguise, to which he replied, “At the moment it seems quite effectively disguised.” I wouldn’t be surprised if President Aquino more than once, felt the same way; but there was a genuine relief and happiness as the calendar he had ordered put together—one in reverse, counting down the days until he left office—reached its last page and he could go home to Times Street. That in and of itself was a victory—over ambition; over egotism; no one could seduce him any longer, with that two-edged appeal, “you are a necessary man.”
Chronic disease affects each of us differently but altogether reduces and narrows our field of vision and capacity of experiences until all we have is an all-consuming discomfort and endless vista of pain; I cannot and will not presume to know what he was going through all the time, but we have it from one of his sisters that to the very end, he was clear headed and still thinking of his vaccination to come.
Within a few hours of news of his passing, institutions, public and private, began lowering the national flag to half mast, without need of or waiting for, the bidding of the Palace. How true it is that the pomp and circumstance of the state are as nothing compared to the spontaneous simplicity of direct homage from the people. I began to notice people—hesitatingly, sometimes grudgingly, often surprisedly, paying some sort of tribute to him, and the ripple effect online became rather quickly tangible. There is a perfect word for this: frisson, a sudden strong feeling of excitement or fear—and it was a frisson of—reconnection—that many were experiencing. A reconnection after the traumatic divorce of Aquino from the people in the wake of Mamasapano.
It was not rehabilitation, though perhaps, reconciliation, between an Aquino who tried to compensate for his own shortcomings by mightily hoping—even believing—that the Filipino had modernized enough, to tell facts apart from lies, who could subordinate passion to reason, and who would be satisfied with incremental results as tangible benchmarks for a better future.
Looking at his urn, I recalled a story the late Napoleon Rama once recounted in an interview. After martial law was proclaimed and they were arrested and brought to Camp Crame, he and some other oppositionists, including Ninoy Aquino, were put on a bus but not told where they were going. At one point, the bus stopped at a traffic light near Guadalupe and Ninoy, observing the people gawking at them, remarked, “Look at our people. They know that we’ve been fighting for their rights, and we’ve risked our lives and that freedoms have been taken away from them, and yet they are not doing anything… Look at them, they’re just watching us, curious so, I don’t think there’s hope for the Filipino.” Solitary confinement, we now know, convinced Ninoy otherwise.
I had the privilege of, as they say, writing for President Benigno S. Aquino III, but in truth, when it mattered most, the privilege I actually enjoyed was that of writing with the President; and for this reason I can well and truly say that in his prime, when everything seemed possible, he wrote his own epitaph:
“As long as your faith remains strong—as long as we continue serving as each other’s strength—we will continue proving that ‘the Filipino is worth definitely dying for,’ ‘the Filipino is worth living for,’ and if I might add: ‘The Filipino is worth fighting for.’”
They are burying him, today, and with him, an era. He liked to quote Timothy 4:7: “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith.” He did his duty and then he was done.
The article above mentions but doesn't link to, an article I wrote back in 2015. For the sake of completeness and contrast, here it is:
Rogue Magazine: The Mourning After – Manuel L. Quezon III — www.quezon.ph
Rogue | March 2015
The Mourning After
by Manuel L. Quezon III
As criticism bears down on his administration in the wake of the Mamasapano clash, President Aquino faces the impossibility of extricating his personal history from the national narrative.
THERE is a particularly painful grief that comes from having judged a person, only to discover later on, when it’s too late to matter to that person, that you were wrong. When those coffins emerged from the C-130s in Villamor Airbase, the steady beat of the drums, the constant repetition of “Nearer My God To Thee,” the sound of hundreds wailing as parents, wives, and children—realizing with finality that their loved ones were truly gone—broke the heart of a nation, one that had long ago consigned the uniform of a policeman to being a badge of shame instead of honor. We realized we had been wrong—and not just about one or two, but about many.
These men, in their metal coffins covered with the flag, were heroes.
The people of Zamboanga City knew it best of all. They had a personal relationship with the fallen; they viewed the liberation of their city from rogue elements of MNLF as a deliverance made possible by the SAF. It was a relationship the President shared, for we forget how he had joined them in the field and threw his full support behind them as they fought, with the Armed Forces, to clear the city, street by street. It was for this reason that he was in Zamboanga City soon after the bombs went off: the city was still recovering; its sense of security was still brittle; he wanted to ensure—and for the people of the city to know—that his interest in their recovery and their future security extended beyond past emergencies.
