“Interesting times, dangerous even”
Marking his birthday, for the first time outside homeland, must have been painful for the former president.
In the solitude of his 15 square meter prison cell, where he marked his 80th milestone, the patriarch of one of the country’s most formidable political dynasties must have ruminated about the ups and downs of his life.
Little did he dream as mayor of Davao City that he would one day be drafted to run for the presidency, and win with a commanding lead over some of the country’s famous political brands – a third generation Mar of the Third Republic’s first president, a foundling Grace whose political capital stemmed from the popularity of the King of Philippine Movies, and a vice-president Jojo who like him began his public service odyssey after the father of today’s leader was deposed by “people powe.r.
Little did Duterte think, at the pinnacle of presidential power from June 30, 2016 to the same day in 2022, that he would one day be sent not just into exile, but detention in a cold and cramped cell awaiting trial for “crimes against humanity.”
Neither did he realize until the second year of the current leader’s reign that he would be sent to Den Haag posthaste and under conspired stealth by the man whose victory was sealed by political marriage to his own highly popular daughter.
And neither did daughter think that this was how an “amiable” political husband would treat her and her family after she acceded to that marriage which formed a much-touted “Uniteam.”
The saga of that hastily-wrought “Uniteam” that was just as hastily sundered by intrigues, greed and ambition, would be a great subject for a political novel.
For now, one could graph that political saga and its inflection points, as differential calculus would to macro-economic data, but the inside story would take years to unravel, well beyond the fate of today’s leader and his formidable ally turned forever enemy.
This writer recalls events in 1983 when, by the third week of July, as deputy secretary general of Doy Laurel’s UNIDO, we learned from the exiled Ninoy Aquino that he would soon be returning to his homeland.
One late July afternoon, Erik, son of our secretary-general, former Sen. Rene Espina, came to my office with a tiny caricature lifted from We Forum where a totally unrelated caricature was captioned “Hindi ka Nag-iisa.”
Immediately, I knew I had a slogan with which to welcome Ninoy Aquino, originally scheduled Aug. 7, later moved to Aug. 21. At a small party to celebrate my wife’s birthday on July 31 at our house in Tagaytay, I unveiled the slogan to Doy Laurel, Eva Estrada-Kalaw and Ninoy’s youngest sister, Tessie Aquino Oreta.
Given a thumbs up by Laurel, I had hundreds of placards printed along with a dozen coco-cloth streamers to welcome Ninoy upon arrival at the airport.
The rest is historic tragedy evolving into the ouster of the Marcos patriarch and into exile from what he thought would be his native Paoay into foreign Hawaii.
Last Friday, as hundreds of thousands gathered in several cities around the country, from Davao to Manila and beyond, in rallies by OFWs in Europe, Canada, Japan and the US of A, demanding that Rodrigo Roa Duterte be brought home, with some proudly declaring that “We are not Filipinos for nothing,” a statement of defiance couched in nationalistic pride, I recalled the heady days of the two and a half years of struggle from the death of Ninoy to the military uprising that installed Cory Aquino to power after a contested snap election.
The scenes of such protest rallies came to me like “déjà vu.”
Oh well, the yellow-pinks who chafed at a simple remark of the patriarch’s daughter Inday Sara where she warned her father about going home and being “Ninoy-ed,” an analogy not about martyrdom but simply — death, raised the hackles of the narrow-minded who considered it blasphemous.
I don’t mind if the pundit-keepers of the dying yellow flame condemn me for appropriating “Hindi ka Nag-iisa” to describe the fervor of fellow Filipinos in protesting the surrender of a beloved president to a foreign tribunal we are no longer part of.
For that is what I feel — an independent nation should not, should never, abdicate its just rights, indeed its very sovereignty, and accept to the whole world that it has a failed judicial system incapable of rendering justice, and admitting so, even unto a former president whose immunity from suit has expired.
Still, this is just the beginning of a continuing power play, with several inflection points, from Duterte’s “kidnap” and surrender to the waiting arms of the ICC, thence the protest rallies on his 80th birthday, to the mid-term elections 42 days hence, to the SONA, the Senate trial, and many more.
Interesting times, dangerous even.