Remembering Ninoy anew / GMA will run again?

I had forgotten him for sometime. Not that he was ever far from my mind. He was always there like a blue-layered dolphin just below the surface waiting to be summoned to exhibit his prodigious skills. I was surfing TV early evening, rowing briskly away from "The War In Iraq", that damned war which had become my daily torment. I was hoping the likes of Renee Zellwegger or Nicole Kidman would undulate on the screen, or Halle Berry. I wouldn’t have minded either if Meryl Steep materialized, she always took my breath away with her mercurial talents. Penelope Cruz? Yeah. But why did Tom Cruise ditch Nicole for her?

Back to the surfing.

What appeared next on the TV screen was the full face of Ninoy Aquino. He was addressing a Filipino audience while on exile in the US. It was obvious he was enjoying himself. Yes, it was the same documentary Ninoy: The Heart and the Soul I had seen countless times. I took exceptional pride in this documentary for I authored it in 1986 in my first year as presidential press secretary and spokesman of President Corazon Aquino.

Now it was there again. I knew every line, knew every sequence, every stirring scene and should have shifted to another channel.

But Ninoy continued to have that power over me, riveting me in my seat as if it was the first time I laid eyes on the man. In life and in death, Ninoy played his cards with superb theatrical mastery, entrancing the beholder with his intellectual depth and earnestness, his moral passion, his humor, and a smile that flickered from naughty to mischievous to playful to downright wicked. The mention of Imelda always produced that wicked smile.

Whenever he talked with his family, his friends and acquaintances, it was a camp fire.

Light and shadow would leap playfully at each other. There were no long silences for Ninoy’s voice punctured them, ever jocular, ever interesting, but always versatile, always like Rachmaninoff on the piano. If only the youth and studentry of today could meet him, they would have been exquisitely shocked that such a Filipino leader ever existed. And only recently. This was the Ninoy of course minted in the Senate, the Ninoy who exposed the Jabidah Massacre, who dueled fearlessly with President Ferdinand Marcos, the Ninoy who with his wit, courage and intelligence so scared the screaming meemies out of Mr. Marcos, the president singled Ninoy out as the first to be arrested at the outset of martial rule Sept. 21, 1972.

What a pity the youth of today had never seen or heard Ninoy. If anybody could dazzle, he could dazzle. If anybody could enchant or enthall, Ninoy could.

The youth would have looked at our present crop of senators and congressmen, raised their eyebrows and wondered if the brains of homo Filipinus had constricted to the size of chimpanzee in just 20 years’ time. Listen to our political leaders talk today. It’s drivel. It’s jabberwocky. It’s piltdown pastrami. None of course can do a Recto. The inimitable Claro Recto could read The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis and translate it immediately into classic Spanish.

Ninoy wasn’ all that phenomenal before his martial law arrest.

But he had all the makings. He had a phenomenal memory, total recall. In that sense he was like Ferdinand Marcos who could remember faces, places, dates, incidents, anecdotes, telephone numbers with amazing ease. The difference was that Ninoy’s gaze was always up, scouring mountaintops and the stars. Marcos had already stopped dreaming, had already mastered Midas’ touch of turning everything into gold. Marcos never forgot. He hardly forgave. Ninoy, converted to Mahatma Gandhi’s satyagraha philosophy after almost eight years in prison, forgave even the most uncouth guards who humiliated members of his family when they came to visit him as a prisoner in Fort Bonifacio.

But most of all, Ninoy became a nationalist.

Often referred to as Amboy (American Boy) during his halcyon days as a young politician, Ninoy gradually changed his mind. We engaged in long earnest talks on Philippine-American relations when I visited him in Boston. With no prodding from anybody, Ninoy said it was time the US bases went – Clark and Subic. That was way back in 1982. Why? He explained those bases corroded the pride of the Filipino, made him dependent on every whim and caprice of Uncle Sam, deterred independent thinking, gave us fire when what we needed was ice, gave us ice when what we needed was fire.

There was one thing about Ninoy. Roses with thorns were always thrown across his path. There was never a time when life was not a challenge, when he saw in the stark, hollowed eyes of the peasant and farmer the nation's agony, the persecution of the poor. Ninoy's toils and enchantments had absolutely nothing to do with wealth and money. He wolfed hotdogs with ketchup, not paté de foie gras. He dressed simply, ate simply, lived simply. Once we went out shopping. He bought himself a lot of T-shirts without any regard for what signature they bore. Ditto for briefs.

As an intellectual, he was like Chou en-Lai and Henry Kissinger. His was a life of the mind, probing its limits, welcoming its challenges, seeking its crevices and hidden ladders. When they parted in Beijing in 1972, I think, after a long bout of intellectual exchange, Chou said: "Let’s meet again for the joy of talking." And Kissinger, an avid admirer of Chou, said: "Yes, of course. We have to meet again." I reminded Professor Kissinger about this when he was in Manila in the late-90s and he was absolutely delighted that I remembered. And he recounted portions of those talks.

Ninoy would have enjoyed the company of either.

Chou was the classic Chinese patrician, the inveterate Confucian who knew China like the palm of his hand but who knew the West and America too, and amazed Kissinger with his erudition. But Dr. Kissinger dipped his buckets in ancient Europe, the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment. He drew sparks from Otto von Bismarck, who visualized surges of knowledge as a flying horse in the sky, to be seized and ridden and only later on dismounted. And Ninoy? He would have talked endlessly about the Filipino ethos, drawn from Castilian Spain and liberal, pragmatic America and shot this knowledge across the bows of Chou and Kissinger.

* * *

I have these days often been besieged with the question: Will GMA change her mind and run for the presidency in 2004?

A lady close to her with intimate links to almost every member of GMA’s cabinet virtually swore she would. No, she had no hard, concrete, irrefutable proof that indeed La Gloria in excelsis would storm the hustings as a candidate in 2004. But she could tell. Women could tell. The subject was reportedly verboten in Malacañang. But as all things verboten, GMA’s suspected volte face was always on top of the Palace marquee.

I don’t buy. GMA may recover somewhat from her minus 14 approval rating. But it’s too late to storm the heights from the cellar. She has been going down, down, down in the ratings because the nation has been going down, down, down. And I don’t have to enumerate anew the many ills that afflict the republic, the bulk of which were already there in 1946. It’s simply not true that her ratings went down because GMA rode the American horse in the war against Iraq. Now that the war is over, and the US triumphant, I don’t think either what will translate into a big plus for GMA.

What is more, GMA just doesn’t measure up to the presidency when the trumpets blare, and the nation is in dire danger. You need leaders the size of Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Charles de Gaulle with fire in their bellies, and words that explode into silver pylons. And yes, Margaret Thatcher. I can’t imagine her riding the carousel like a circus colleen when SARS threatens to invade the country or a big bouffant suit where GMA’s head peeps like a pea when jobs get more and more scarce.

I don’t think GMA will run. And even if she does, she’ll get shellacked.

Her problem, methinks, is whom to support: Eduardo (Danding) Cojuangco or Raul Roco. At the rate the surveys are going, Danding doesn’t have a chance of a popsicle in purgatory. In the last survey I saw, commissioned by a business magnate, Mr. Cojuangco just landed 12th with hardly two percentage points. Roco as usual topped the 14-man presidential list with 25 points. Sen. Panfilo Lacson was fifth with seven points.

The dilemma of an immediate ex-president is this: Will his or her successor lower the boom on the crimes supposedly committed by the previous dispensation? Danding may pledge everything GMA desires but his chances of winning are virtually nil. How about Roco? That, as Shakespeare said, is the question.