On his way to Zamboanga he began to get news that the operation in Maguindanao had, after its initial success, started to go very wrong. At once, conspiracy theories were hatched. When the President addressed the nation, the blame game took on Olympic proportions. Friend and foe alike joined the fray.
In August 2010, as dusk fell, the President came to our office and quietly told us that the unfolding Quirino Grandstand hostage crisis was reaching its most perilous point. The hostage-taker’s nerves are frayed, he said, and everyone involved will be tired and jittery; things can unfold in a matter of seconds, and the professionals must be primed to move swiftly and effectively to neutralize the hostage-taker if he snaps, and rescue the hostages—otherwise, a bloodbath would ensue. I will never forget how, as we watched the bloodbath he had feared take place on TV, at the back of my mind was the realization that the horror of the moment was compounded by what we knew, which was—the President had foreseen this, and he had been right.
Nor will I ever forget how, in the frantic, anxious minutes after he returned to the Palace, I suggested to him that he needed to go on TV immediately because the country needed a consoler-in-chief. He looked at me and said he owed the country the facts. He proceeded to interrogate the top brass; and only after this did he address the country. I only understood why he said this when it later emerged that prudent measures he had ordered to prevent mass slaughter were not carried out.
In subsequent crises—whether man-made, such as rebel attacks, or acts of nature, such as typhoons and earthquakes—we had the same President, but different reactions from him. His strengths—an understanding of logistics, a long view with regards to the national interest, a vise-like grip on his own emotions, a reluctance to say things for the sake of saying something, and an insistence on rationality and facts when addressing the public—have also been his weaknesses. We (the people), who live life so vividly, are often confounded by dogged determination to do his duty behind the scenes when what we have come to expect is the grand gesture, the clichéd phrase, cathartic unfolding of a familiar script.
When preparations were being made to return the remains of the fallen SAF troopers to Manila, the President instructed that the fullest honors be rendered; that every family’s particular circumstances be gathered, and every possible source within the limits of the law be explored, to provide for each family’s needs. Would he go to Villamor? No, he would not. But why? And he told a story: when they came home from Boston, they barely had any time to be together with their father for the last time: could we imagine what it was like to see his grisly remains for the first time? He would not deny them time. The families must have time to come to terms with their grief. He would not bring a circus to intrude but, instead, see them when his public role was proper—to deliver a eulogy—and his presence would serve a purpose beyond ritual: to assure them concrete plans were in place to provide material security to families confronted not only with grief, but anxiety about their future.
Here is where the vividness of the past collides with the forgetfulness of the present, and where duty defies expectations. The President was crucified for his absence in Villamor; and again, friend and foe alike thundered and shrilled, whether out of disappointment or delight.
The President belongs to a generation that was raised with a very different perspective on public emotion from what we have come to expect from celebrities. That perspective is derived from a life lived in public view; from a constant awareness not only of being constantly watched, but of always of being expected to set an example. This is particularly true of sons. I do not think and, indeed, I strongly doubt that my upbringing was very different from his—and from a very early age it involved a lot of don’ts: when in public, don’t fidget; stand up straight; mind your manners; do your duty, whether it’s enduring a speech, or making one; most of all, show strength and never cry. So thoroughly had this been drilled into me that, on the day of my father’s funeral, his reminders kept echoing in my head, and it was only when they were sealing his tomb, and most mourners had left, that I could cry. I practically collapsed in my aunt’s arms, and to this day, I wonder how she managed to keep us standing.
Consider this instinct, which is so strong in the natural course of things, and what it must be like for those who share the same instincts in the midst of the trauma of tragedy. My father lost his mother, sister, and brother-in-law in an ambush; among my earliest and most vivid memories was his telling me that the only time he had to properly grieve was in the brief time he had with his sister, when he arrived home after having been told the news. After that brief time together, time was not theirs, nor was grief; they were part of a collective experience that is both highly personal—for other relatives, friends, officials, and followers—and yet strangely impersonal, with everything reported, editorialized upon, filmed and photographed.
The President has said time and again that, when his father died, he became the head of the family, the protector of his mother and sisters—not only during times of genuine peril, but also in the years of near-constant political storms and stress. This is a situation that is not conducive to wearing one’s heart on one’s sleeve, or demonstrating weakness, not just in public, but even in private. It is what made him who he is; it is the only way he knows how to do what he must.
