Madame Imelda says there were but four fatalities in the Film Palace tragedy of Nov. 17, 1981. This fantastic revisionist claim I am reading for the first time. Were that true, it would have been one of those things. Just another bump in the road, aside from the feelings of the victims’ close kin and friends. Accidents do happen (as I know, only too well).
The reason the foreign press went to town on what became a widely published story was that it was said that 68 died, because she had rushed the construction of the Film Palace that remains basically unused. Many buildings with few construction fatalities are in normal use all over the world, but the Film Palace scares the bejesus out of potential occupants.
The Aug. 14 issue of the Sunday Inquirer carried this exchange between Imelda and the paper:
“[Q]: But do you regret ’yung mga namatay sa Film Center? [A]: Mayroong namatay, but what happened there? I always got the best contractor, for the Heart Center, the Lung Center.
Pagkatapos sinabi nila when I was about to build the Film Center, sabi nung Prime Minister ‘You cannot do that anymore just to have that contractor, we have to bid it.’ The cheapest bidder was the Chinese. Pinakamura sa lahat, nanalo sila. I was in Rome for the Cardinal Vidal (consistory). Umulan siyam-siyam, bumagsak ang roof. Pero ang namatay doon apat na tao at hindi iniwanan doon. That’s a big, big lie.
“[Q]: They were not buried? [A]: No, I came home right away. They were buried when the ceiling collapsed. We dug them [out] and we gave them so much money.”
That was a time of heavy censorship, but there was no stopping the foreign press and the local kwentuhan or tsismisan circuit— about contractor Wescon Inc., about the lack of budget, about Aber Canlas claiming responsibility for completing the Film Palace, about those who waited to die for hours, encased in quick-drying cement against which mere chisels were used, about the lack of any criminal prosecution, etc.
I find myself wishing the aborted Truth Commission had been created solely to find out whether a few—28, 64 or 168—perished, and how many were retrieved or just buried there. It was a time of heavy censorship, but Mabini lawyers helped memorialize the tragedy in Newsletter snippets.
The concern here is maybe Imelda again is revising history. Had the foreign media twisted the facts and bloated the number of deaths, the journalists concerned would have been
“ASSOed” (from martial law’s ASSO—arrest, search and seizure order) and deported at once, or charged with subversion by libel. Imagine saying 168 died when only four did. ASSO was replaced by the PCO (Presidential Commitment Order) and later, the PDA (Preventive Detention Action), in case we have forgotten.
—RENE SAGUISAG, former senator, ravslaw@gmail.com