THE NATION today commemorates the 20th anniversary of the assassination of former Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr. The assassination stands out as one of the most outrageous political murders in the history of this country, including the murder of Andres Bonifacio in the midst of the Philippine Revolution that began in 1896 and the execution of Dr. Jose Rizal by Spanish musketry.
A move has been initiated in Congress by Sen. Aquilino Pimentel to proclaim Aquino a national hero in the category of Rizal and Bonifacio. While it is odious to make comparisons among the three, they share some things in common: a passion to fight for freedom and the willingness to lay down their lives in the struggle.
There are other similarities. Aquino‘s murder was an upshot of political conflict and his rivalry with Marcos, while Bonifacio’s stemmed from the struggle for power and leadership of the Revolution between the contending factions of the Katipunan. Both died at the hands of their countrymen. Up until now, 20 years after the murder at the tarmac of the Manila International Airport, the crime has not been solved, and the mastermind of the assassination has remained a mystery. Similarly, Bonifacio’s murder remains unsolved.
The demand for the solution of the Aquino assassination commands public attention 20 years after the act. Although a trial during the administration of President Corazon Aquino found 16 soldiers guilty, the conviction sparked calls for a wider search for those who were responsible for the murder.
Rizal’s execution, after a trial on trumped-up charges, sparked the 1898 Revolution that led to the end of more than three centuries of Spanish rule. Aquino‘s assassination was similarly a defining event in Philippine history. It set off a chain of events that led to the overthrow of 14 years of the Marcos dictatorship. The murder of Aquino, who was jailed by Marcos upon the declaration of martial law in 1972, was the foremost symbol in the struggle for the restoration of freedom and democracy.
People power owes its origin to the Aquino murder. The assassination radically altered and transformed the Philippine political landscape. It harnessed the undercurrent of popular resistance to the dictatorship. Aquino‘s funeral marked the time when Filipinos ceased to be afraid to proclaim their demand for liberty.
Before then, Filipinos had lived in fear, and, except for a few brave souls, lost their voice to protest the abuses of the regime. The assassination emancipated Filipinos from their bondage. A vast transformation took place in the horizon of political action after the assassination.
Aquino returned from exile to carry on the struggle for political emancipation, without sounding the clarion call of revolution and armed struggle. He came home alone, knowing the risk to his life.
Prior to Aquino‘s tragic homecoming, the color of resistance to the Marcos dictatorship and even of revolution to change the social order was red, with flags being waved by demonstrators singing the “Internationale.” Although he was not a leftist revolutionary, Aquino nevertheless showed in his writings in exile that he recognized the inequities of the elite-dominated social order. But he embodied the principle of passive resistance incarnated by his model, Mahatma Gandhi.
Yellow, the color of a homecoming, became the emblem of the unarmed resistance to the dictatorship. Yellow swept aside the red flags of the radical revolutionaries who, since the end of World War II, had failed to mobilize widespread popular support for their revolution.
Aquino‘s death rallied the multitudes behind his movement for reform and return to democracy and stole the initiative from the radicals who, in the end were swallowed by the current of the middle-class resistance to the dictatorship. His Yellow Revolution unearthed the depth and breadth of the middle-class constituency that provided the backbone of the People Power Revolution of 1986, tapped by the aboveground legal political opposition led by his widow.
As we commemorate Aquino‘s assassination in the aftermath of another coup attempt, we would do well to remember that its most significant result was to mobilize the middle class for a non-violent method of political change.