Publicly, it meant he commiserated with the grieving the only way he knew how: in terms of his own loss, only for it to become clear how little anyone else can comprehend how colossal that loss was for him. Here was a very public rupture, indeed. Yet no one was at fault; certainly not those in the midst of grief; not a President confronted with, how unknowable to others, how deep one’s private loss can be; not the public, for whom the personal loss of yesterday had become intertwined with a national story of redemption at once deeply personal, yet which had become, over time, so distant.
We did not elect this President to be another run-of-the-mill leader. Every president ends up, sooner or later, obsessed with history; each one is the product, not only of the history of his or her times, but also of his or her own personal history. That history has been his strength, and at times, his weakness. Most, however, leave nothing to chance, and it is a rare President who takes the long view and possesses the certainty that, when the dust settles and emotions abate, vindication will be his. This surely comes at a high cost—not only politically, but personally. In the end, when he addressed the nation for a second time, he finally showed what he had felt all along, but hadn’t permitted himself, until that moment, to fully reveal.
Yet with the passing of that moment, he must continue to confront what he is: to his mind, someone not permitted the freedom of public emotion. For you will never be alone, never allowed to let go, never permitted to come to terms—until your own time is up, and the next generation steps forward to come to terms with what you had to live with all your life: neither joy nor grief are exempt from being public property.
In connection to my 2015 article, a blog entry by an anonymous Filipino member of our foreign service includes mention of this article; the ebtry itself is very thought-provoking and I will be referring to it again in the future when the time is right to explore an idea I have for a book on the Rise and Fall of the Philippine Fifth Republic. Please do take time to read fhe whole entry:
President Aquino’s imperfection – OUR GUY IN GENEVA
It is unfortunate that those spontaneously paying tributes to former president Benigno S. Aquino III upon his recent passing have to preface their eulogies with the caveat that he was “not perfect.” They are, of course, technically correct. Nobody is perfect; not even saints. Yet mentioning this truism when singing paeans to the dead is usually avoided in any culture, unless the deceased’s imperfections are so glaring as to render their mention unavoidable.
In usual times, therefore, such caveats are invoked only when eulogizing disgraced but rehabilitated figures, and only out of respect to the victims of their shortcomings. You hear such caveats, for instance, in eulogies to Richard Nixon, who subverted the election process at Watergate – hence, imperfect – but also revolutionized U.S. foreign policy by engaging China and was therefore, in hindsight, a statesman. You also hear it in the Chinese Communist Party’s official pronouncements that Mao Zedong’s legacy was “forty percent bad” – an acknowledgement of the untold suffering caused by his Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution – but also “sixty percent good.”
But Aquino was neither a Nixon nor a Mao. He was, by all accounts, one of the best Filipino presidents in recent memory. The alleged blemishes in his record that people often mention were merely the occasional miscalculations or uninspired decisions that are expected of any administration, including the best ones. They pale in comparison to the transformative policies his presidency oversaw, and are eclipsed by the superior personal virtues he demonstrated as a public servant.
I do not think, therefore, that these acknowledgments of the late president’s imperfections were meant to state the obvious about the nature of human frailty. I think they were simply a nod to current political realities: the Aquino dynasty has become divisive, if not unpopular. Everybody knows that the late former president was a virtuous man who served his country with honor, but nobody wants to be accused of having drank the so-called Aquino Kool-Aid.
I think this speaks of the extent of the slander that Aquino – and indeed his entire family, to whom Filipinos owe the democratic space they now enjoy – had to silently suffer as forces of both illiberal populism and Marcos restorationism perpetuate false narratives to undermine the legitimacy of the liberal values that the Aquinos represent.
But this also comes from something deeper than the proliferation of vicious trolls. The hostility of the current political environment towards anything “yellow” is also a historical signpost: Aquino’s death came at a time when the nation’s schizophrenic emotional pendulum is once again swinging, to paraphrase a leading commentator, from a yearning for a democratic liberator to a pining for an illiberal strongman. In other words, we are seeing the unraveling of the EDSA Republic.
