I was a Yellowtard before the term was coined. It all began on that fateful day on August 21, 1983 when GMA broke the news of Ninoy Aquino being shot on the tarmac as he deplaned from the China Airlines aircraft which brought him from Taipei to Manila.
The broadsheets were full of news, mostly speculative, about Aquino’s impending homecoming. We did not have much information about Marcos’ illness. There were only rumors which spread about how sick he was. Being born and raised in San Miguel, Manila within the security perimeter of Malacanan had its advantage. The Marines manning the security checkpoints spoke of how there were rumors that the Great Ilocano was seriously ill.
Being the stupid college student I was then, the primary suspect was of course, Marcos and Imelda. The whole of Metro Manila became alive during those days what with Ninoy’s wake and the funeral procession which took the whole day because of the number people who poured out on the street to catch a glimpse of the ten-wheeler truck bearing his casket on the way to Manila Memorial Park.
Back at school, the brainwashing begun. Our professors were all anti-Marcos. We were encouraged to join the protest movements and the Student Council mobilized. The President was Fernando Pahati. His rival who lost to him was Hernani Braganza. It was only later I would find out that he was related to FVR. Braganza was identified with leftist-militants whose organization was not recognized by DLSU officials.
Once Danding Cojuangco’s name became involved in the assassination, his portrait, which hung in the main hall of the La Salle Building was taken down. This despite his financial backing of DLSU’s varsity basketball team, which also formed the nucleus of the Philippine National Team under Ron Jacobs. Danding was Project Director for Basketball under Project Gintong Alay, the sports development program established to discover athletic talents all over the country in the bid for the first Olympic gold medal.
By the time I was a sophomore, the rallies had reached its peak. I covered each one as a personal endeavor, since I was majoring in Communication Arts for my AB degree. This was the time when dual degrees were the fad, Lia-Com in La Salle speak. You graduated with both a Liberal Arts and Commerce degree in four years under the trimester system.
Not having a telephoto lens meant I had to be at the venue early enough and shoot from the inside to the outside. I was present at every major Cory rally from the first at Liwasang Bonifacio to the last at the Luneta. Idealism was what was my primary motivation. I thought I was one of the many making an impact in changing the country for the better. Little did I know that pragmatism is best because it takes into account all factors.
My disillusionment with Cory began the moment she declared a revolutionary government. I did not think it was called for and her reneging on the deal she cut with Doy Laurel of UNIDO left a lot to be said about her integrity. It became worse with the move the draft a new constitution by a commission which she appointed all of the members of. The frustration peaked with the return to the old pre-martial law system.
It did not help also that the RAM was getting restive with the release of all “political prisoners.” These personalities were all identified with the CPP-NPA-NDF which was out to overthrow the government. They were not activists. They were condoning violence to overthrow a legitimately elected government. By 1987, I was more sympathetic to the cause of RAM and wanted Cory out.
Other factors which changed my opinion of Cory was the corruption that began immediately after her takeover led by her relatives and the political vendetta she led against government officials identified with Marcos. The origin of corruption was the PCGG, the agency tasked with running after the ill-gotten wealth of the Marcos’ and their cronies. Louie Beltran could not stop writing about story after story in his column. It was he who coined Kamaganak Inc., to describe Cory and her relatives who were falling over each other taking over lucrative businesses and brokering compromise agreements with the cronies.
The political vendetta involved the removal of not only appointed government bureaucrats but also those who held plantilla positions and were guaranteed security of tenure under the civil service code. It did not stop there as elected officials, mostly local government unit heads such as mayors and governors, were replaced by holdover officials on an interim basis. What good would this do and was it not a violation of the democratic process since their constitutuents voted them into office?
What this was was a plain old-fashioned purge, an act of political vendetta, which was designed to rid the government bureaucracy of everything and everyone identified with Marcos. This was the root of the disunity among Filipinos and the beginning of the onset of political dysfunction. It was legalized mob rule under the guise of a revolutionary government.
The Yellowidiot did not have a long-term development plan in place. All of the plans drawn up by the Marcos technocrats were thrown out. Just look at what has become of Metro Manila, which had a development plan in place since 1976. The energy security infrastructure established by Geronimo Velasco was dismantled and the Ministry of Energy abolished. The Bataan Nuclear Power Plant was mothballed and never commissioned.
Up to today, we do not have food or energy security because the priority has always been the interest of the oligarchs. It has never been about the basic needs of the Filipino. The Marcos’ are no saints but you have to admit that even Imelda’s “edifice complex” served a purpose. What would we have used when we were the hosts of the APEC and ASEAN Summits? At the height of the pandemic, the tertiary hospitals she built during her time as First Lady bore the brunt of pandemic response. Even the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine was established during her watch.
Destiny is one of the factors which determines a Presidential candidacy. Marcos set his eyes on the Presidency and it was almost derailed by the reckless act of the murder of Julio Nalundasan. Yet then Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Jose Laurel ordered a review of the case which resulted in Marcos’ acquittal. There was no direct evidence that Marcos committed the murder and he was only a person of interest in the case. He would go on to become President in the 1965 election.
