Cory to FVR, JPE: Tell the truth now

Former President Corazon Aquino challenged yesterday former President Fidel Ramos and former Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile to speak forthrightly on what they know about the assassination of her husband, Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr.

Mrs. Aquino’s spokeswoman Deedee Siytangco told The STAR if the two "have anything new to say, they must say it now."

"They owe it to the Filipino people," Siytangco said in a telephone interview.

Asked whether Mrs. Aquino wants a new investigation on the Aug. 21, 1983 assassination which remains unsolved, Siytangco said the issue is beyond the jurisdiction of the Aquino family.

Siytangco said findings of the Agrava Commission failed to "pinpoint the real mastermind" who occupied a higher post than then Armed Forces chief Gen. Fabian Ver.

"However, Mrs. Aquino is comforted by the thought that the Filipino people know who was the real mastermind," she said.

Earlier, Rep. Benigno Aquino III had urged that mysteries surrounding his father’s death be solved for the sake of future generations of Filipinos. He was only 13 years old when his father was assassinated at the then Manila International Airport on his return from three years of exile in the US.

Enrile is considered as the architect of martial law imposed by the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos on Sept. 21, 1972 that enabled him to suspend Congress, jail thousands of his political foes including Aquino, while the military was authorized to do extra-judicial killings.

Ramos, a cousin of Marcos, was chief of the Philippine Constabulary and concurrent Armed Forces vice chief of staff during the martial law years.

By a strange twist of fate, Mrs. Aquino anointed him to succeed her and he won the presidential elections in 1992.

On Monday, Enrile said he was willing to participate in an investigation into the Aquino assassination.

"If I know the answer to their questions, then I will answer (them)," Enrile said.

His statements were preceded by a call by Sen. Aquilino Pimentel on Ramos to enlighten the Filipino people on the assassination.

"As PC chief, it is impossible for Mr. Ramos not to have known about the planned murder of Ninoy. Or if he did not know the plotters before the act was done, it is impossible for him not to know after it was done," Pimentel said in a privileged speech on Aug. 21.

"I suggest that he owes it to the Filipino people to come clean, tell us what he knows about the killing of Ninoy and identify who masterminded the murder," he said.

Marcos administration officials initially identified Aquino’s assassin as Rolando Galman, "a lone communist hit man," who was also shot dead at the airport tarmac along with Aquino.

Then Supreme Court Chief Justice Enrique Fernando was appointed by Marcos to lead the first commission to investigate the Aquino assassination. Fernando is vividly remembered as the figure holding a parasol over the head of then First Lady Imelda Marcos in her outdoor public engagements.

The five-member Fernando Commission dissolved itself due to domestic and international pressure after only two hearings.

Marcos was pressured to form another fact-finding panel led by retired Appellate Court Justice Corazon Juliano Agrava, the first woman judge of the Court of First Instance and the first female Bar examiner.

The Agrava commission issued two different reports.

Agrava’s own report did not blame Ver for the death of Aquino, while the members’ report found him liable.

The then Tanodbayan court acquitted Ver but convicted Gen. Luther Custodio and 15 other soldiers for the Aquino assassination.

The political turmoil that accompanied the Ver acquittal, the decision of Marcos to hold a snap presidential election, the claim of Aquino’s widow - Corazon — that she was robbed of the presidency were among the elements that culminated in the February 1986 people power revolt that ousted the strongman and propelled him into exile in Hawaii.