How did we even get here? This is a question that, I think, is best left to detached historians to study years from now. There are many factors that led to the recent unraveling of the national consensus behind the progressive and liberal values that heretofore governed the parameters of mainstream Filipino politics for the past three decades. I suspect, however, that future historians will conclude that the demystification of the Aquino dynasty helped hasten it.
In the era of EDSA, the Aquino family personified modern Filipino democracy. Of course, this is a simplistic narrative that has never squared entirely with reality. But social contracts are forged through myth-making. The people’s faith in common values is often predicated on their belief in the stories that underpin them. In the case of the EDSA Republic, these stories revolve around Aquino’s parents, Ninoy and Cory.
To understand this is to recall how the Marcos dictatorship used fear and intimidation as a lid over the pent-up frustrations of Filipinos, how this lid was blown away by an explosion of national emotions made possible only by Ninoy’s martyrdom, and how these emotions were channeled into unity by the widowed Cory through her grace, fortitude, and moral integrity. It was her personal dignity that lent legitimacy to the republic that was established on EDSA in 1986.
This is not just historiography; this is actual history. Consider, for instance, that the framers of the 1987 Constitution were all handpicked by Cory rather than elected nationally. Instead of calling for a constitutional convention that could have been hijacked by warlords and dynasts, Cory chose to appoint women and men of integrity to write the new constitution, and what they produced is one of the world’s most progressive charters. The legitimacy of the 1987 Constitution is therefore premised on the personal moral integrity of the woman who led the revolution that produced it, and ratified only by the people in a democratic plebiscite.
All Filipino presidents that followed Cory pledged fidelity to the values that underpin the democratic order she established, even if their actual faithfulness to this pledge varied. It might be hard for most young people today to imagine this, but there was a time when yellow was a unifying symbol of the Philippines.
Modern political scientists would frown upon such simplistic symbolism and the personalistic paradigm it implies. I argue, however, that the yellow mythology was the necessary glue that held the national consensus together pending the consolidation of democratic institutions. It is therefore unsurprising that powerful forces seeking to dismantle or erode these institutions began by diluting this yellow glue.
These forces sought to consistently discredit the Aquino myth amid the democratic rambunctions that camouflaged the painfully slow but steady economic development that the restoration of democracy jumpstarted. Democratic institutions struggled to cope with the realities that perpetuated persistent social inequities, and their thorough and deliberative nature made them unresponsive to the urgency of expeditiously responding to the needs of the common man. Meanwhile, populists backed by pro-Marcos revisionists consistently offered the alluring proposition that the nation’s complex problems can be solved with simplistic solutions.
In their impatience, Filipinos grew disillusioned with their new democracy, allowing illiberal forces to slowly erode the EDSA edifice. I remember coming to age at a time of intense political divisions emanating from persistent legitimacy crises that began in 2001 and was aggravated from 2004 onwards, and my political awakening being marked by household debates that would sometimes question the very legitimacy of the EDSA Republic itself. It was clear then that a national soul-searching was unfolding. The sense that the era of EDSA was coming to an end was palpable.
It was at that time of political dysfunction that Cory died in 2009. The public grief that ensued turned into national nostalgia for the values she represented. Around a million Filipinos escorted her to her grave, and in so doing renewed the legitimacy of the progressive political order that she created. It was in this context that his son became president in 2010.
Benigno S. Aquino III was therefore elected not only as an economic builder but also as a national symbol. But alas, he lacked the necessary emotion to harness the residual gravitas of his family’s legacy, or even to protect it. This, I truly believe, is the only imperfection about him that is worth mentioning, if only to prompt some national self-reflection.
By now, we have read sufficient explanations of the reason behind his stoic disposition. These explanations are of course valid, and they affirm the high standard of personal integrity that the late president demonstrated. Yet they do not change the fact that Aquino’s refusal to harness or even acknowledge national emotions, while no doubt an asset to a technocrat administering day-to-day governance, was a liability in terms of defending an unraveling social contract.
He was supposed to uphold the EDSA spirit, to stand as a symbol of that spirit, to maintain the subliminal link between him and his people, and to be a pastoral president. Yet he chose to be an aloof technocrat. At times of crises and disasters during his tenure, Filipinos were often left searching for a modicum of empathy from their president, and always to no avail. This led to what a former Aquino official describes as the divorce between the public and the Aquino family.
