In our image, p.70
In Our Image, page 70
Though only thirty-five, Holbrooke was uniquely suited for the job. Having spent years in Vietnam, he understood the futility of hustling Asians. He also knew, as a shrewd Washington bureaucrat, that he would be judged by results. His critics complained that he did not push Marcos hard enough on human rights, but he did make progress on the issue and managed as well to reach a bases agreement.
In April 1977, when Holbrooke first visited Manila in his new assignment, Marcos gave him the opulent welcome he routinely reserved for important guests, entertaining him aboard the presidential yacht with one of Imelda’s lavish dinners and a night of songs. The next day, after a brief review of the bases negotiations, Holbrooke urged Marcos to release Ninoy and allow him to move to the United States, where he might retire quietly to a university fellowship. It was the first time that a senior American official had pleaded on Ninoy’s behalf, and both Marcos and Imelda reacted coolly. As obsessed as ever with their image in the United States, they voiced alarm that the Carter administration, Congress and the American press would “lionize” Ninoy. Holbrooke assured them that Ninoy would be a “quick story” for the news media and then fade away, and that neither the White House nor the State Department would make a “big deal of him.” Though Holbrooke dented him, Marcos typically shifted back and forth, alternately treating Ninoy leniently, rudely, gently, always striving to retain the upper hand.
Convinced that he could bring Marcos around in a personal talk, Ninoy suggested that they meet. Suddenly, on June 21, 1977, a helicopter flew him from detention to the Malacañang palace. Marcos warmly greeted him as “brod,” as fraternity brothers of Upsilon Sigma Phi called each other, and wryly complimented him on his svelte figure. They bantered, Ninoy boasting that his long imprisonment had transformed him into a hero. “You know damned well,” Marcos riposted, “that you would have arrested me if you had been in my place.” Ninoy nodded—then, turning to the main topic, repeated his demand for a civilian trial. Marcos dangled various options, one calculated to put Ninoy into his debt: “If you’re convicted, would you ask for a pardon?” Ninoy answered flatly: “No, sir, because I am not guilty.” With that the session ended.
Marcos stiffened the following November, instructing a court-martial to sentence Ninoy to death. Holbrooke advised David Newsom, the U.S. ambassador in Manila, that the verdict would have a “devastating effect” in Washington, and directed him to “make clear” to Marcos that President Carter was personally distressed. Shortly afterward, one of Marcos’s close aides confidentially guaranteed Newsom that Ninoy would be spared. Marcos had backed away, satisfied that he had dramatized his power of life and death over Ninoy.
His absolute authority thus displayed, Marcos scheduled legislative elections for April 1978, the first since he had imposed martial law five years before. He hoped to impress upon Vice President Walter Mondale, who planned to stop in Manila during a tour of Asia the next month, that he was not the ogre portrayed by his opponents. Realizing that Mondale would look ludicrous arriving there after a rigged election, Holbrooke advised Newsom to urge Marcos to release Ninoy and allow him to run in a “truly free” contest. Marcos, as a token concession, permitted Ninoy to campaign—from jail.
Ninoy, chided by some backers for accommodating Marcos, affiliated with a party called Strength of the Country, or Lakas ng Bayan, whose acronym, Laban, means “fight.” He also entered a television debate with Marcos’s defense minister, Juan Ponce Enrile, showing his ardor to be undiminished. On election eve, thousands acclaimed him by honking horns, blowing whistles and ringing church bells across Manila. The election was blatantly fake. Marcos’s New Society Movement swept the vote, with Imelda predictably topping the ticket in Manila. Mondale came and went, and Ninoy remained in jail. Early in 1979, Marcos acceded to the urging of his friend Senator Daniel K. Inouye of Hawaii, and signed a bases pact promising a five-year aid package amounting to $500 million—half of the Kissinger offer he had spurned.
