By | Dec. 16, 2013 at 12:01am
It is not easy to frame this question, but the recently released video recording of the Secretary of Interior and Local Government Manuel Roxas II talking down to Tacloban Mayor Alfred Romualdez in the wake of the death and destruction wrought by the super typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan compels us to do so.
In that conversation, the mayor, who nearly lost his life in the typhoon, pleads for the administration’s help in recovering the dead and the missing and caring for the wounded and the displaced in his city.
But Roxas tells him “to understand that you are a Romualdez while the President is an Aquino,” and that the national government could not do anything for his city unless he first declares that he was no longer able to run the city and hands over its control to the secretary.
This particular quote is by far the most chilling of all the lamentable quotes that have come down from the administration during this calamity.
At a time when foreign governments were sending ships, planes, and men and all sorts of material aid even before the government could ask them, Aquino’s alter ego of all alter egos was telling the mayor he was the wrong person to ask the central government for help because he had the wrong family name.
As though we were living under the Nazis when one’s Jewish family name became one’s passport to Auschwitz or Dachau.
Nothing more cold-blooded, nothing more malignant, nothing more insensate, nothing more revealing of man’s inhumanity to man had sought to defile the world’s generous response to our disaster-stricken countrymen.
Roxas’ statement denies all notions of “inclusive” and non-discriminatory response to disaster and provides, on the contrary, a partisan template for small-town politicians in the distribution of relief goods to their constituents.
It belies altogether Aquino’s well-applauded line in his first demagogic speech in Congress: “Kayo ang aking boss”----“You (the people) are my masters.”
At the same time it tries to resurrect the old oligarchic divide between the “we” and the “they,” long after its original overlords, the “caciques” of the old sugar estates, had gone, and the country had ceased to be one big foreign agricultural plantation.
It seeks to perpetuate one of the most pernicious causes of social, political and economic inequality, which had sparked violent revolutions before, and only recently, the “Occupy Movement.”
Roxas first complained that the video recording had been “spliced.” After that excuse failed to fly, he retreated and complained that he was being quoted out of context.
But it’s all on YouTube. No one has added or taken away a single word from his actual statement. And yet he’s being taken out of context? In what context should or could his statement be read? Neither he nor Malacanan has offered any idea of how to do it.
As the bad press on the Tacloban video escalated, Aquino flew to Tokyo to attend the 40th ASEAN-Japan Commemorative Summit. There, he defended Roxas before a less than informed audience, and turned on his critics at home.
This was the second time he had publicly done so within a short time. A couple of weeks earlier, he complained before a group of women journalists that there was too much negative reporting on the government’s response to the Tacloban-Guiuan disaster.
He minced no words before his Tokyo crowd. “Those critics already have an industry in the Philippines,” he said. “It’s easier for them to write and hit anyone. They should take our place and try to do what they can. The problem is they don’t want to run (for public office).”
Then he invoked God’s wrath: “Bahala na si Lord sa inyo, busy ako”---“Let the Lord take care of you, I’m busy.”
A critic should try to avoid responding directly to a president’s public protestations. But the truth must be told even at the risk of pushing certain boundaries. No critic could be happy to see that some people who could run government much better are writing commentaries instead, while those who have demonstrated total incompetence are the ones running it.
But there are times when even a mere columnist is tempted to say to B.S. III what Lincoln was known to have said to his generals during the Civil War: “If General (George B.) McClellan (the commander US Army of the Potomac) does not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it for a while.”
But by what right does Aquino now invoke God’s name to censure those who merely want to see him to do his job right? He never took things of God seriously before: a baptized Catholic, one of his first acts as president was to shut down the Malacanang Catholic chapel, where Cory, his president-mother, used to hear Mass, and which even Fidel V. Ramos, a Protestant, had the nobility and prudence to keep.
Aquino is known to attend Mass at some church weddings, but only to go out before it ends to smoke or chat or breathe some air. And lest we forget: Aquino used his “pork” to bribe Congress not only to impeach and remove Chief Justice Renato Corona from the Supreme Court, but also to railroad the foreign-dictated, anti-Catholic and constitutionally infirm Reproductive Health Law, which prescribes birth control to all and requires all Catholics to fund with their tax money a state contraceptives program that offends the teaching of their Faith.
Even so, Aquino should have at least remembered what the Second Commandment forbids: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”
What makes him feel he is above all the rules that are meant to keep society together? What makes him feel the Aquino clan is above everybody else? Or to quote Roxas, what puts him above a Romualdez?