The same official believes that the final straw may have come in the President’s failure to appear at the Manila tarmac to welcome police officers who were killed in a botched anti-terrorist commando operation in the south in 2015. The late president thought that being there would have entailed logistical problems rather than solutions, and he would rather work behind the scenes to ensure that the martyrs’ families would be taken care of. But the people saw it differently: the Filipino nation had bravely stood with the Aquino family when Ninoy and Cory died, yet their son could not even muster enough empathy condole with the nation as it mourn its martyrs. The subliminal link was therefore broken.
Aquino remained moderately popular after that, but he ceased to be seen as heir to democratic symbols. Instead, he became simply a passing politician. Public opinion started to judge his presidency against the standards of an ordinary administration, rather than a transcendent one. In the absence of an appreciation of a bigger historical context, his administration’s petty failures were magnified, and its perceived ineptitude were exploited by those actively seeking to discredit the yellow coalition. In the end, they amplified a message that was obviously false but nonetheless resonated: thirty years of democracy have spawned nothing but callous incompetence, and the time has come for change.
The tragedy is that all of these resulted from the trust that Aquino placed in his people. He thought that the Filipino has matured enough to be patient, to trust their institutions, and to recognize that complex problems can only be solved with nuanced solutions that, in turn, require thorough and thoughtful deliberations that uphold reason over emotion. Indeed, this was evident in the message of the Daang Matuwid coalition in 2016: we are not there yet, but if we continue on this straight path, we will get there soon. But the Filipino has waited long enough, his needs remain in the here and now, and he simply does not have the time. If a transcendent, pastoral leader in the mold of Cory had made that call, the Filipino might have placed his trust.
But President Aquino did not choose to play that pastoral role. Instead, he chose to be a modern president for a people that remain unready to modernize.
Another take
is remarkabTle because it also ties in a theme Randy David had introduced more than a decade ago --that the Philippines has, and is, undergoing a Crisis of Modernity.
Speaking of writers from my former team, this came out ahead of my article and leaves me with no regrets for our time together in public service.
PNoy was My Boss: A delayed dispatch from an ex-Palace speechwriter | ABS-CBN News — news.abs-cbn.com “After I die, you can write whatever you want,” PNoy told his speechwriters. So here I am, Mr. President, writing the truth about what I saw.
This one came out after I sent out the newsletter but I am adding it here for completeness.
'Sa susunod na pagkikita': Former Palace speechwriter shares lessons from boss PNoy in heartfelt tribute — interaksyon.philstar.com A former speechwriter of the late Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III remembered the story of his store visit and the lessons he learned from the late president
And by my deputy, who is a poet, and who shared his thoughts in a bilingual essay:
[OPINION] The Dutiful President: Si Pangulong Noynoy Aquino at ang konsepto ng tungkulin — www.rappler.com Duty ko na igiit ang mga katotohanang ito: Mabuting tao si Noynoy Aquino. Dakila siyang pinuno. Iniwan niya ang bansa nang mas mainam kaysa natagpuan niya. Dalisay ang intensyon niya, at ginawa niya ang makakaya niya. Tinupad niya ang tungkulin niya.
After the funeral, an open letter from another of our speechwriters:
[OPINION] #SalamatPNoy — www.rappler.com '[S]a dulo ng lahat ng ito, nakakangiti pa rin ako. Dahil alam ko na naglingkod ako sa mabuting tao...'
Not finally because, and mea culpa for this oversight; there is this piece by Tina del Rosario another of our team:
Sights and Sounds
Mourning with social distancing means you ultimately must do it alone. What was stunning in 1983 was that solitary choice made in individual hearts: to simply dare to show sympathy. Today that decision is being made again heart by solitary heart on the route to Manila Memorial Park. Courage.
For a man who loved music so much, even official music had to withstand his scrutiny. Three pieces you may have just heard as his remains were laid to rest.
"We Say Mabuhay," composed by Tirso Cruz, Sr. Presidential anthem since the Quezon administration; played whenever the president arrives at a venue, as a welcome. Performed with preceding ruffles and flourishes by the PSG Band.
"Parangal sa Pangulo," composed by PSG bandleader Maj. Xavier Celestial to be played when military honors are rendered the president; first adopted under Pres. BSA3; performed by the PSG Band.
By tradition, presidents pick a song they like to be played: a) as they review the troops b) leave a venue (as recessional); BSA3 picked Raul Manglapus' Ateneo fight song, "Blue Eagle, the King" as his recessional. Performed by the PSG Band.