Marcos loosened Ninoy’s leash further in 1979, first granting him two hours at home to celebrate his daughter’s graduation from college, later furloughing him for a day and a half for his twenty-fifth wedding anniversary and finally giving him three weeks with his family at Christmas. Aside from advertising his humanity to the Carter administration, Marcos hoped to soften Ninoy and, in the process, split the opposition. He succeeded. Fearful of being driven into the radical camp, which would isolate him from the liberal Manila elite and especially the moderate Catholic hierarchy, Ninoy spoke vaguely of compromise. His drift troubled hard-liners, but it reassured Cardinal Jaime Sin, who informed him that Pope John Paul II had told Marcos that he would visit the Philippines as scheduled in 1981 only if he could see Ninoy in prison. Sin honored Ninoy at a mass and circulated a homily extolling him: “He embodies what is best, what is good and true and courageous.… With all my heart and soul, I look up to him in admiration and pride.”
As he pondered Ninoy’s fate at the start of 1980, Marcos considered sending him into exile or naming him to a toothless “council of leaders.” Ninoy flinched at being co-opted, but to remove himself from the political scene by going abroad was equally onerous. The choice was forced on him on May 5, when an escort rushed him to the Philippine Heart Center, one of Imelda’s pet projects, with a heart attack. The doctors recommended bypass surgery, which could have been performed there. Intervening, Imelda prevailed on Marcos to allow Ninoy to leave the country. It would look like “monkey business” if Ninoy died during an operation in Manila, she explained—and, besides, they could now get rid of him while appearing altruistic. Marcos agreed on condition that Ninoy abstain from criticizing him in America. Complying, Ninoy pledged in writing to return and “desist from commenting on our domestic political situation” or engaging in “any partisan political activity.” He also praised Imelda in a note to the head of the Manila hospital, saying: “Now that I see what she has done here … I take back all my hard words—hoping I do not choke.” Imelda visited his room, and like old chums, they joked and gossiped. Before departing for Dallas, where he would have his operation, Ninoy gave her a gold crucifix he had worn in jail. She hung it around the neck of a statue of the Infant Jesus that sat in a hall of the Malacañang palace.
* * *
His operation over, Ninoy faced a dilemma in the summer of 1980. The Carter administration had helped to secure his release, but he feared he would be ignored if Ronald Reagan, now the Republican presidential candidate, triumphed in November. Having promised Marcos to return, how could he stall until after the election without dishonoring his pledge? Various friends, myself included, figured that Marcos would cede if Harvard offered Ninoy a fellowship. Samuel Huntington, the head of the Center for International Affairs, came through. The Aquinos settled in a large house in Newton, Massachusetts, to start what Cory later called “the three happiest years of our life.” They visited the tourist sights in Boston, New York and Washington, and Ninoy’s children at last began to know him as they shopped or went to the movies together.
But Ninoy was too committed to retire. On August 4, 1980, addressing the Asia Society in New York, he blasted Marcos—declaring that “a pact with the devil is no pact at all,” and he no longer felt bound by his vow of silence. Unless Marcos lifted martial law, he warned, there would be “an escalation of rural insurgency” as well as “massive urban guerrilla warfare”—and he would join in the fight. “Is the Filipino worth dying for?” he asked, coining the phrase that became one of his slogans. “Mr. Marcos,” he asserted, “believe me when I tell you that, like the average Filipino, I will face death in the struggle for freedom if you do not heed the voice of conscience and moderation.” And, of course, he evoked General MacArthur’s famous motto: I shall return.
Ninoy’s threat was empty bombast. Over the next year, he flew to places as diverse as Nicaragua and Saudi Arabia to seek financial support, but all he received was rhetorical encouragement. Nor were his prospects for ousting Marcos by political means much better. Marcos ended martial law in January 1981 and announced plans to run for reelection in June. Both gestures were hollow, since he retained the power to rule by decree, and the election would as usual be rigged. He hoped to impress Pope John Paul II during his visit in February and also to sway Ronald Reagan, who had just been elected president. The pope, advised by Cardinal Sin, was skeptical. By contrast, Reagan did not need convincing.
Reagan had found confirmation of his conservative credo in the thesis evolved by Jeane Kirkpatrick, then a Georgetown University professor, which distinguished “authoritarian” from “totalitarian” regimes. Stripped of its academic jargon, it exorcised morality from foreign policy and favored support for any autocracy that served America’s interests. Marcos fit the category, and Kirkpatrick was to cling to him to the end—as Reagan did all along.
