There are two bloody events shaping our political history we should be commemorating today: one, the assassination of Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr. in 1983; the other, the infamous bombing of Plaza Miranda that nearly eradicated the Liberal Party senatorial ticket for the elections of that year.
The two events are not unrelated, although it is only the assassination that that is offered as the reason for declaring this day a national holiday.
Both events were bloody and unprecedented. Both traumatized the nation. Yet both crimes remain largely unsolved.
The two violent events bracket a period in our political history: the onset of dictatorship and its eventual overthrow by means of a popular uprising. In between these two events, there was much brutality and many deaths. So many young and talented Filipinos put their lives on the line to fight a tyranny and restore democracy.
The city drafted me to write the text for the marker erected on one corner of Plaza Miranda, when Lito Atienza was mayor, to remind all passers-by of that horrible night in 1971. When I last visited that marker, the text was barely readable. Time and the bustle of the place corroded the bronze marker. Vendors sometimes use the small marble marker as a convenient lean-to for their stalls.
Since it is only the assassination that is officially commemorated on this day, there is danger the bombing might lapse into oblivion. Its significance might be completely forgotten. Its victims, never redressed, might soon walk into anonymity.
The target of the 1971 bombing was the miting de avance of the Liberal Party (LP). The Liberals were then battling the Nacionalista Party (NP), led by Ferdinand E. Marcos, for control of the Senate. In the aftermath of the tragedy, the LP did score a landslide victory — but could do nothing against the powerful current that brought forth a dictatorship.
Two grenades were hurled towards the stage on which the candidates and stalwarts of the party sat. The most seriously injured was Jovito Salonga. Although he survived, he carries ugly scars from the violence.
Among the other LP leaders wounded in the attack were: LP President Gerardo Roxas and his wife Judy (parents of Mar); Rep. Ramon Bagatsing (who lost a leg); Sen. Sergio Osmena Jr. (who underwent a sensitive lung operation); Sen. Eva Estrada Kalaw; broadcaster Eddie Ilarde (who sustained near-fatal injuries but survived to win a seat in the Senate).
In all, nine people were killed in that brutal attack. A hundred and twenty-nine were injured. The whole nation was wounded: our politics would completely lose our civility.
Plaza Miranda was, until the LP rally was bombed, considered the heart of our nation’s political life. It was our equivalent of London’s Hyde Park, the protected stadium for free speech. Anyone who had anything to say, it was said during that time, must be ready to defend it at the hallowed Plaza.
On any given day, there was someone literally standing on a soapbox, delivering an oration on whatever inspired him, to all who would care to listen. The most important newspapers were on streets around Plaza Miranda.
If Plaza Miranda was the heart of our politics, the bombing was a treacherous stab at it. Something else, apart from the obvious casualties, died that night of the attack: the confidence that every Filipino may speak his mind without courting repression.
In 1971, the acknowledged leader of the LP was Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr. Yet he was not on the stage at the time of the attack but in a hotel elsewhere in the city even as his party’s political rally was at its climax.
That resounding absence was exploited to the hilt by the Marcos government. The claim was that Sen. Aquino was forewarned of the attack. The official line was that the attack was the handiwork of the communists and Aquino was in cahoots with them.
For years, the Marcos government hammered on that theme. Aquino was incessantly linked to the bombing, and to the communist movement by way of Bernabe Buscayno, the peasant from Hacienda Luisita who helped found the NPA. The official line was that the radical Maoist guerilla movement acquired its first firearms from Aquino himself.
The anti-Marcos opposition, on the other hand, attributed the terrible attack on Marcos himself. This version of the bombing claims the attack intended to establish the preconditions for martial rule. Indeed, less than 48 hours after the bombing, President Marcos suspended the writ of habeas corpus. Twelve months later, as our politics became intensely polarized, martial law descended.
Among the anti-Marcos partisans throughout the long years of struggle against dictatorship, this interpretation of the bombing was infallible dogma. To question it was to commit an act of betrayal against all the brave Filipinos fighting for democracy. This even as there were no actual suspects traceable to Marcos tagged for this dastardly act. The actual perpetrators of this attack were never found, never brought to justice.
After the Edsa Revolution, the handy (albeit unsupported) attribution of the bombing to Marcos became the subject of cautious review. Jovito Salonga himself began to doubt this version and suspects that the carnage might, in fact, be the handiwork of communist partisans to sharpen the political confrontation.
In 1989, an American journalist, after interviewing scores of leftists, put out a book on the CPP attributing, among other things, the bombing to the Maoists. He claims the operation was carried out on instructions of the party by Danny Cordero, a flamboyant CPP operative eventually executed by his own comrades.