Additional Readings
From the start two passages that immediately came to mind upon the sudden news of President Aquino's passing; they'd long been favorites of mine. The first, written by Teodoro M. Locsin Sr., was a reflection on Ninoy Aquino's famous saying, "The Filipino is worth dying for." Locsin dared to ask, is he, really? The portion on cynicism in response to obvious goodness, has long struck me as encompassing a basic truth about human nature.
"Is he?" by Teodoro M. Locsin, August 23, 1986 « The Philippines Free Press Online — philippinesfreepress.wordpress.com
Here is a mystery of human nature that defies solution while humbling us. Evil we know, and understand, knowing our nature. But good is something else. As martyrdom, it has had, history shows, a fascination for some. The cynic would say it is mere inflation of the ego. But how explain the slow martyrdom of Damien who lived among lepers, ministering to their needs, and finding a mystical fulfillment when he could say: “We lepers.” Ego-inflation still? If that is the supreme desire, then the cynic might try life in a leper colony. He should never think more highly of himself then. But cynicism is only fear—fear of knowing what one is. To debase the good is to rise in self-estimation. If all men are vile, then you are not worse than you might think you are. You just know the human score. To face and recognize goodness is to sit in judgment on oneself. Avoid it.
Here is a passage and portion of this passage also came to mind. While in government, during a moment of reflection, a senior official turned to me and said, "we are all students of power," which is true; for me the journey began with the works of this writer, and his books are ones I have returned to time and again since I was a young teenager.
Ryszard Kapuscinski: — mlq3.tumblr.com
The Shah’s reflex was typical of all despots: Strike first and suppress, then think it over: What next? First, display muscle, make a show of strength, and later perhaps demonstrate you also have a brain. Despotic authority attaches great importance to being considered strong, and much less to being admired for its wisdom. Besides, what does wisdom mean to a despot? It means skill in the use of power. The wise despot knows when and how to strike. This continual display of power is necessary because, at root, any dictatorship appeals to the lowest instincts of the governed: fear, aggressiveness towards one’s neighbors, bootlicking. Terror most effectively excites such instincts, and fear of strength is the wellspring of terror.
A despot believes that man is an abject creature. Abject people fill his court and populate his environment. A terrorized society will behave like an unthinking, submissive mob for a long time. Feeding it is enough to make it obey. Provided with amusements, it’s happy. The rather small arsenal of political tricks has not changed in millennia. Thus, we have all the amateurs in politics, all the ones convinced they would know how to govern if only they had the authority. Yet surprising things can also happen. Here is a well-fed and well-entertained crowd that stops obeying. It begins to demand something more than entertainment. It wants freedom, it demands justice. The despot is stunned. He doesn’t know how to see a man in all his fullness and glory. In the end such a man threatens dictatorship, he is its enemy. So it gathers its strength and destroys him.
Although dictatorship despises the people, it takes pains to win its recognition. In spite of being lawless -or rather, because it is lawless- it strives for the appearance of legality. On this point it is exceedingly touchy, morbidly oversensitive. Moreover, it suffers from a feeling (however deeply hidden) of inferiority. So it spares no pains to demonstrate to itself and others the popular approval it enjoys. Even if this support is a mere charade, it feels satisfying. So what if it’s only an appearance? The world of dictatorship is full of appearances…
…The most difficult thing to do while living in a palace is to imagine a different life -for instance, your own life, but outside of and minus the palace. Toward the end, the ruler finds people willing to help him out. Many lives, regrettably, can be lost at such moments. The problem of honor in politics. Take de Gaulle --a man of honor. He lost a referendum, tidied up his desk, and left the palace, never to return. He wanted to govern only under the condition that the majority accept him. The moment the majority refused him their trust, he left. But how many are like him? The others will cry, but they won’t move; they’ll torment the nation, but they won’t budge. Thrown out one door, they sneak in through another; kicked down the stairs, they begin to crawl back up. They will excuse themselves, bow and scrape, lie and simper, provided they can stay --or provided they can return. They will hold out their hands --Look, no blood on them. But the very fact of having to show those hands covers them with the deepest shame. They will turn their pockets inside out --Look, there’s not much there. But the very fact of exposing their pockets -how humiliating! The Shah, when he left the palace, was crying. At the airport he was crying again. Later he explained in interviews how much money he had, and that it was less than people thought.
