“The circus is coming to town”
OUT of town and in another ASEAN member country where Alice Guo seems to have evaporated, we remember as we write this article, the events 41 years ago when we were waiting at the Manila International Airport with banners proclaiming “Ninoy, Hindi Ka Nag-iisa” for the return of friend in exile, Benigno Aquino Jr.
In the airport vicinity with a few workers hiding banners and placards underneath a rubberized plastic “trapal” in our delivery truck, all proclaiming the welcome slogan for Ninoy, we waited for the throng of supporters from the capital region and nearby provinces who were informed two days before their hero was arriving noon of Aug. 21, 1983.
I was then the deputy secretary general of UNIDO, and weeks before, at my wife’s birthday party in our Tagaytay house, we told Doy Laurel, Tessie Aquino Oreta and Eva Estrada Kalaw that we would use the slogan “Hindi ka Nag-iisa” for the homecoming originally scheduled for Aug. 7.
It was lifted from an ear insert in Joe Burgos’ We Forum, a totally unrelated meme, as we would call it these days, shown to me by Erik, youngest son of our secretary general Rene Espina, which I thought was most appropriate for a man coming home to an uncertain future in the land of his birth.
Little did I then realize the slogan would get a nation on fire after the dastardly assassination at the tarmac.
Tita Eva Kalaw and her faithful girl Friday, Fely Reyes Laurel, would also combine the slogan with an American folk ditty titled “Tie a Yellow Ribbon” which gave birth to “yellow” as the color of protest in those “revolutionary” days that presaged the end of authoritarian rule.
Earlier, in 1978, I was driving my Mercedes Benz 250 through the streets of Manila along with three friends flashing the L (for Laban) hand sign while thousands lined up making all sorts of protest noises on the eve of the Interim Batasang Pambansa elections where the imprisoned Ninoy led a motley group who dared to run in what would turn out to be a sham exercise.
Later that night, we hied off to another friend’s house, where a jaded Chinoy friend remarked that the following day, things would be back to square one, and the dictator would still be in power.
These days, seeing how little our unequal society has changed after the heady days of Feb. 1986 when Edsa One toppled Marcos the First, and after Bagong Pilipinas revised Bagong Lipunan a mere generation and a half ago, one could only sigh in woeful regret that what my friend said in 1978 when Laban was born, would ring true 46 years later.
As Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr in an epigram remarked — “plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose” (the more things change, the more it is the same), we are where we are today because we as a people have chosen the same kind of leaders throughout four decades under political, social and economic systems that have hardly improved.
Thus yesterday, Aug. 21, a national holiday whose commemoration has been officially moved to Friday the 23rd to conform to “holiday economics” ostensibly some of the better-heeled can hie off to weekend vacations and thus boost domestic tourism, we are met by two news items, one political, the other a national shame.
Guo Hua Ping, a.k.a. Alice Guo, former mayor of Bamban, Tarlac, has flown the coop, having left the country as far back as June 18, even as our authorities have been supposedly looking for her. What a shame.
“Heads will roll,” an angry President Marcos the Second thundered. Abangan!
Meanwhile too, our speculated list of senatorial candidates of the Bagong Pilipinas coalition has been unveiled, just one name added to a speculative list first published in this paper and in this column (July 4, “Let the games begin”).
Of course, the de-frosted Partido Federal says it’s not a done deal till the president mismo says so.
To our list of 11, Makati Mayor Abby Binay has been added, attributed to the NPC of which she is a new member, and whose quota includes NPC chairman Tito Sotto, boxing great Manny Pacquiao and Probinsyano from Quiapo Lito Lapid.
An independent Ping Lacson claims he has not yet made a final decision to run or not to, despite the persistent calls of partner TitoSen.
So there it is: incumbents Pia Cayetano, Imee Marcos, Lito Lapid, Francis Tolentino and Bong Revilla, with come-backing SP Tito Sotto, perhaps independent Ping Lacson, the Pacman, with newcomers Benhur Abalos, Erwin Tulfo, Camille Villar to replace her mom and join her brother Mark, and Abby Binay.
The circus is coming to town.
