Liberal Party finds common themes in 1983 Aquino murder, drug war
THE HOMECOMING assassination 34 years ago of Benigno S. Aquino, Jr. was commemorated on Monday, Aug. 21, by followers of the martyred senator, including the Liberal Party (LP) to which he belonged.
Mr. Aquino, the leading opponent of the Marcos dictatorship, returned home from exile in the US that tragic Sunday afternoon. Before his exile abroad, his rival, dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, had him detained for about seven years, during which time Mr. Aquino was also subjected to a military trial on controversial charges.
He was gunned down on Aug. 21, 1983, by his own security escorts, as later established in a subsequent trial. But the masterminds, one of them widely presumed to be from the Aquino-Cojuangco family, have remained unidentified.
Mr. Aquino’s wife, Corazon, and son, Benigno III, were catapulted to the Philippine presidency in 1986 and 2010, respectively.
“Though tragic, both events were defining moments that saw Filipinos resisting the coming of darkness,” the LP in a statement said of the Aquino assassination and the Plaza Miranda bombing a decade earlier, also deemed a dark chapter in the Marcos regime.
“With the administration’s brutal war on illegal drugs today, a creeping impunity is in our midst. We must let our voices be heard. We must resist. We should not be afraid,” the party said, adding:
“The Duterte administration’s war on drugs has turned out to be a worse evil than the one it set out to fight.”
For his part, LP stalwart and Senate Minority Leader Franklin M. Drilon said in a statement: “Let us not dishonor Ninoy’s sacrifice by trivializing human life. If Ninoy were alive today, he would have been the first to speak against the bloodbath in the name of war on drugs.”
Mr. Drilon also said: “If Ninoy were alive today, he would have condemned the death of a teenager, a son, a child, a mother, and a father. Ninoy valued life as much as he valued freedom.”
“If he were alive today, Ninoy would have been in the forefront of the fight against police impunity and the government’s acquiescence.”
Mr. Drilon’s allies in the LP also issued their statements according to those themes.
Supporters of the LP and of former president Aquino have expressed similar views in their online outrage at the murder of Grade 11 student Kian delos Santos in the hands of the police. Mr. Delos Santos’s death has become a rallying point in the clamor against the rising death toll in President Rodrigo R. Duterte’s drug war.
But Manila Archbishop Luis Cardinal Antonio Tagle on Sunday urged a “multi-sectoral dialogue” on the drug problem, saying in part: “The illegal drug problem should not be reduced to a political or criminal issue. It is a humanitarian concern that affects all of us.”
“Words of solidarity without tears and acts of compassion are cheap,” the Manila archbishop also said.
A day earlier, Mr. Duterte himself sent out a presidential message in tribute to the slain Mr. Aquino, saying in part: “up until the very end of his life, he inspired a peaceful revolution that resulted (in) the liberties we enjoy today.”
Mr. Duterte, however, had also honored the late Mr. Marcos by allowing his burial at the Heroes’ Cemetery last November, after decades that this move by the Marcos family was blocked by survivors of the dictatorship.
