Open letter to Kris on Ninoy’s death anniversary
August 21, 2005 | 12:00am
Cowards die many times before their deaths: The valiant never taste of death but once. –William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge, that myth is more potent than history. I believe that dreams are more powerful than facts – that hope always triumphs over experience – that laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death. –From the movie The Crow
Dear Kristina Bernadette "Kris" Cojuangco Aquino,
No, this is not about showbiz buzz or your highly-publicized romance with that basketball player who’s younger than you and rumored to be a playboy!
Today, August 21, is the 22nd death anniversary of your late father Senator Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino, Jr., a historic event that shook the whole of Philippine society out of decades-old moral complacency and apathy. I remember it was a Sunday afternoon and I was home just relaxing. I was reading a novel, The Autumn of the Patriarch (El otoño del patriarca) by Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez and listening to pop music on the radio when the startling news abruptly interrupted and jarred me out of my languor.
What a coincidence. That novel I was reading was about a pathological fascist despot. He was a tragic composite of Latin America’s fascist tyrants Trujillo, Batista and Somoza – described as "a genius at the barren politics of survival, capable and guilty of the most savage brutality, a lonely monster who shuffles through his palace every night, checking the locks, looking for assassins, lighting a lantern for a quick exit."
I’m sure almost everyone in the Philippines then would remember what they were doing and where at the precise moment of your dad’s cold-blooded killing. August 21 was a defining moment in Philippine history, similar to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, which was an unforgettable event for many Americans.
As a student writer, I was then eternally curious about the perplexing things happening to our society, similar to the surreal magical realism in novels by South American writers. As an idealist, I was angered at the sheer injustice of the murder, for even the worst criminals are given fair trials and chances for final appeal before they are executed! As an ethnic Chinese youth who dreamt of becoming an entrepreneur like six generations of my forebears in the Philippines, I grieved for the "duan" or chaos – the economic decay and pall of gloom aggravated by your dad’s shocking death.
I remember braving the long lines at Sto. Domingo Church to view your dad’s blood-drenched corpse. However, I recall feeling in my gut that the whole Philippines was then in its death throes and ripe for some cataclysmic rebirth as a new society. I was surprised when the fall of the Marcos regime took three years to happen, surprised also by the series of events that led to EDSA 1986. I was all the more surprised at your mother Corazon "Cory" C. Aquino’s meteoric rise to power and her government’s tragic descent into ennui. Kris, what has happened to the Philippines ever since your dad’s death 22 years ago?
Don’t you just feel heartbroken by all that has happened in our society since? After People Power in 1986 came nine subsequent military coup attempts and frustrating socio-economic crises, while the rest of our Asian neighbors pulled ahead of us in progress. Are you not appalled by our collective national amnesia or the cavalier forgetfulness about history, that we have forgotten all the amorality of martial law corruption, lies and political viciousness?
Are you not saddened by this nationwide "ningas cogon" sickness which has allowed so many post-martial law leaders and former street parliamentarians to become as corrupt or worse? Are you not scandalized by all the cynicism, despair, even nihilism and fixation with only self-interest or self-gratification driving many of our young people?
Kris, I agree with you when you went on national TV to cry your heart out against the injustice of the boorish insults hurled by Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales against your mother, using your tragic past mistakes to get back at your mom politically. However, no matter how improper his criticisms were, you’d be surprised at how many other people – educated or not – share the same sentiments about your turbulent personal life played out so openly and inappropriately in mass media like the most sordid reality TV show. I sincerely wish you true happiness and peace.
Like it or not Kris, you’re like the crown princess of Philippine politics, if there ever was one. The position you occupy is similar to that of John F. Kennedy, Jr., the assassinated president’s only son. I was aghast to read about your controversial 2003 affair with the married Joey Marquez in the The New York Times – that’s how big you are as a celebrity brat! Your father had become an icon and a hero, while your mother is a former President and was the rallying symbol of a non-violent People Power uprising.
On both sides of your bloodlines, you’re part of this country’s traditional political elite, which has for generations endured and recklessly mismanaged the affairs of the Philippines instead of leading our society towards enlightenment. Let us not romanticize the past as glorious, because many of our leaders since the revolutionary and Commonwealth eras to post-World War II decades were duplicitous and corrupt. Scions of leading families like you, who are blessed with more in life, are expected to do more for our troubled society. It is not right that young people of your socio-economic and political class devote your energies, time and talents primarily to your own economic enrichment, sybaritic pleasures or the pursuit of celebrity.