This is obviously a political question, since in the eyes of the Creator we are all made of the same dust, to which we shall all return.
The histories of the Aquino and Romualdez families do not intersect except tangentially after Imelda Romualdez married Ferdinand Marcos. Both families produced distinguished members who made their own distinct contributions to the nation.
Aside from Imelda, who served as First Lady, Metro Manila governor and Minister for Human Settlements for at least 20 years, the Romualdezes produced Norberto, a well-known writer, statesman and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, who also became known as the “Father of the Law on the National Language”; Daniel, a distinguished and incorrupt Speaker of the House of Representatives; Eduardo, a highly respected and competent Secretary of Finance and ambassador; and Benjamin, a well-loved governor and ambassador, father of Leyte’s fiercely independent Rep. Ferdinand Martin Romualdez.
The Aquinos for their part had Servillano Aquino for their patriarch, a Filipino general who fought in the war of independence against Spain, and became a delegate to the Malolos Convention. His son, Benigno S. Aquino Sr., the father of the late former Senator “Ninoy” and the President’s grandfather, served as member of Laurel’s Japanese puppet government, fled to Tokyo before Japan surrendered, was arrested and jailed at Sugamo Prison, then was repatriated to Manila on Aug. 25, 1946 to be tried for treason. He died on Dec. 20, 1947 while watching a boxing match at the Rizal Memorial Coliseum.
Apparently Ninoy wanted to cleanse his father’s record of any stigma of collaboration by serving the Americans at an early age. In 1957, during the Permesta revolt in Indonesia, the young Ninoy worked with the CIA to set up a clandestine radio station for the anti-Sukarno rebels, ship guns to them from a third country, and open up Hacienda Luisita for the training of rebel Indonesian pilots. This story is told in the book, “Subversion as Foreign Policy” by Audrey Kahin and Geore Mc T Kahin, quoting as their source the late former Sen. Jose Wright Diokno.
Nothing comparable appears on the record of the Romualdezes or even Marcos. And until the Marcos presidency no sign conflict existed between the Aquinos and the Romualdezes. The conflict was between Ninoy and Marcos, and it came in two stages.
On August 21, 1971, the Liberal Party rally at Plaza Miranda was bombed, resulting in eight people killed, and 120 others injured. Among the casualties were the top leaders of the LP opposition, except for Ninoy, the LP secretary-general, who was mysteriously absent.
Aquino and everyone else, including the entire national media, blamed the crime on Marcos, who blamed it on the communists as he suspended the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. Years later the communists would finally admit it: they were the ones who did it.
On Sept. 21, 1972, Marcos proclaimed martial law all over the Philippines. It was his constitutional response to the communist insurgency, which had come knocking at the doors of Malacanan Palace. Aquino was among those arrested and charged with murder, illegal possession of firearms and subversion.
He was tried by a military tribunal, whose authority he refused to recognize. On Nov. 25, 1977, found guilty as charged. The penalty was death. In March 1980, however, he suffered a mild heart attack. Marcos granted him leave to go to the US for a heart bypass.
In early 1983, Aquino sent word he was coming home. Marcos, through his Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile, tried to stop him, saying there was a serious threat on his life, which the government was still trying to neutralize. Ninoy was determined and could not be stopped.
On August 21, 1983, he came home on board a commercial flight from Taiwan, and was gunned down before touching the tarmac.
That assassination tore the nation apart. Again, the onus of guilt instantly fell on Marcos. But he was much too intelligent not to know that any harm that would come to Aquino would be blamed on his government. He was pilloried in the press. The members of the airport security detail were all prosecuted and convicted of murder, but no mastermind was identified.
Cory Aquino stayed in office for six and a half years without exerting any decisive effort to uncover the mastermind. And her son, B. S. III, has been in office since 2010 without any visible effort to find out who really ordered his father’s death.
This has given rise to speculations, supported by various unverified stories, that Aquino had come home purposely to die (allegedly because of a terminal illness), in order precisely to bring down Marcos, make Cory president, and rearrange the fabric of Philippine foreign policy which Marcos had tried to rework during his long years in office.
Until we get to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about why Aquino was killed and who ordered his assassination, we cannot answer the question at the beginning of this article. It would be nothing but cheap demagoguery for B. S. III to proclaim his parents as heroes and the Aquinos as a chosen clan, and to bash Marcos and all those related to him at every opportunity he can.
fstatad@gmail.com
It is not easy to frame this question, but the recently released video recording of the Secretary of Interior and Local Government Manuel Roxas II talking down to Tacloban Mayor Alfred Romualdez in the wake of the death and destruction wrought by the super typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan compels us to do so.
