September

Though totally unrelated to the events of September 1972, the Earth Wind and Fire hit uncannily and coincidentally singles out the 21st day of September.

September 1972

Ninoy Aquino, then an opposition senator, was arrested on Sept. 23, 1972, two days after President Ferdinand E. Marcos signed Proclamation 1081 placing the Philippines under martial law, and on the day Information Minister Francisco Tatad announced it on television.

“Before Sept. 23, 1972, it seemed that there was nothing that (Ninoy) could not handle. He had planned his life and everything was going on schedule. At that time, the important event he was most looking forward to was the forthcoming presidential elections of 1973,” the late former President Cory Aquino would later recall in her oral memoirs, which were subsequently transcribed and compiled in the book To Love Another Day.
“Then, on Sept. 23, with the day just beginning, I received a call from Ninoy. He informed me that he was on his way to Camp Crame. I was perplexed because he could not tell me why, but he assured me that I would know eventually.

“Later, I received a call from Judy Roxas, wife of Sen. Gerry Roxas. She asked me if I knew what had happened to Ninoy. When I told her no, she informed me that Sen. John Osmeña had just called from the Hilton. Martial law had been declared, he said, and Ninoy had been arrested. Judy also said that Gerry was on his way to Crame and would call us once he got to see or talk to Ninoy.”

“I woke my children up (at that time Kris was only a year and a half old) to tell them what had happened; and when I told them, I couldn’t help but cry.”

“On the advice of my brother, Peping Cojuangco, my children and I left our home (in Quezon City) at around 2:30 a.m. and transferred to my parents’ home in Makati. On our way to Makati, we passed by Gerry Roxas’ house where he briefed me about his visit to Ninoy in Camp Crame. When we arrived at my parents’ house, my sister, Terry and her husband, Ricardo (Baby) Lopa were already there. Peping was there and so were Ninoy’s sister, Tessie, and her husband, Len Oreta. I did not wake up my parents as I felt the bad news could wait until daybreak, even as I recounted to my relatives what Gerry Roxas had told me,” Cory would later recall in an article she penned for PeopleAsia magazine.

“Tessie accompanied me to Camp Crame at around six in the morning to try and see Ninoy. However, we were only allowed to wave to him from a distance and leave some food for him. It was in the afternoon when my sister-in-law, Lupita, was able to get permission for me to visit Ninoy.”

When she was finally allowed to see Ninoy in Crame, he told her that he and the others, including STAR founding publisher Max Soliven, Pepe Diokno, Soc Rodrigo, Teddy Locsin Sr., Chino Roces, Ramon Mitra, Nap Rama, Jose Mari Velez and student activist Voltaire Garcia were going to be transferred to Fort Bonifacio.

Cory said she and the wives of Diokno and Locsin had to be bodily searched by the Women Auxiliary Corps (WACS) before they were able to visit their husbands in Fort Bonifacio on the first Sunday they went there to visit them.

“The whole experience was so absolutely new and unsettling,” she said in her memoirs.

“Still, in the beginning, things did not seem too bad. We could visit every day for an hour, although there was always a WAC and a military soldier looking on.”

Eventually, months later, Ninoy’s cellmates were released from detention, one by one.

“As it turned out, Ninoy and Pepe (Diokno) were to be left behind in jail,” Cory recalled in her memoirs. 

Diokno was released from imprisonment on Sept. 11, 1974.

Ninoy Aquino was imprisoned for seven years and seven months.

September 2025

Ferdinand Marcos Jr. is president of the Philippines. Kiko Aquino Dee, grandson of Ninoy, is one of the leaders of a peaceful protest against corruption, “Trillion Peso March” at 2 pm at the People Power monument on Edsa, on Sept. 21, the 53rd anniversary of the declaration of martial law.

According to online reports, the center of the protests are massive irregularities and anomalies in flood control projects, with data pointing to some P1.9 trillion spent over the past 15 years, over half of which has been allegedly lost to corruption.

The President has said that if he were not president, he would be out on the streets protesting himself.

“If I weren’t president, I might be out in the streets with them. So, of course, they are enraged,” he said at a press conference. “Of course, they are angry. I am angry. We should all be angry. Because what’s happening is not right. So, yes, express it.”

 Kiko believes joining rallies would be superfluous for the President, considering the powers the presidency already has.

“Well, I think if you’re president, you have so many powers to actually affect change. The reason why we’re rallying is because we don’t have that power.  Definitely rallying is important and we can push things, right? We can make our voices heard, we can make our voices heard through the ballot. But President Marcos was given the blessing of 60 percent of voters to exercise that power to do something for the country, right? And he hasn’t done much of it in the last three years, but hopefully he does it now.”

“The ICI (Independent Commission for Infrastructure) is a step in the right direction, but he needs to exert his authority to rally Congress to pass the law to give the ICI proper powers to actually have a meaningful investigation,” Kiko told me.

Kiko actually admits that he is a so-called “nepo baby.”

“Yeah, definitely. Why? Because everything I have is because of my family, from the physical trappings to even the activism I do now. I’m able to express myself. 

“Not because I’m particularly brilliant, but because I’m related to these people who are such big parts of our history. I’ve built a career off the name of my family, so that’s kind of what a ‘nepo baby’ is. 

“Nepo baby is privilege by definition, both in the bad sense and the good sense. 

“But I have it, and if I don’t use it, then it doesn’t go anywhere, right? So I might as well use it for the things that I think to be right, to the best of my knowledge.” *