BBM ran for Vice-President in 2016 and “lost” in a close race against Leni Robredo. He was not given any special favors by Duterte. He was not appointed to any government position after the one year ban and saw his protest through. He lost the protest as the Supreme Court ruled that there was no evidence of fraud in Lanao Del Sur, Maguindanao and Basilan, the three provinces where Marcos claimed it would have been impossible for him to obtain zero votes. Marcos still adhered to the rule of law.
Marcos knew the 2022 election was his last chance to run for President. Still, he did not force the issue with Duterte. He did not claim the Presidency as his birthright. He indicated he would be willing to be part of the administration coalition in any manner it saw fit. In short, he left his fate in the hands of Duterte, out of respect for the President and recognizing the reality that he could make or break any candidate given his popularity with the electorate.
The political drama which consumed the Duterte family and the intramurals within the PDP-Laban made the political outlook bleak as Presidential daughter Sara put her foot down and stated categorically that she would instead run for reelection for her last term, instead of seeking either the Presidency or Vice-Presidency. It was clear that Sara did not want anything to do with splitting the vote and letting the rebranded Yellowidiots win as Pinklawans.
In the end, it was GMA who would move heaven and earth to make the Marcos-Duterte tandem a reality. For a while, there was a ray of hope for the opposition that a split-ticket would materialize but Sara Duterte was not a scheming, power-hungry scion of an incumbent President. She knew her place and thought of the country’s best interest and not hers or her family’s.
In the end, GMA was able to achieve unity for the pro-administration coalition. She used whatever remained of her clout and influence to get the political factions to unite under her wing so there would be no question about the total defeat of the opposition in the May election.
Duterte’s win in 2016 and Marcos’ loss were both providential. The win paved the way for the Filipinos to see how a President who did not come to power the traditional way, would govern. A hillbilly who was an underachiever, the eldest son of the last Governor of an undivided Davao province, whose political career began as a direct result of Cory’s purge of elected officials under Marcos.
Marcos lost his electoral protest but Filipinos never accepted the “victory” of Leni Robredo. They know who they voted for Vice-President in 2016. They were tired of the gaslighting they got from the Yellowidiots and wanted to move forward from the Aquino versus Marcos narrative. Despite the vilification for the past thirty-six years, Marcos is on track to set poll records in this election cycle.
I wonder what Louie Beltran would say of a Marcos restoration if he were alive today. Like much of the Pink Talunans, I had so much hope in a Cory Presidency but that went down the drain faster than the amount of time it took to oust Marcos.
Beltran was frustrated as well because there was no real change in the manner which government was run. There was no reform but more of a restoration of the pre-martial law order. He vented his frustration by parodying the events under the Cory administration with his Republic of Banana column series.
Then there is the late National Artist for Literature, Manong Frankie, F. Sionil Jose, who was vehemently anti-Marcos since his election in 1965. In his October 4, 2021 column he writes:
As the Marcoses slither back to Malacañang, in this election season, they and their allies are revising history they claim the crimes of Ferdinand Marcos will be cleansed by time. Wrong! There may be centuries-old epochs and dynasties, but time – history – is a continuum without any hiatus. The judge is us. We are the victims, the brutalized, who have recorded our pain. The generations that follow us – they may know all these but have no personal experience of our agony. How in heaven’s name can they judge?
All through history, revisionists think they can undo history with their lies. We should be aware, particularly in these times of information glut, those with no sense of the past, who do not know the truth, will accept repeated lies as the truth.
Those young voters who didn’t experience Martial Law will be asking similar questions if they have not yet made up their minds in the continued assault by the Marcoses and their allies on the truth. We are angry and fed up with our political system, with narcissistic leaders gorging on the people’s money. We distrust an arrogant media, of bloated TV personalities. Everywhere, we see the flaunting of wealth and also where there are Filipinos eating once a day. When will this misery end?
Marcos plundered billions of dollars – our money – and hid them in secret bank accounts only his family knows. They are using it now in their reach for power. Lest we forget, history’s detritus is not made by one tyrant alone or a gaggle of conspirators but by the people. We made Marcos.
I have never been a Marcos apologist and I will not start now. But the truth is, it is not the Filipino who should be blamed for the Marcos restoration but those who had the opportunity to prove to Filipinos that it could have been better under their watch but failed to do so. This is what Manong Frankie wants us to realize.
The Yellowidiots are again out on social media laying the blame at their countrymen; the laylayan that Leni claims to be her primary constituency, those that they derisively refer to as bobotantes, the D and E.
But the truth is, Marcos’ victory is not only because of the D and E vote but also due to the support of those from the higher economic classes, the ABC, who are sick and tired of the same old narrative from the opposition. What they want is an end to the division and the beginning of a responsible, mature and genuine opposition which will serve as a fiscalizer in the best interest of the country, its citizens and its democracy.
The ball is now with the opposition if they will accept Marcos’ call for unity. I am not optimistic because if they refused to cooperate with Duterte, what reason would they have with Marcos? We are not dealing with sane and reasonable personalities here but with psycho-sociopaths. Just the same, it is good that Marcos is on track to win with more than a simple majority as soon as the official tally is in.
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