Soon after his election, Reagan demonstrated his esteem for Imelda by visiting her at the Waldorf-Astoria during one of her New York sprees. The symbolic encounter, following Carter’s pious meddling, elated the Marcoses. Vice President George Bush boosted their morale even higher during his trip to Manila in June 1981, when he praised Marcos’s “adherence to democratic principles.” His extravagant remark was no slip of the tongue. Walter Stoessel, the undersecretary of state, had advised him to “reassure Marcos that the Reagan administration regards him as a friend” to allay his concerns about criticism in Congress and the American press. Reagan went further in September 1982, when he and Nancy entertained the Marcoses in Washington, a tribute that Carter had denied them. Later he nearly doubled Carter’s aid package for the bases, granting Marcos $900 million over a five-year period. But State Department specialists stressed the importance of remaining on “good terms” with Ninoy. As one of them emphasized in a secret memorandum: “He may yet achieve his supreme ambition to be Philippine president. He is basically moderate, free enterprise-oriented and not hostile to U.S. interests.”
During her New York sojourn in late 1980, Imelda invited Ninoy to her hotel room to caution him against counting on the Reagan administration. “You must behave yourself,” she said. “This is a different government and you could be picked up.” Their meeting, one of several during his exile, illustrated the odd, often inexplicable, coziness of their relationship. Ninoy confided to me that once, in New York, he responded to a summons from her at midnight to come to party at her Waldorf suite—where, clearly, she wanted to show her hold over him to her glitzy guests. Presumably he felt indebted to her for his surgery, but another time she urged him to come to terms with Marcos, saying, “You can be his heir.” Demurring, he explained that he had suffered for his principles and would compromise only if Marcos reformed. After Ninoy’s murder, Marcos similarly disclosed that he had often called him from Manila. “He was the only opponent I really respected,” Marcos said somewhat mawkishly, leaving me to wonder whether he was sincere or putting on one of his acts.
Though Cory hoped to remain in America, by early 1982 Ninoy was thinking about going home. Most of the moderate opposition factions had grouped in a loose coalition called the United Democratic Nationalist Organization, headed by Salvador “Doy” Laurel, who until recently had sided with Marcos. Without his leadership, Ninoy reckoned, they would be crushed by the Communists, whose strength was growing. The increasingly polarized political situation was also being exacerbated by the crippled economy, a huge foreign debt and massive corruption. Still, Ninoy believed, Marcos was the key. “The tragedy of tragedies,” he told an interviewer, “is that only Marcos can bring us back to democracy … the only man today who can decree a clean and honest election.” By implication, only he could persuade Marcos to reform.
Time also pressed Ninoy, who had heard that Marcos was gravely ill. The rumor was real. Marcos’s debilitating yet not fatal disease was lupus erythematosus, which can affect the kidneys and requires regular dialysis. During his visit to Washington in 1982, he was tested at Walter Reed Hospital. He later underwent two kidney transplants, one on August 7, 1983, which aborted, and another, successful, in November 1984. The donor in the first is said to have been his son Bong Bong, in the second, his illegitimate son. Attributing his increasingly frequent absences to old war wounds, Marcos vehemently denied that he was sick. Indeed, he kept his condition so concealed that he stymied even the CIA, and a Filipino surgeon who discussed it with an American reporter was mysteriously murdered. His secrecy had a purpose. He had refused to appoint a successor, and any hint that he was near death would trigger a scramble for power. Speculating, Ninoy foresaw Imelda seizing the presidency with General Ver behind her as chief of a military junta. The vision infused him with a sense of urgency to return.
As usual, Ninoy talked too much, and a shower of warnings deluged him—most of them orchestrated by Marcos. On May 21, 1983, Imelda was again in New York and, speaking for Marcos, implored him “as a mother and wife” to postpone his journey until “the area is sanitized.” As an inducement to stay, she offered to loan him $10 million and recruit such experts as David Rockefeller and Felix Rohatyn to manage the money. Back home shortly afterward, she told friends that Ninoy would be dead in “just one hour” if he returned. Enrile later cabled Ninoy that he was “convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that there are plots against your life,” and exhorted him to wait “for at least a month.”
