Was Ninoy’s death a US operation?

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
08/23/2010



The Aquino children’s repudiation of the reopening of the Ninoy Aquino slay inquiry, under the pretext of “having already forgiven the perpetrators,” is facile and unacceptable. The Filipino people are entitled to know the truth in their continuing conduct of history; and the unclosed chapter is unfair to Ferdinand Marcos et al. who were long condemned as the masterminds through insinuations by the Aquino family and the Establishment media.

Take Billy Esposo’s logic, written in 2007: “…The responsibility falls squarely on the Marcos regime… The compelling reason for ordering the Aquino assassination was to remove the all-too-real threat of Aquino rallying the opposition…” That same facile logic about the 1971 Plaza Miranda bombing — which has been proven absolutely false to waylay the nation — created chaos and almost absolved the real perpetrator, Jose Ma. Sison.

Esposo, echoing the logic of all those still simplistically blaming Marcos or those around him, argues: “The power dynamics of the Marcos era was such that the Aquino assassination could only have been undertaken with the go-signal of Marcos or someone who could act on his behalf in ordering the military to undertake the elaborate operation.”

But could Marcos have forced the US not to renew the visa of Ninoy Aquino and his family? And why exactly didn’t the US extend the visas of the Aquinos, since there were countless humanitarian grounds to grant this, particularly the alleged threat of physical harm to his family in the event they returned to Manila? Could Marcos have arranged the acceptance of the obviously faked passport of Ninoy (under the name “Marcial Bonifacio”) through the British in Hong Kong and the Taiwanese authorities? Could he have imposed upon these governments to let a fake passport holder slip through?

Ken Kashiwahara, Ninoy’s Japanese-American brother-in-law, writing his firsthand account in 1983 of that last plane leg at the Chiang Kai Shek International Airport before arriving in Manila (republished by The New York Times last week), said: “Ninoy had no problems going through immigration as Marcial Bonifacio… but as soon as he left the counter, the two ‘security’ men escorted him around the corner. I panicked. ‘This is it,’ I muttered. ‘He’s been discovered.’ I hurried through the immigration, rounded the corner and there was Ninoy, grinning. ‘That was the Taiwan garrison commander,’ he said, ‘and he just wanted to make sure I got through O.K. Can you imagine? A general?’”

The point I am driving at should be clear by now: There has always been a power that could supercede Marcos and any other president to this day. (Erap tried to insist on his way and got ousted, too.)

The official investigation of Ninoy’s assassination stops at Sgt. Pablo Martinez, the identified gunman. But after decades of incarceration and religious guidance from Msgr. Robert Olaguer, assigned by the late Cardinal Sin to minister to the spiritual needs of the 10 soldiers implicated in the assassination, Sgt. Martinez decided to come out with his personal knowledge of who the mastermind was.

On November 2007, Gloria Arroyo pardoned the convicted Ninoy Aquino killers on humanitarian grounds. And as the Aquino siblings denounced this decision, Msgr. Robert Olaguer came up to defend the soldiers to insist on their innocence.

Meanwhile, Esposo, in his aforementioned 2007 article, came to Danding’s defense saying, “What rules out Danding Cojuangco from being the mastermind is the fact that (he) was only in the money game during that time but was nowhere in the line of succession. He neither had the title to vie for it nor had command of the legions to be able to grab it...”

Years after the fall of Marcos that began with the Ninoy Aquino assassination, many US State Department bigwigs, among them former State Secretary George Schultz and then ambassador to Indonesia Paul Wolfowitz, have come out to claim credit for the former leader’s ouster. They’ve stated this either in their memoirs or in various speeches which I have accessed by patiently searching on the Net.

The fall of Marcos caused a reversal of his nation-building programs; then restored and reinvigorated the power of the old privileged elite; demolished trade protection; and accelerated privatization and deregulation, which all led to the greatest transfer of wealth from the Philippine state’s coffers (and the people’s pockets) to global transnational corporations and their local partners. From then on, the sinister program to obliterate the existence of a sovereign Philippine Republic has all but ended with finality.

(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; watch Politics (and Economics) Today, Tuesday, 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m. on Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21 about “Ninoy’s Death: A False Flag Operation?”; visit our blogs, http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)