In that conversation, the mayor, who nearly lost his life in the typhoon, pleads for the administration’s help in recovering the dead and the missing and caring for the wounded and the displaced in his city.
But Roxas tells him “to understand that you are a Romualdez while the President is an Aquino,” and that the national government could not do anything for his city unless he first declares that he was no longer able to run the city and hands over its control to the secretary.
This particular quote is by far the most chilling of all the lamentable quotes that have come down from the administration during this calamity.
At a time when foreign governments were sending ships, planes, and men and all sorts of material aid even before the government could ask them, Aquino’s alter ego of all alter egos was telling the mayor he was the wrong person to ask the central government for help because he had the wrong family name.
As though we were living under the Nazis when one’s Jewish family name became one’s passport to Auschwitz or Dachau.
Nothing more cold-blooded, nothing more malignant, nothing more insensate, nothing more revealing of man’s inhumanity to man had sought to defile the world’s generous response to our disaster-stricken countrymen.
Roxas’ statement denies all notions of “inclusive” and non-discriminatory response to disaster and provides, on the contrary, a partisan template for small-town politicians in the distribution of relief goods to their constituents.
It belies altogether Aquino’s well-applauded line in his first demagogic speech in Congress: “Kayo ang aking boss”----“You (the people) are my masters.”
At the same time it tries to resurrect the old oligarchic divide between the “we” and the “they,” long after its original overlords, the “caciques” of the old sugar estates, had gone, and the country had ceased to be one big foreign agricultural plantation.
It seeks to perpetuate one of the most pernicious causes of social, political and economic inequality, which had sparked violent revolutions before, and only recently, the “Occupy Movement.”
Roxas first complained that the video recording had been “spliced.” After that excuse failed to fly, he retreated and complained that he was being quoted out of context.
But it’s all on YouTube. No one has added or taken away a single word from his actual statement. And yet he’s being taken out of context? In what context should or could his statement be read? Neither he nor Malacanan has offered any idea of how to do it.
As the bad press on the Tacloban video escalated, Aquino flew to Tokyo to attend the 40th ASEAN-Japan Commemorative Summit. There, he defended Roxas before a less than informed audience, and turned on his critics at home.
This was the second time he had publicly done so within a short time. A couple of weeks earlier, he complained before a group of women journalists that there was too much negative reporting on the government’s response to the Tacloban-Guiuan disaster.
He minced no words before his Tokyo crowd. “Those critics already have an industry in the Philippines,” he said. “It’s easier for them to write and hit anyone. They should take our place and try to do what they can. The problem is they don’t want to run (for public office).”
Then he invoked God’s wrath: “Bahala na si Lord sa inyo, busy ako”---“Let the Lord take care of you, I’m busy.”
A critic should try to avoid responding directly to a president’s public protestations. But the truth must be told even at the risk of pushing certain boundaries. No critic could be happy to see that some people who could run government much better are writing commentaries instead, while those who have demonstrated total incompetence are the ones running it.
But there are times when even a mere columnist is tempted to say to B.S. III what Lincoln was known to have said to his generals during the Civil War: “If General (George B.) McClellan (the commander US Army of the Potomac) does not want to use the army, I would like to borrow it for a while.”
But by what right does Aquino now invoke God’s name to censure those who merely want to see him to do his job right? He never took things of God seriously before: a baptized Catholic, one of his first acts as president was to shut down the Malacanang Catholic chapel, where Cory, his president-mother, used to hear Mass, and which even Fidel V. Ramos, a Protestant, had the nobility and prudence to keep.
Aquino is known to attend Mass at some church weddings, but only to go out before it ends to smoke or chat or breathe some air. And lest we forget: Aquino used his “pork” to bribe Congress not only to impeach and remove Chief Justice Renato Corona from the Supreme Court, but also to railroad the foreign-dictated, anti-Catholic and constitutionally infirm Reproductive Health Law, which prescribes birth control to all and requires all Catholics to fund with their tax money a state contraceptives program that offends the teaching of their Faith.
Even so, Aquino should have at least remembered what the Second Commandment forbids: “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.”
What makes him feel he is above all the rules that are meant to keep society together? What makes him feel the Aquino clan is above everybody else? Or to quote Roxas, what puts him above a Romualdez?
