Why I am so angry with Cory Aquino
Credit to Author: RAMON T. TULFO| Date: Wed, 27 Feb 2019 16:22:49 +0000
AT the outset, I apologize to Jackie Aquino, my co-host at the test broadcast of The Manila Times TV Channel on Facebook last Monday, which tackled in its initial program the 33rd anniversary of the People Power Revolution (originally called the EDSA Revolution).
The topic was “33 years after the Edsa Revolution, has there been a significant change?”
I should have been smart enough to know that Jackie is a niece of the late President Corazon Aquino who I did not mince words in criticizing.
The program coordinators should not have partnered me with her since I am a known rabid Aquino basher (both Cory and her son Noynoy).
As an aside, I am not a Marcos loyalist either.
I couldn’t help but express my feelings about the regime of Cory Aquino.
My friends who watched that part of the daytime talk show (1 to 2 p.m.) saw Jackie squirming in her seat though she acted like the compleat lady. She didn’t even contradict me when she could have done so.
But at the start of the show, I said that her father, Butz Aquino, the late Senator Ninoy’s brother, and Jaime Cardinal Sin, should be considered the real and unsung heroes of EDSA and not Cory, who was hiding in a convent in Cebu in the first hours of the People Power Revolution.
I said that it was Butz who gathered the first crowd that marched to EDSA from Isetann Department Store in Cubao, Quezon City, in support of Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and his men who were cornered at the Ministry of Defense building inside Camp Aguinaldo.
Their plot to unseat Marcos uncovered, Enrile and his men sought shelter at the MND main office, which was practically unprotected.
The effusive Jaime Cardinal Sin called on the people to gather at EDSA to protect Enrile and his co-plotters, as well as the group of then Lt. Gen. Fidel V. Ramos, the vice chief of staff of the Armed Forces and concurrent chief of the Philippine Constabulary-Integrated National Police.
* * *
What went wrong with the EDSA Revolution that unseated a dictator and was supposed to have improved the country’s well-being?
The post-Marcos government started on the wrong foot. Cory Aquino, supposedly a devout Catholic, did not follow the example of Nelson Mandela.
Mandela, who was jailed for many years by the apartheid government of South Africa, forgave his jailers and started with a clean slate when he took over from the oppressive predominantly Caucasian Afrikaners.
Cory’s personal vendetta against the Marcoses is the root cause of the post-EDSA Revolution governments.
We are a divided people because Cory and her followers cannot forgive and forget what dictator Ferdinand Marcos did.
Marcos may have been a bad president in the last few years of his rule, but he must also be credited for many of the good things he did for the country.
Because of Cory’s bile and her vile reign of vendetta, the country did not move forward during her term, which was wracked by many coup attempts.
The government improved somewhat during the administration of Fidel V. Ramos but his successor, Joseph “Erap” Estrada, botched the gains Ramos had made.
The administration of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, a great economist, was tarnished by her husband, Mike, in much the same way that Marcos’ reign was destroyed by his wife, Imelda.
Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino 3rd, who succeeded GMA, was practically a do-nothing president, leading wags to comment that all he did was kuyakoy (shake his legs in a nervous tic). Noynoy was as vindictive toward GMA as his mother was toward Marcos.
The current president, Rodrigo Duterte, has inherited the ills of the previous administrations, particularly that of Noynoy abnoy kuyakoy’s.
Digong is trying to make people forget their sordid past — first, by burying Marcos’ remains at the Libingan ng mga Bayani—and move the country forward.
But he is being blocked by the Yellows, the remnants of the vindictive Cory and Noynoy administrations.
* * *
Why am I angry at Cory Aquino?
Because I inadvertently got involved in the second-day unfolding of the EDSA drama.
On that day, Feb. 23, 1986 of the EDSA Revolution, there was frenetic activity at the Ministry of Defense building at Camp Aguinaldo.
I saw retired Armed Forces Chief Romeo Espino and Customs Commissioner Ramon Farolan call on Enrile at his office. I also saw many civilian officials of Marcos visiting Enrile, among them former Information secretary Francisco “Kit” Tatad.
Earlier that morning, Enrile and his RAM (Reform the Armed Forces Movement) boys — Colonels Gregorio Honasan, Red Kapunan, Tito Legaspi and Felix Turingan — attended Mass held at the defense minister’s office where they all received holy communion.
Enrile, with an Uzi machine pistol slung on his shoulder, was visibly nervous because he knew it was probably his last day on earth.
There was only a handful of soldiers loyal to Enrile that was in the MND building. They would surely be wiped out if Marcos would order an attack, and the attack was imminent.
At the back of the MND building was the headquarters of the Military Police Brigade under Brig. Gen. Pedro Balbanero who was fence-sitting. But he could change his mind at any time.
Enrile and his RAM boys were isolated from the rest of the world; their communication lines had been cut off.
At the hallway, I met Kapunan who, like the others, was moving about like a headless chicken.
He asked me if I would know what the Marcos camp was doing.
With my handheld radio (remember, cellular phones were nonexistent at the time) I called fellow Bulletin reporter Louie Perez. Louie was at Fort Bonifacio covering the “other side.” He was at the Marine base.
“Mon, lalakad na ang mga tangke patungo diyan (the tanks are about to start moving in your direction),” Perez said, meaning Camp Aguinaldo.
After I told Kapunan what Perez told me, he rushed to Enrile.
“Sir, sabi ni Tulfo padating na ang mga tangke (Tulfo said the tanks are coming),” Kapunan shouted.
Enrile and his RAM boys then decided to go to Camp Crame to join forces with Lt. Gen. Fidel Ramos.
Up until then, Ramos was noncommittal. That’s from my point of view at that time.
I took part in the march of Enrile and his RAM boys to Camp Crame.
The rest is history.
You see, I had a personal stake in the EDSA Revolution, and that is why I am angry at Cory Aquino because she didn’t live up to the promise of a better future for the Philippines.
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