It is high time we removed the 40 thieves!

Today is the 30th anniversary of the assassination of the late Senator Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino, Jr. He was the thorn in the side of the conjugal Marcos Dictatorship and they incarcerated him for seven years and even sen-tenced him to death. But when he developed a heart problem, super ma'am Imeldific found this as their opening to show mercy to the man and sent him to exile in the United States. But then Ninoy never gave up his struggle and eventually returned to the Philippines where the Conjugal Marcos Dictator-ship had him assassinated at the airport tarmac.

Ninoy's assassination led to the creation of the Agrava Commission that actually turned into a whitewash commission. During Ninoy's funeral, hundreds of thousands lined the streets in what was dubbed as the biggest funeral that the nation ever saw. But not so strangely, all the mainstream newspapers featured a man who was struck by a lightning while watching the funeral. Yes, in those days the mainstream national newspapers and television were owned and controlled by Marcos cronies.

I always write an annual tribute to Ninoy; after all he was the only spark of hope left in a nation literally kowtowing to the Marcos dictatorship, whose political party was the Kilusan ng Bagong Lipunan (KBL) that was the only political part with the money, the clout and the power to win their election bid. Thanks to an equally corrupt Commission on Elections (Com-elec), which did the cheating for its powerful masters.

The KBL was a political monolith that took all political parties, in-cluding the Liberal Party and others under its wing and happy days were there again. But even then, there were two political parties that dared chal-lenge this monolith, the Mindanao Alliance of Reuben Canoy, who concocted the idea of the Mindanao Dollar and Cebu's Pusyon Bisaya, with stalwarts like radio broadcaster Natalio "Talyux" Bacalso and Hilario Davide Jr. tak-ing center stage. But as it turned out, Marcos allowed these parties to win so he could tell the world that the Philippines was a thriving democracy.

If you are already 30 years old today, chances are, you have no memo-ries of the events that I'm writing here today and that is why we are writing this piece so you would know our political history. I'd like to emphasize that the assassination of Ninoy Aquino did not trigger the irate Filipino people to forcibly remove the conjugal Marcos Dictatorship. But it gave the Filipino people the courage to begin demonstrations against Marcos until US Senator Richard Lugar forced the hand of Marcos to call for snap elections.

The Snap elections happened on the last week of February 1986 and two events triggered the Filipino people to march against the Marcos Dicta-torship. First was the sudden walkout of the computer programmers working for the Comelec at the Philippine International Convention Center (PICC) when they realized that they were being used to cheat in the counting of the snap elections. That move incensed a lot of our people.

Then in the midst of the EDSA Revolt, when the KBL leaders declared Marcos as the winner of the elections despite the walkout by the computer programmers, the EDSA Revolt was cemented into our history and the Filipino people turned out in droves to EDSA. Mind you, it was a middle-class revolution, as the poor people didn't care to show up in EDSA. The leftist groups were also absent during the removal of the Marcos Dictatorship at EDSA. But 30 years after Ninoy's death, injustice has worsened!

Thirty years after the assassination of Ninoy Aquino, his death has never been solved even if his wife succeeded the Marcos Dictatorship as pres-ident of the land. But then, Tita Cory brought back the oligarchy that was hated by the Marcos Dictatorship and in the end returned the Philippine Se-nate who became mini-dictators in this democratic society of ours. As my mentor, the late Sir Max Soliven would say, "We removed Ali Baba, but the 40 thieves have remained in power." Now it is time we removed the 40 thieves!

Today we have Pres. Benigno "PNoy" Aquino, III son of Ninoy Aqui-no, as president and in less than three years in office despite of his anti-corruption slogan, corruption has worsened in the Bureau of Customs (BOC) and worse of all, while the people he insulted during his SONA gave their resignations, he did not accept them, making the whole thing a total farce.

Today the Aquino Regime is embroiled in the worse scam that ever hit this scam-ridden nation…the P10-billion Pork Barrel scam perpetrated by the still missing Janet Lim Napoles who has now gone into hiding. But we know too well that Janet Napoles could not do the scam without willing senators and congressmen…after all it really takes two to tango. So while the NBI is still looking for Napoles, why can't they name these senators and congressmen and have them arrested for the same crime? Abangan!

*  *  *

Email: [email protected]