Kris, I hope you don’t mind my saying this, but for all the surface gloss, bad boyfriends and scandalous romances, which I fear millions of young people might wrongly emulate or consider acceptable, I admire your guts and chutzpah. I also admire how you’ve survived the many rotten bums who were your former boyfriends and suitors. I admire you because you are beautiful and smart. I respect you for creating your own life, for pursuing your own dreams and the passions of your heart.
Kris, game ka na ba? Couldn’t you someday tap into your innate gutsy rebellious spirit and your intelligence to help kick some sacred cows in our Philippine society and help exorcise the many evils that oppress this country? You enjoy a life of privilege, but don’t close your eyes to the harsh reality of the tens of millions of people who suffer hunger, homelessness, dehumanizing poverty and other iniquities. We are actually a republic with two nations – the small elite and endangered middle class versus the fast-growing mass of unlettered and hungry poor in the urban slums or rural barrios.
Do you want your son Joshua and other kids to grow up in an unjust, violent and corrupt society with the rich hiding behind high walls and armed guards, the harassed middle class voting with their feet in migration and the poor masses manipulated by our rotten-to-the-core-of-their-beings politicians in our flawed democracy?
Kris, you and other young people of our generation and education have a moral responsibility to help fundamentally change this country! We young people with good educations should be culturally, morally, politically and in other ways radically different from the corrupt past!
I disagree with half-educated peasants masquerading as pseudo socio-political pundits, Communists who are misguided idealists still living in a fantasy world or even the right-wing fascists, all of them who mindlessly call for bloody revolution against the so-called "hopeless elite." It was the modernizing elites of China in the Nationalist and Communist regimes, South Korea in the Park Chung Hee era, Japan of the Meiji era, Taiwan province under Chiang Kai Shek and his son Chiang Ching Kuo, Singapore under Lee Kuan Yew’s People Action Party, even democratic America, which led their nations towards progress. It was not bloody revolutions by the abused and dispossessed masses, the disgruntled proletariat or hungry peasants that changed their societies for the better.
In America during the revolutionary era when they established the world’s oldest constitutional democracy, only the oligarchy of white, literate and land-owning males like slave owners George Washington and Thomas Jefferson could vote and politically govern the United States. Kris, the problem in the Philippines is not the presence of a powerful or self-perpetuating power elite or oligarchy symbolized by your Aquino and Cojuangco clans, but the real problem is the lack of morality, long-range vision, guts and idealism of our power elite to vigorously push sweeping reforms.
Before your dad’s assassination, the Philippines was already headed downhill economically, politically, etc. Your dad’s death was the last straw that broke the camel’s back. With that martyrdom, he was immediately transformed into a heroic figure for many people like me who looked upon him with suspicion as a clever but ambitious and frustrated traditional politician.
As a student at the Ateneo, your dad had suffered some form of ostracism from some American Jesuits because your paternal grandfather – along with the grandfather of Senator Manuel "Mar" Roxas III and other members of the local elite – were prosecuted by nationalist Lorenzo Tañada as collaborators with the Japanese invaders. With your dad’s one act of moral courage and selflessness, Ninoy Aquino not only secured his exalted place in Philippine history, he also helped redeem the blemished honor of his own collaborator father. Can you uphold the honor of your parents with a purpose-driven life dedicated to advancing far-reaching reforms, high standards of morality and social justice?
In the Chinese language, there is a saying in Hokkien that goes like this – "Si-se cho yeng-hiong" or "The exigencies and circumstances of history create heroes." Whether we are well-known VIPs like you or ordinary citizens, if we courageously and selflessly respond to the challenge of our turbulent times, we can become real heroes and heroines who can change the future of the Philippines! We should put a stop to apathy and the fatalistic "bahala na" surrender to gloom. Instead of cursing the darkness, complaining about our hopelessly rotten politicians and our seemingly endless crises, let us master our destiny! Let us be subversives, defying excessive corruption and pessimism! Let us be agents of positive change!
Kris, on this, your dad’s death anniversary, you and all of us who are alive shouldn’t mourn your dad’s dying, but envy him. The late civil rights leader Rev. Martin Luther King said, "If man hasn’t discovered something that he will die for, he isn’t fit to live." Your dad Ninoy discovered his purpose in life and what he was willing to die for. Have we?
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