The trouble with practical jokes is that they very often get elected—Will Rogers.
Look at the senatorial line-ups of the Liberal Party and the United Nationalist Alliance: A lot of them are jokes foisted upon the electorate.
If you’re an intelligent voter—and I presume you are because you read the INQUIRER— you will know who among the senatorial candidates in the LP and UNA are jokes.
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I agree with retired Maj. Gen. Ramon Montaño, now a senatorial candidate, that Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile’s claim that he was ambushed on the night preceding the declaration of martial law “defies logic.”
Montaño said he was part of the team that investigated the supposed ambush.
Enrile’s car was raked with bullets, but the bullet holes were aligned.
Apart from that, nobody in the car was hit, according to the former chief of the defunct Philippine Constabulary-Integrated National Police.
“It defies logic,” he said.
I will confirm Montaño’s statement.
What he said that Enrile, the former defense minister under the dictator Ferdinand Marcos, was not ambushed is true.
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Montaño said that he stopped reading Enrile’s autobiography, “Juan Ponce Enrile: A Memoir,” after he came to that part where the Senate President recounted his supposed ambush.
I did the same thing the retired general did. I put down the book when I came to the part when Enrile was narrating his recollection of the ambush.
During the Edsa Revolution in February 1986, I was there to cover the event from start to finish as a reporter for the Manila Bulletin.
I recall Enrile telling reporters during an interview at his office at the Ministry of National Defense in Camp Aguinaldo that his “ambush” was staged to justify the declaration of martial law.
The interview took place into the second day of the Edsa Revolution.
During the same interview, I also remember then Defense Minister Enrile saying that he helped Marcos manipulate the election returns in Cagayan, his home province, during the snap presidential election of 1985 that pitted Marcos against Corazon “Cory” Aquino, the widow of Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, who eventually became President.
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I’m surprised President Noy didn’t include Montaño in the Liberal Party senatorial line-up.
The President’s favorite candidates—like his cousin Bam Aquino, who’s wet behind the ears—can’t hold a candle to Montaño in terms of wisdom through experience.
A loyalist of President Noy’s mother, Cory, Montaño fought off several coup attempts.
He was a special assistant on military affairs to then President Ramos after he retired from the service.
Montaño’s experience and wisdom would be of very good use in the Senate, which in ancient Greece was a body composed of men of wisdom.
Several simpletons, one of them a caregiver, will be sitting in the Senate after the midterm elections.