By HERBERT VEGO
THE short speech of President Benigno Simeon “Noynoy” Aquino III before the Filipino-American community at Boston College – recalling the assassination of his father Ninoy in 1983 – revealed a nugget of vindictiveness in his character when he said, “As the only son, I felt an overwhelming urge to exact an eye for an eye. Mr. Marcos and his ilk were like rabid dogs who had lost all reason.
“I knew that he was a formidable foe and the fight would be impossible. But regardless of this, in those moments, all I wanted was to do to Mr. Marcos and his camp what he had done unto us.”
Toward the end of his speech, however, he remarked, “Dad’s death started a new movement for change,” referring to the uprising three years later that toppled the Marcos regime and catapulted his mother, Corazon Aquino, to the presidency.
Ironically, in all six years that Cory had been President, no court of law had declared President Ferdinand Marcos as the mastermind behind the murder.
Comes now the question: Had Ninoy not departed as he did, could Mother and Son have ascended to the presidential throne?
I have yet to hear somebody answer “yes” simply because it was Ninoy’s brutal murder that paved the way for Cory to the presidency; and Cory’s cancer-caused death that motivated the sympathetic voters to elevate a low-rated senator, Noynoy, to the presidency.
Presuming without admitting that Marcos killed Ninoy, Pilosopo Tasyo would have shouted, “Hoy, PNoy, you owe your position to Makoy!”
More ironically, while he minces no words in desecrating the memory of a dead dictator, PNoy now behaves worse than Marcos. He has surrounded himself with corrupt government officials but blames his predecessor and her retired coterie for graft and corruption.
Incidentally, I once heard somebody singing to the tune of “My Way,” “Regrets, I’ve had a few, and one of them… voting for Simeon….”
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The lady behind the famous Molo County bakeshop has departed for good to join her husband in paradise. She is Paz Tolentino Mabilog, 82, who passed away Sept. 15 and will be interred tomorrow at the Molo Catholic Cemetery after a 1 p.m. mass at St. Anne Church in Molo, Iloilo City.
Incidentally, today marks the first death anniversary of her late husband, my good friend Regino “Rene” Mabilog. Happy birthday up there, Don Rene.
It was in Rene’s wake a year ago that I last saw Doña Paz alive. She said she had read the column I had written on her husband.
In that column I had quoted the poem, “Death is Nothing at All” by Henry Scott Holland that began with these lines:
Death is nothing at all,
I have only slipped away into the next room.
The couple is back in each other’s arms in that “next room.”
Like Rene, the wife had spent the prime of her life serving humanity through Lionism. She had occupied top positions in Lions Club, culminating as president of Lioness District 301 B Philippines.
As a businesswoman, she ran Molo County Bakeshop and Tita Paz Pansit Molo House; and was a board director of Antique Cargo Handling and Port Terminal Services.
Deeply religious, she was president of the Third Order of Discalced Carmelites.
Surviving Doña Paz are four daughters, namely Rosemarie (married to Dr. Russell Landoy), Elena (married to Everardo Ledesma), Reynita (married to Henry Mualla), Angelica (married to the late Pedro Apollo Panes), and Blesilda; and grandchildren Marc Aldwin, Joreine Patrick, Roselle Paz, Erika, Edrick, Regine Paz, Marie Therese , Camille Megan and Peter Daniel.
With no son of their own, the late couple “adopted” Mayor Jed Patrick Mabilog, who called them “Papa” and “Mama.”
Her body lies in state at the family residence in Fundidor, Molo.
Condolences!/PN
