Remember Ninoy's martyrdom and Plaza Miranda

It has been 27 years since the assassination of the late Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. and I will never forget that the day before, we had a fellowship night at the Cebu Rotary Club (Mother) at the residence of Mr. Antonio Mira and naturally the talk of the night was, what would happen to Ninoy when he stepped out of the plane at the Manila International Airport (MIA). When it was my turn to answer this poignant question, I instantly said, “Ninoy would be dead before he gets out of the airport terminal.”

Call it a hunch or a premonition, but he was assassinated as he disembarked from the China Airlines plane, hence a lot of my Rotarian friends called me (there were no cell phones then) and asked how I knew that this would happen. Of course, I just thought that someone would get rid of Ninoy before he could do more threats or harm to the Marcos Dictatorship. Nope, I wasn’t a journalist in those days and in fact, I was playing golf that fateful day at the old Club Filipino Golf course (now the Ayala Business Park) with a radio on my ear when we all heard about the historic events unfolding.

We have said it here so many times before that we consider Ninoy Aquino as the hero of our generation; after all, Dr. Jose Rizal fought and died for our Spanish colonizers, while Ninoy died against the tyranny of our own Filipino leaders, a tyranny that continues to exist today in so many political island kingdoms or provinces controlled by many political warlords under the guise of winning their votes in democratic elections, which we all know are often won by guns, goons and gold… and now, let’s add electronic cheating to that list.

Lest we have already forgotten, there was another historic event that happened 12 years earlier when Ninoy made his heroic transition from politician to martyr and that is the infamous Plaza Miranda bombing on Aug. 21, 1971 or 39 years ago, where the perpetrators of this dastardly deed almost eradicated the entire leadership of the Liberal Party (LP), including Sen. Jerry Roxas, Sen. Jovito Salonga and others. Cebu’s political leadership led by then Sen. Serging Osmeña Jr. and Sen. John “Sonny” Osmeña were seriously wounded in that incident that would eventually lead to Martial Law.

The only evidence we can get as to who ordered this bombing came from the book of Sen. Salonga entitled “A Journey of Struggle and Hope” where he was told by a member of the Communist Party of the Philippines that CPP chairman Jose Maria “Joma” Sison ordered Danny Cordero to throw the grenades in Plaza Miranda. If you want to know more, get in touch with my good friend, Rep. Jun Alcover of the ANAD Partylist, and he’ll give you a summary of the events that transpired in those days when he was still with the underground movement.

In short, then President Ferdinand Marcos was right… that Plaza Miranda was done by the CPP in order to sow intrigue and trouble and in the end, the Marcoses took advantage of this turmoil by declaring Martial Law and staying in power longer than was constitutionally allowed. As for Joma Sison, he has blood in his hands and if he is not extradited to the Philippines, more blood would spill as he is running the communist insurgency by remote control from Utrecht in the Netherlands. Someday, we will find justice not just for Ninoy, but also for those who were killed in Plaza Miranda.

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Just when I e-mailed my Friday article on disciplining Filipino drivers, another tragic bus accident happened in Benguet, killing 41 passengers. I didn’t make a list of the number of bus accidents that happened this year, but I’m sure that the figure is in the hundreds or closer to a thousand. So we ask, how many more bus disasters will we expect to happen before the year ends? Perhaps the bigger question is, what will the Land Transportation Office (LTO) do to ensure the safety of bus passengers in the future?

Mind you, the usual response by the LTO in suspending the operations of bus companies is not and has never been the solution to the problem of bad, ill-trained and ill-disciplined drivers. As we said before, nowadays buses carry far more passengers than what a Cebu Pacific Air ATR carries. Yet airplane pilots have to undergo a very rigorous training, not to mention periodic flight checks just to ensure the safety of passengers. But for bus passengers, there are no special training done for them and no periodic tests, hence buses are falling into ravines at a very alarming rate, killing a lot of passengers.

How does one become a bus driver then? Well, it starts with riding a bicycle, then the man eventually drives a tricycle or a motorcycle for hire (habal-habal), then he moves up the ladder to become a jeepney and eventually a bus driver… using the same license. Hence, I propose a special license for bus and truck drivers in order to ensure passenger safety.

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