This is obviously a political question, since in the eyes of the Creator we are all made of the same dust, to which we shall all return.
The histories of the Aquino and Romualdez families do not intersect except tangentially after Imelda Romualdez married Ferdinand Marcos. Both families produced distinguished members who made their own distinct contributions to the nation.
Aside from Imelda, who served as First Lady, Metro Manila governor and Minister for Human Settlements for at least 20 years, the Romualdezes produced Norberto, a well-known writer, statesman and Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, who also became known as the “Father of the Law on the National Language”; Daniel, a distinguished and incorrupt Speaker of the House of Representatives; Eduardo, a highly respected and competent Secretary of Finance and ambassador; and Benjamin, a well-loved governor and ambassador, father of Leyte’s fiercely independent Rep. Ferdinand Martin Romualdez.
The Aquinos for their part had Servillano Aquino for their patriarch, a Filipino general who fought in the war of independence against Spain, and became a delegate to the Malolos Convention. His son, Benigno S. Aquino Sr., the father of the late former Senator “Ninoy” and the President’s grandfather, served as member of Laurel’s Japanese puppet government, fled to Tokyo before Japan surrendered, was arrested and jailed at Sugamo Prison, then was repatriated to Manila on Aug. 25, 1946 to be tried for treason. He died on Dec. 20, 1947 while watching a boxing match at the Rizal Memorial Coliseum.
Apparently Ninoy wanted to cleanse his father’s record of any stigma of collaboration by serving the Americans at an early age. In 1957, during the Permesta revolt in Indonesia, the young Ninoy worked with the CIA to set up a clandestine radio station for the anti-Sukarno rebels, ship guns to them from a third country, and open up Hacienda Luisita for the training of rebel Indonesian pilots. This story is told in the book, “Subversion as Foreign Policy” by Audrey Kahin and Geore Mc T Kahin, quoting as their source the late former Sen. Jose Wright Diokno.
Nothing comparable appears on the record of the Romualdezes or even Marcos. And until the Marcos presidency no sign conflict existed between the Aquinos and the Romualdezes. The conflict was between Ninoy and Marcos, and it came in two stages.
On August 21, 1971, the Liberal Party rally at Plaza Miranda was bombed, resulting in eight people killed, and 120 others injured. Among the casualties were the top leaders of the LP opposition, except for Ninoy, the LP secretary-general, who was mysteriously absent.
Aquino and everyone else, including the entire national media, blamed the crime on Marcos, who blamed it on the communists as he suspended the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus. Years later the communists would finally admit it: they were the ones who did it.
On Sept. 21, 1972, Marcos proclaimed martial law all over the Philippines. It was his constitutional response to the communist insurgency, which had come knocking at the doors of Malacanan Palace. Aquino was among those arrested and charged with murder, illegal possession of firearms and subversion.
He was tried by a military tribunal, whose authority he refused to recognize. On Nov. 25, 1977, found guilty as charged. The penalty was death. In March 1980, however, he suffered a mild heart attack. Marcos granted him leave to go to the US for a heart bypass.
In early 1983, Aquino sent word he was coming home. Marcos, through his Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile, tried to stop him, saying there was a serious threat on his life, which the government was still trying to neutralize. Ninoy was determined and could not be stopped.
On August 21, 1983, he came home on board a commercial flight from Taiwan, and was gunned down before touching the tarmac.
That assassination tore the nation apart. Again, the onus of guilt instantly fell on Marcos. But he was much too intelligent not to know that any harm that would come to Aquino would be blamed on his government. He was pilloried in the press. The members of the airport security detail were all prosecuted and convicted of murder, but no mastermind was identified.
Cory Aquino stayed in office for six and a half years without exerting any decisive effort to uncover the mastermind. And her son, B. S. III, has been in office since 2010 without any visible effort to find out who really ordered his father’s death.
This has given rise to speculations, supported by various unverified stories, that Aquino had come home purposely to die (allegedly because of a terminal illness), in order precisely to bring down Marcos, make Cory president, and rearrange the fabric of Philippine foreign policy which Marcos had tried to rework during his long years in office.
Until we get to know the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about why Aquino was killed and who ordered his assassination, we cannot answer the question at the beginning of this article. It would be nothing but cheap demagoguery for B. S. III to proclaim his parents as heroes and the Aquinos as a chosen clan, and to bash Marcos and all those related to him at every opportunity he can.
fstatad@gmail.com
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