What would Ninoy do?

While on exile in the United States in the early 1980s, Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, Jr went to Nicaragua, the Central American country then ruled by the Sandinistas, a popular socialist movement that had a few years back toppled a corrupt dictatorial regime. Ninoy was looking for models with which to build a new nation should he be afforded the chance to return to the Philippines and be part of post-Marcos government. He had gone so far to the Left that he was looking at what Cuba and Nicaragua were doing successfully with their farmers and workers. All these came to naught that fateful day of Aug. 21, 1983 as he fell from assassins’ bullets.

The time of his fateful journey back to the Philippines, Ninoy’s outlook in life had drastically changed. Had Ferdinand Marcos not imposed Martial Law and imprisoned him and countless other traditional politicians in 1972, it would have been Ninoy’s turn at the helm. And he would have ended just like every president that went before him: so much hope at the start only to lose sight of the goal midstream due to politics and then lose out in the end. The pattern had been akin to the rigodon de honor, that classic dance Malacañang denizens savored at every ball where Manila’s elite would hobnob with ambassadors from foreign countries. Philippine governance was nothing more than the politics of the “ins” and the “outs” of Malacañang, each waiting for each other’s turn. Before Marcos’ reelection in 1969, no president had enjoyed a second term. And had it been Ninoy’s turn, he would surely have suffered the same fate.

But martial law changed Ninoy’s prospects and the way he looked at political power from then on. He saw how power had corrupted what was a very promising Marcos presidency that had an awe-inspiring, spectacular vision of building a new society armed with a seven-point industrial development program akin to that carried out almost at the same time by South Korea, which was then also under martial law under Gen. Park Chung Hee.

By the time of Ninoy’s exile in 1980, South Korea had started to move to developed nation status, with seven great (not just big or huge, but great) industrial projects that had resulted in the birth of the humongous Hyundai Corp., among others. The Philippines, on the other hand, was going nowhere. In the mid-’70s, Marcos had started building the same industries that South Korea pursued, coupled with the Mactan Export Processing Zone to entice multinational companies to invest in factories free of labor unions. Marcos had even boldly ventured into nuclear power via the now-mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant. And yet a financial crisis loomed in the horizon: the Philippine was in a debt trap that its production output could not overcome. Economists immediately saw the divergence between South Korea and the Philippines. The former had started solving the age-old problem of poverty via huge investments in export industries, while the latter was now facing an armed rebellion in the countryside amid a ballooning foreign debt and a large population now below the poverty line. South Korea was successfully engendering a large middle class, while the Philippine middle class was thinning every day.

What would Ninoy have done in this respect? Would he have followed Marcos’ formula minus the brazen corruption in the corridors of power?

Alas, Ninoy was never given the chance to show what he would have done. But his serious attempts at studying socialist principles applied to an otherwise capitalist country like the Philippines and his speeches attacking the corruption eating into the presidency and the nation at large provides us some glimpse at the dilemma that he understood faced him should he become president after Marcos went.

His wife Corazon Aquino lived out a life free of corruption herself but history will be a harsher judge when it comes to her cohorts. More importantly, she could have pursued genuine agrarian reform to save vast sections of the poor but she held her horses amid a growing opposition from a pre-martial law type of legislature that she restored, despite its obvious defects. With opposition from the landed gentry that lorded over the House of Representatives, it took years for a Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Law to pass and by then it was so watered down that even today, farmers still clamor for agrarian justice.

Comes now the presidency of his son and namesake, Benigno Aquino III. I think it legitimate to imageine if President Noynoy Aquino in his quiet moments alone would ask himself, “What would dad have done if he were in my place?”

Now entering the period of his final three years in power no radical shift from the past to show for it, Noynoy is being challenged by the very people who put him into power to end the pork barrel system. This comes amidst the P10 billion in pork barrel funds that have allegedly been cornered by one Janet Lim-Napoles. What would Ninoy do if he were here? More to the point, if Ninoy bandied the slogan “Tungo sa matuwid na daan,” would he let go of political debts and end the corrupt-ridden pork barrel system?

The straight path has suddenly entered rough and unchartered territory, one that will hurt a lot of the powerful. Will Noynoy bulldoze his way to a successful presidency even if he runs over narrow and utterly selfish political interests? The years of exile in the U.S. had changed Ninoy and I believe this is what he would have done. Let us pray that like his father, Noynoy will too.

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Uuniversity of San Carlos (USC) Museum invites everyone to the opening at 1 o’clock today of the exhibit entitled USC Arkeo@50: Celebrating the Pioneers of Archaeology at USC. The exhibit, at the museum’s Institutional History Gallery, pays homage to the pioneers like Fr. Rudolf Rahmann, Dr. Karl Hutterer, Dr. Rosa C.P. Tenazas, Dr. Marcelino Maceda, Dr. Rogelio Lopez, Prof. Lionel Chiong, Leonisa Ramas and a few others who paved the way for archaeology not just in USC but also in southern Philippines. The exhibit will feature artifacts from the museum storage on display for the first time. The event runs until Sept. 21 and is part of the USC Week celebrations.