WITH the campaign period for national candidates in full swing and with only three months to go before Election Day, I am reminded of the story of a man who died, and soon found himself before St. Peter.
The man asked St. Peter where he was going. “Well, son,” St. Peter said, “you have a choice between Heaven and Hell.” The man replied: “Since I have a choice I’d like to see Hell first.” St. Peter then pointed to an elevator.
That man took the elevator down to Hell.
When the elevator door opened, the man was greeted by a handsome man in a tuxedo, accompanied by a bevy of beautiful girls in bikini.
As the man was escorted around, he saw bacchanalian feasts, naked girls romping and in the company of his former friends long dead. The man felt at home and looked very happy.
When the elevator took him up before St. Peter, the key speaker of Heaven asked the man, “Well, what is your choice?” The man said, “I would like to see Heaven first.” The Pearly Gates opened and the man found himself in Heaven where he saw it all lighted up with people all around seemingly contended, and at peace. He saw angels and cherubs.
The man appeared bored.
He then told St. Peter. “I want to go to Hell.” Thus, he entered the elevator once again and went down to Hell.
When the elevator door opened, there was Lucifer surrounded by devils. He saw fires, and devils torturing people. He heard cries of pain and anguish. In fact, a devil was already assigned to boil the man in oil.
The man asked Lucifer, “What happened? When I was here yesterday, it was a completely different place. Lucifer laughed maniacally, and told the man, “Yesterday we were campaigning, but today you voted…welcome to Hell.”
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If you read all the campaign platforms of presidential candidates, and believe in them, you would think it would be Nirvana for the next six years, especially for the poor and the jobless, who constitute the bulk of our people.
“The criminals will be all dead; and so will all drug traffickers. There will be no corruption,” Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Du-dirty intones.
“We will have a government with a heart,” according to Mrs. Mary Grace Natividad Kelly Poe Llamanzares, adding that it was the legacy of her late adoptive father, movie icon Fernando Poe Jr., who appeared in movies helping the poor and the marginalized. Legacy, my gulay, when it was all in the movies!
The administration candidate, Mar Roxas, wants us to follow the straight path of his master, BS Aquino III. Straight path? That’s baloney since the hallmark of the Aquino administration is incompetence, lack of sensitivity and hypocrisy.
“When I die, Bongbong Marcos will be president,” Senator Miriam Santiago told Ilocanos in Batac, Ilocos Norte, in an attempt to win sympathy from the Ilocanos.
Santa Banana, do you believe them? Will you vote for them?
Unfortunately, there are still many of us who cannot differentiate fact from fiction. We get fascinated with new faces.
Unfortunately, our story may be similar to that of the man who chose hell just because he believed in promises.
I refer to the bulk of our electorate who simply cannot separate the grain from the chaff. Others sell their votes, and some just follow their leaders. That’s the tragedy of our nation during election time.
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We will soon mark the 30th anniversary of Edsa I, or the so-called People Power Revolution, which placed the Philippines on the world map.
Unfortunately, there has been a lot of distortion about Edsa I because of political bias.
One of the distortions, for instance, is the belief that without the people who went to Edsa, the military mutiny could not have succeeded.
Truth is, there was a breakaway of a portion of the military—Reform the Armed Forces Movement led by then- Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and then-Col. Gringo Honasan, and later on joined by then-PC/INP Chief Fidel Ramos.
What people do not know was that the RAM had followers among all segments of the military—the marines, the Air Force, the Navy and even among the commands outside Metro Manila.
I’d say that the presence of people of Edsa helped a lot in overthrowing the dictator, but history also tells us that military coups alone had succeeded in Thailand, South Korea, and in Egypt without civilian support.
Vice versa, can the people alone without military support succeed in overthrowing a government? The only civilian uprising in history that succeeded was in France with the Storming of the Bastile.
The point I am driving at is that it was not a People’s Revolution. What people do not know was that Enrile and the RAM had planned the breakaway months before it happened. Enrile recounted the fact that the RAM had been training for a coup in Cagayan province, as well as in Quezon and Zambales. Enrile and the RAM had imported sophisticated firearms from Israel and had a well executed plan to paralyze the forces led by then Chief of Staff Fabian Ver. Enrile told me that they were ready for thousands of RAM patches because they expected to be supported by thousands from the military.
Another untold facet of the Edsa I event was that the late President Cory Aquino was in Cebu when it happened. Somehow, Cory was told by some sources that a breakaway group was ready to move into Metro Manila. According to Enrile, Cory had plans to go to Mindanao to continue the revolution to overthrow the Marcos regime with the help of then-General Rodolfo Biazon.
It was with this knowledge that Enrile hatched a plan to form a Military Council with him, Ramos, Paeng Salas, then Ambassador Rafael Ileto, a former Chief of Staff, and Cory herself, which did not materialize. Enrile and his group handed power to Cory on Feb. 25, 1986.
In other words, with Enrile, Ramos and Honasan leading the RAM and other segments of the military, they could have succeeded without people support just like in military coups in other countries. That’s why I believe that to call Edsa 1 a People Power Revolution is a misnomer.
You may not believe it, but Marcos knew it was the end of him. He said he would hand down his power to Enrile et al, and he’ll just go to Paoay, Ilocos Norte to retire in exile. But, it seemed that the Americans had other plans.
The rest is history.
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Haven’t you noticed that three Supreme Court justices appointed by BS Aquino III are now on the side of Mrs. Llamanzares on her disqualification case? They are Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno and Associate Justices Marvic Leonen and Francis Jardeleza.
This adds to my suspicion that Mrs. Llamanzares is the “Machurian candidate” or the alternative bet of BS Aquino III. Isn’t it obvious?
My suspicion started when Senator Bam Aquino voted for Mrs. Llamanzares at the Senate Electoral Tribunal when as a Liberal Party member, he could have voted against her.