Though worried, Ninoy refused to cancel. As he saw it, Marcos was trying to keep him away for two possible reasons: His presence might be embarrassing during Reagan’s planned visit to Manila in the fall or would foul up the legislative elections scheduled for 1984. Or maybe Imelda and Ver knew that Marcos was dying and did not want him back to obstruct their takeover. Whatever, Ninoy was certain that Marcos “won’t shoot me,” as he told a reporter. A secret State Department prognosis was more prescient: “Assassination is not Marcos’s style … but it is not beyond the capability of some of his operatives.”
Heeding Enrile’s advice to delay, Ninoy did not leave Boston until August 12. He flew to Singapore and drove to nearby Malaysia, where he met with a few Southeast Asian officials to explain his mission. Then he doubled back to Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, his springboard for Manila. There, hoping that a press escort would protect him, he picked up several correspondents, among them Sandra Burton of Time and his sister Lupita’s husband, Ken Kashiwahara, an ABC television reporter based in San Francisco. As Kashiwahara recalled, Ninoy was on an “awful emotional rollercoaster,” joking, talking, telephoning. Late on the morning of August 21, they embarked for Manila, an hour away.
Ninoy’s mood varied on the flight. He chatted with the correspondents until the plane began its descent. Then he went to the toilet to slip a bulletproof vest under his tan bush jacket and, returning to his seat, he fingered a rosary and prayed. As the wheels hit the runway, he yelled with typical bravado to the television crews: “Get your cameras out.” A welcoming crowd, alerted by his supporters, jammed the terminal. The plane taxied to a berth, where a blue van stood, flanked by troops. Three soldiers came aboard, holding back the reporters and passengers as they steered Ninoy into the boarding tube and down a service stairway. A jumble of voices echoed from the stairway, one in Tagalog shouting, “Here he comes, I’ll do it,” another in Cebuano, the Visayan language, barking, “Let me shoot.” Suddenly there were five pops, strangely followed by a salvo. Killed by a single shot in the back of his head, Ninoy lay at the foot of the stairs, not far from a bullet-riddled body in mechanic’s clothes, later identified as Rolando Galman.
* * *
The quintessential martyred hero, Ninoy now ranks with José Rizal as the Philippine national messiah. And his assassination, like Rizal’s execution, accelerated rather than changed the country’s history. By 1896, when Rizal was shot, Filipinos had already turned against Spanish rule, and his death sparked open rebellion. Similarly, Filipinos had lost confidence in Marcos by 1983, and Ninoy’s murder crystallized their opposition. Both men thus kindled explosions that were awaiting a spark. In both instances, the fuse burned slowly.
Though the outrage against Ninoy spelled the beginning of his end, Marcos managed to retard his collapse for two and a half years. In part he outmaneuvered his Filipino foes until, finally, they unified behind Cory. He also benefited from America’s amorphous approach as his friend President Reagan resisted pressures from the State Department, the Pentagon and Congress to act firmly. Events following Ninoy’s death stumbled along two tracks: one in Manila, the other in Washington. Ultimately they converged through a series of unpredictable circumstances, again illustrating Rudyard Kipling’s aphorism “A policy is the blackmail levied on the fool by the unforeseen.”
Imelda was lunching with her courtiers at a chic Chinese restaurant when an urgent call summoned her to the Malacañang palace. She rushed to see Marcos, who was in bed, recovering from his kidney transplant of two weeks before. He told her that Ninoy had been shot, but had no idea whether Ninoy was dead or alive. Her friends had accompanied her, and she gave them the news, lamenting, “Now they’re going to blame us.” Uncertain of Ninoy’s condition, she prayed to the crucifix still adorning the statue of the Infant Jesus, which he had given her before going to Dallas three years earlier. She and her group sat in the gloomy palace foyer through the afternoon as visitors shuffled in and out—Enrile, Ver, General Fidel Ramos, then commander of the constabulary. Finally someone arrived to announce that Ninoy was dead. Imelda hurried to Marcos’s room and returned to report that he was vomiting, as he did in moments of stress.
