Prayer concert held vs Marcos burial
CONCERT SIDESHOW Former President Benigno Aquino III is greeted by supporters who want to have a selfie with him during the Prayer for 8 concert at the Lapu-Lapu monument at Rizal Park in Manila. —GRIG C. MONTEGRANDE
Former President Benigno Aquino III and Interior Secretary Mar Roxas on Sunday night joined a prayer concert at Manila’s Rizal Park purportedly so that Supreme Court justices would see the light and reject the burial of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos at Libingan ng mga Bayani.
The high court is expected to issue a decision on Tuesday on whether to allow the burial.
“It will be a defining moment for our history,” singer Noel Cabangon said in an interview. He said the decision would “show how we value the lives of so many people killed during the dictatorship.”
Cabangon is one of the performers at the event that drew musicians, singers, artists, poets and several hundred followers of Aquino’s “yellow” brigade at the forefront of the opposition to the Marcos reburial.
“I don’t even want to think that [the court will allow it]. But if it does,” said singer Jim Paredes, shaking his head, “Are we a serious nation of laws?”
Aquino and Roxas arrived with Sen. Francis Pangilinan. All three were in white shirts, following the chosen fighting color of the organizers.
Asked if he felt the people were already abandoning the color yellow, Aquino replied that by choosing the color white, the people were emphasizing that the fight against the Marcos burial “is not a fight only between two families.”
Aquino reiterated that the fight for democracy was not only between his family and the Marcoses, saying that many families sacrificed during the dictatorship in the struggle to regain the country’s freedom.
Aquino’s father, opposition leader Sen. Ninoy Aquino, was assassinated in 1983 that became the tipping point for the people to rise against the dictator.
Yellow became the political color that represented the fight for democracy, but it was also deeply associated with the Aquino family.
