Right now there is a dispute over the Ninoy Aquino statue that stands in that avenue. Some sectors are objecting to the fact that the monument shows Ninoy being under the control of two soldiers. There are TV shots of Ninoy’s arrival and he was escorted down the plane by two members of the Armed Forces. There are no shots of the instant that he was shot. The next film shown shows him already dead on the floor. If there was film coverage of his getting shot, it must have been suppressed. So his Makati monument actually depicts his arrest by the Armed Forces. The soldiers that met him at the airport have been convicted for their alleged involvement in his assassination. But to this day, the official who gave the orders for his assassination has not yet even been identified. That crime, of course, happened in the airport. What puzzles us is that the authorities showed no interest in identifying the official who gave the orders for his arrest and assassination. The soldiers who merely obeyed the order of the official are all in jail.
So our question is: Does the Ninoy monument stand for justice or injustice? Ninoy’s widow became President of the Philippines. Nothing was done to identify and track down the official responsible for Ninoy’s arrest and murder. In our opinion, the soldiers who arrested and escorted him down the plane cannot be held responsible for his assassination. They just obeyed orders.
We mention all these because of Makati’s recent announcement of the crime rate declining in its city. We are very happy about that. But more important is that Makati is fast becoming the city where unusual crimes have taken place. We will be celebrating Valentine’s Day soon and terrorists bombed a bus in Makati last year right on Valentine’s Day. There were also the soldiers who mutinied in Makati right on the hotel center of the city.
We congratulate Mayor Jejomar Binay and the Makati Police Department for the peace and order that Makati residents enjoy. One of the things that made Makati’s crime rate drop is the fact that its crime rate solution rose from 93 percent in 2004 to 95 percent this year. This means that only 5 percent of crimes committed in Makati remain unsolved. When we say crimes we mean murder, physical injuries, rape and theft.
The most important thing in any city is peace and order. We are lucky that despite all the previous Gloria Step Down rallies, which are now things of the past, we have had relative peace and order in almost all our cities. When we read what is happening all over the world, we have to give our people credit. Let us support President Gloria Macapagal’s program of making the Philippines a first world nation in 20 years.