Philippine Daily Inquirer First Posted 23:49:00 08/30/2008
MANILA, Philippines—Those who want to get to the bottom of the country’s “crime of the century,” the assassination of anti-Marcos opposition leader Ninoy Aquino on Aug. 21, 1983, may have been perplexed by two recent initiatives in long-form journalism. A new documentary by the Foundation for Worldwide People Power, “Beyond Conspiracy: 25 Years After the Aquino Assassination,” confirmed the popular view that Rolando Galman was merely a fall guy. But a seven-part special report by reporter Fe Zamora in the Inquirer raised, yet again, the alternative view that Galman was in fact the assassin, albeit working as part of a military operation.
What are we to make of all this?
We can understand the relief that Galman’s son, Reynaldo, felt upon viewing the documentary the other week. “We [the family] have been quiet for so long, the issue is no longer clear to many people. It’s good it’s coming out again. I feel it is time to remind the people my father was innocent,” Galman said in Filipino.
And yet the soldiers convicted of killing Aquino and Galman continue to profess their belief that it wasn’t a soldier who shot the opposition politician returning from years of exile, but Galman. They do so, despite debilitating illness (in the case of some) or conversion to religion (in the case of others).
We should not lose sight of the essential, agreed-upon or already established facts, however. There was an elaborate security operation to secure Aquino’s safety upon his arrival at the Manila International Airport, called Oplan Balikbayan. But there was also an equally complex but smaller-scale military operation (whether part of Balikbayan or completely separate from it remains unproven) to put Aquino in harm’s way.
That much is clear. The hiring of Galman, the spiriting of the hired gunman into the airport in airplane maintenance overalls, the special instructions given (or allowed) to sergeants Rolando de Guzman and Pablo Martinez, Martinez’s unusual presence on the tarmac—all speak of a violent plan with Aquino as the ultimate target. In this sense, it does not matter whether Galman pulled the trigger or not. Units of the military, then under the control of loyalist general Fabian Ver, had sprung a trap for the opposition leader. Whether Galman served as the spring or was used merely as a diversion, we know, we can reasonably be sure, that the trap was laid by soldiers and generals.
If the events that led to the assassination were telling, the events that followed were damning.
Hours after the assassination, Ver gathered the top brass in Camp Aguinaldo and announced, “If we are to put the soldiers in front of the firing squad to save the day for the President and the Republic, we will do that.” But in fact he did not place the soldiers in front of the firing squad; he allowed them to be placed, figuratively speaking, before the buffet table.
In the two years or so that the Aviation Security Command officers and soldiers were undergoing investigation, in the last years of the Marcos dictatorship, they enjoyed the perks of pampered VIPs: they were kept under very loose guard by fellow Avsecom soldiers, some were allowed to go home, they spent weekends drinking and feasting, they received “fat allowances” in lieu of their suspended salaries. (Not coincidentally, civilians who may prove inconvenient to their wellbeing disappeared permanently.) The soldiers were so astonished by the availability of so much money they asked: Where is the money coming from? From million-peso funds put up by two of Marcos’ closest crony businessmen, they were told.
Of course, none of these essential facts can tell us who the true mastermind behind the assassination was. In spite of many tantalizing leads, that remains a mystery.
It is a mystery we must continue to probe, and today is a good day to re-dedicate ourselves to the task. This day is 25 years to the day that Aquino was buried (Aug. 31, 1983) in the country’s largest funeral. Around 2 million Filipinos braved the heat—and the torrential rains, too, that, hours into the funeral march which started at Sto. Domingo Church in Quezon City, fell heavily from a mourning sky.
Copyright 2008 Philippine Daily Inquirer. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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