Forgetting About Ninoy

Every year in August we pause for a national holiday commemorating the death of Sen. Benigno Aquino, Jr. Every year we try hard to remember Ninoy. And each year, our collective memory seems to fail us. For in our efforts to remind ourselves that there was once a man shot dead in an airport now bearing his name, we forget the very essence of this man's martyrdom.

Around the same time last year, a young school boy was interviewed in the evening news and was asked if he knew Ninoy. "Yes, the father of Kris Aquino," was the proud reply. I turned over in my seat. The fallen senator must have done the same in his grave. Didn't they tell the boy at home that Ninoy was a lot more than just a father to a showbiz character? Didn't they teach him in school about Ninoy the hero, our hero?

Still, there are some degenerates who maintain otherwise, insisting that had Ninoy been alive today, he would have been but another one of those tiresome trapos. What totally escapes them is that Ninoy chose not to be alive today. He chose to come home from exile and die, believing that the ultimate sacrifice was the only way to further his cause.

Sadly, this sacrifice is forever proving to be fruitless. Save for a brief shining moment in history in that episode we call EDSA Revolution, we have not done much to change anything. We are still the same poor country, the same divided nation, the same miserable race moving soullessly toward an uncertain future.


More than two decades since that fateful day, the tragedy forced upon Ninoy and his family remains an injustice. But the bigger injustice is not the inability of the judicial system to bring the perpetrators down; it is our incessant incapacity to rise above ourselves and heed the call of the man who gave up his life. In a sense, we are no better than his murderers. Yes, they are the ones who pulled the trigger. But we are the ones who killed all hope born of his heroism. And we are guilty beyond reasonable doubt.

The Filipino is worth dying for. Who is willing to die next?