Within a cycle of nearly 40 years, the scions of two leading Philippine political dynasties find themselves lodged in strategic positions that could spark a resumption of their epic blood feud.
Through a quirk produced by the May 2010 elections, Sen. Benigno 'Noynoy' Aquino III, son of the martyred opposition leader former senator Benigno 'Ninoy" Aquino Jr., was elected president by a landslide. Also in the same polls, Ferdinand 'Bongbong' Marcos Jr., son of the late President Ferdinand Marcos, was elected to the Senate, where his father mounted his first bid for the presidency in 1965.
The Aquino assassination has not been solved up until today, but it remains a deep wound that has scarred the political consciousness of the Aquinos and their loyal followers. More importantly, it has defined the deep cleavage and issues of Philippine society, from the time of the Aquino killing up to the Edsa People Power Revolution of 1986.
The Aquinos cannot forget that blood is on the hands of the Marcos dictatorship, which has been blamed by the family and the multitude of Filipinos for the murder.
The underlying issues in this epic feud between these two powerful Filipino dynasties are defined by the beliefs that the Marcos dictatorship represents a reprehensible abuse of power, and the Aquino family, the victims of such abuse and exponents of the restoration of a democracy based on renewal of trust of the people in their government, through regular and free elections and good governance.
Mind-boggling result
The amazing juxtaposition of the heirs of the Aquino and Marcos families in 2010 was one of the mind-boggling outcomes of the May election.
The results did not follow a political script, for nothing in Philippine politics, as well as elections, has ever followed a script or a grand architecture and has always confounded political forecasts by self-styled political “experts” in its idiosyncratic twists and turns.
Noynoy sits on the throne once held by his mother, Cory Aquino, the first Aquino to become president through an extraordinary circumstance of popular acclamation or street coup, called “people power” after Marcos cheated the 1986 snap election.
Having been officially proclaimed president by the national board of canvassers, Noynoy has been installed in the seat of the executive power, facing a potential challenge from family adversaries embedded in the legislature, the seat of legislative power in our scheme of checks and balances by coequal political branches of our often turbulent and unruly republican democratic system.
Bongbong and Imelda
While an Aquino holds sway in the executive department, he faces two members of the Marcos dynasty ensconced by the last election—Bongbong Marcos in the Senate and his mother, Imelda Marcos, widow of the late dictator, who has been elected to the House representing the second district of Ilocos Norte.
It is convenient, but not always helpful, to make a hasty conclusion that the election of two Marcoses in both houses of Congress, as well as the election of former congresswoman Imee Marcos of Ilocos Norte as governor of that province, is a vindication of Marcos and his dictatorship, marked by historians as one of the darkest chapters in modern Philippine history.
Bongbong has made no bones about his intentions to rehabilitate the inglorious record of his father and has trained his sights on the presidency—an ambition that puts him on collision course with the second Aquino presidency.
Noynoy should be warned that a Marcos heir, who belongs to the same generation with him, has found a platform in the Senate, which his father Ninoy established his base to excoriate Marcos in his second presidency (1969 to 1972, when martial law was declared by Marcos).
If the Marcos heirs have signalled their intentions to settle scores with the Aquino dynasty, if not to push for the rehabilitation of the dictatorship’s record after regaining political footholds, Noynoy has been less combative and outspoken, and has so far not given any indication he is craving to engage the Marcos dynasty in a running vendetta.
Ill-gotten wealth
The recovery of the ill-gotten Marcos wealth is not a closed case and remains of the sensitive sore spots that can provoke the reignition of the dynastic feuding.
If Bongbong opts to use the Senate as the platform to mount his campaign to harass or obstruct the Aquino presidency, he has not found any better and more strategic position for this purpose than the Senate.
As far as the Marcoses are concerned, the shoe is now on the other foot. This is their opportunity to use Congress as the arena in which to use the same tactics used by Ninoy to excoriate systematically and relentlessly the Marcos presidency.
Ninoy, as the Liberal Party opposition leader, and Marcos, the president, were constantly at loggerheads over transcendental stakes, involving no less the presidency, with Ninoy always fancying himself as the alternative to Marcos.
This rivalry heated up to the point where Aquino was murdered in 1983, permanently eliminating him as a dangerous rival to end Marcos’ monopoly of power.
More solid foundation
What makes Noynoy’s mandate more solidly founded than that of his mother’s in 1986 is that it has been officially confirmed by such constitutional bodies as the national board of canvassers, after a completed or interrupted election.
Therefore, the election legitimacy of Noynoy’s assumption to power stands on firmer and more unassailable grounds than that of Cory. The Marcos rubber-stamp institutions—the Batasang Pambansa and the Commission on Elections—rigged the count of the results when Cory was found leading the results by independent quick count organizations, provoking the military rebellion against Marcos and the ensuing “people power” revolution.
Cory was sworn into the presidency on the crest of people power. The results of the snap election were never completed—an imperfection that was corrected in 1987 when a national referendum overwhelming ratified the 1987 Constitution that formally restored key democratic institutions that had been demolished by the dictatorship.
That ratification corrected the ambiguity left by the interruption of the counting of the results of the snap election.
Noynoy’s presidency has no such ambiguity. Its legitimacy is founded on a stronger position to thwart efforts by the new administration’s enemies—including the heirs of the Marcos dynasty—to undermine it.
Aquino’s responsibility is to use his unique political capital to build an honest and competent government.