Here is the story by Napoleon Rama in his own words, which I mentioned in my article.
Nap Rama on Ninoy Aquino | Presidential Museum and Library — malacanang.gov.ph
When we were there at Camp Crame, there were about a thousand of us, Ninoy was the one who would greet us and would try to console us. He would say, “Never mind, you’re in good company, join the club.”
At about 10 o’clock General Nanañiego arrived. He said, “Alright, I’m going to call your names and these people will please come forward”. He was calling the name of Ninoy Aquino, Pepe Diokno, Mitra, Chino Roces, etcetera, myself… there were ten of us.
I said, “What are they going to do?” Ninoy said, “This is it. We’re going to be sent to Luneta to be shot.” Soliven was very depressed and told Ninoy, “Son-of-a-bitch, why do you talk like that?”. We were taken out and sent to another place which was the air-conditioned quarter. That was still in Camp Crame.
Ninoy was whistling and was happy as he told us, “You know what? there’s a bathroom in the other side of that building. I’m going to take a bath.”
Of course Soliven was angry, “You are a son-of-a-gun Ninoy… We are here, you know we are going to be killed and now you are making a joke of this thing.”
Ninoy said, “I have to take a bath. At least when I meet my Creator, I am clean.” That was the kind of fellow he was. He was unafraid. But I thought he was telling jokes to cheer up people. He was concerned about us.
Then we were taken out of Camp Crame at about 2 o’clock. We took a big bus, a Metrocom bus, and we had about 10 escorts, and so, we had this motorcade… everybody was looking at us…
Ninoy said, “If we reach Buendia and we turn right, we are going to Luneta to be shot, you can expect that.”
Somewhere in EDSA near Guadalupe there was this traffic and we were stopped. People were curious, cringing their necks and watching us. We rode in a big bus with big windows and some recognized us.
I was seated beside Ninoy and he said, “Look at our people. They know that we’ve been fighting for their rights, that we’ve risked our lives and that freedoms have been taken away from them, and yet, they are not doing anything… Look at them, they’re just watching us, curious, so, I don’t think there’s hope for the Filipino.”
His statement then was different from what he said later that the Filipino is worth dying for. Almost contradictory… but I could understand Ninoy’s feeling. Many of us there were trying to do something for the country. Because of this they arrested us. Ninoy half-expected, I think, that there should be some disturbances or reaction from the people, some kind of demonstration. But there they were just watching us not doing anything, so Ninoy was depressed.
When later we were brought to Fort Bonifacio we tended to agree with Max Soliven. Soliven reiterated his theory that Mr. Marcos had taken a measure of the Filipino people and found them wanting. That is why Marcos had the nerve to declare martial law and just abolish these institutions of freedom. He knew, according to the theory of Max Soliven, that the Filipinos would not do anything about it…
References
Because he was a man who took words seriously, his words:
The Thirty Best Speeches Of His Excellency Benigno S. Aquino III, President of the Philippines (Volume I: June 2010 to June 2012) : Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office : Internet Archive — archive.org The 30 Best Speeches of President Benigno S. Aquino is a straightforward collection of the most engaging, most outstanding remarks delivered by the President...
The Thirty Best Speeches Of His Excellency Benigno S. Aquino III, President of the Philippines (Volume II: June 2012 to June 2014) : Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office : Internet Archive — archive.org The 30 Best Speeches of President Benigno S. Aquino is a straightforward collection of the most engaging, most outstanding remarks delivered by the President...
And because he took facts seriously, the facts.
Achievements of the Aquino Administration 2010-2016 : Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office : Internet Archive — archive.org The Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office has collated the achievements of the Aquino administration since 2010. Review the...
2016 & Beyond : Presidential Communications Development and Strategic Planning Office : Internet Archive — archive.org 2016 & Beyond: The Aquino administration's projects that will be completed after the term.
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Manolo Quezon is #TheExplainer Podcast • A podcast on Anchor — anchor.fm What was my show on ANC from 2006-10 and again 2016-18 is now a home-grown podcast. Back then, as now, I felt it was important to explain why issues are issues. A dive into not only the topics of the day, but topics that come back from time to time. Join me for conversations or reveries on topics of the moment, or things, trends, even places, I'd like to talk to you about.
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