Diplomatic revolt in L.A., Marcos watch in Honolulu

Diplomatic revolt in L.A., Marcos watch in Honolulu

REMARKS on the 26TH ANNIVERSARY COMMEMORATION OF PEOPLE POWER EDSA ‘86

By Consul General Pedro O.Chan

I am not an EDSA ‘86 hero–if at all, maybe just an accidental one
— To me, the real heroes are those former classmates and friends of mine back in Samar who went to the hills, joined the underground movement, lost their limbs, their sanity, their future, died or were murdered or had fallen while fighting the entrenched dictatorship as they pursued against insurmountable odds the protracted class struggle to truly liberate our people and our land from centuries of ignominious bondage

May I share with you briefly my background –

While a young student, I had never thought of joining government service which we idealistic students then despised.

Only those who stood to enjoy or to steal from the government largesse, or to rake in money from being in power while holding even a lowly government office – even if only clerical but powerfully remunerative position (Customs, LTO, BIR) position – wanted to join government.

While at U.P. Diliman, there was never a dearth of teach-ins shortly before, during, and soon after the FQS. Despite the sure predictions by numerous student activist friends of mine then, I continued to harbor doubts – or maybe the ever-optimistic “Candide” streak in me did – and so I went on hoping that the dire predictions of my rubble-rousing and noisy dorm-mates at Narra Residence Hall that Marcos would declare Martial Law soon — that there were clear writings all over our country’s walls — were but the wild ravings and rantings of a studentry which had wanted to topple the system thru a bloody people’s revolution and install a foreign-germinated ideology.
THEN THE BOOM SUDDENLY DROPPED!!! —

— Marcos declared Martial Law on September 21, 1971!!! And the declaration was made public 2 days after he had signed his Martial Law Decree.

What to do???

Many in my poor man’s dorm were caught by surprise and unaware. I can still see my dorm-mates going about our dorm as if in a daze not knowing what would happen next – to our studies, to our chosen careers, to our future, to our country.

I especially sympathized with the College of Law graduates who were then reviewing for the bar exams. They did not know if the exams would be held, and if they were to be held, what subjects would be covered by the bar exams. Would these be Marcos’ Proclamations and Presidential Decrees? It was months or maybe a year before they were able to finally take the bar exams.

A number of my friends and some students I know suddenly disappeared from sight. They were of course either incarcerated, tortured, salvaged – or anticipating the moves of Marcos’ violent henchmen, had fled to some underground haven to join the movement.
Given the conditions at the time, I made a choice to join the despised government service. It was not so much a matter of – “If you can’t lick them, join them …” as my sense of utter helplessness in the face of Marcos’ Martial Law powerful forces and might. I told myself I will try to work from within, to see if there was something one can do while worming one’s way inside that rotten apple of Marcos’ Martial Law Regime.

And so it was that I decided to join government — Marcos’ government at that! First, as Labor Secretary Blas Ople’s Senior Executive Assistant in the Department of Labor. Then when I saw the corruption first-hand at DOLE, I decided to move to the Department of Foreign Affairs which had 2 years earlier written to me for its recruitment program of new honor college/university graduates. While an Assistant at the DFA, I took the Foreign Service Officers Exams and luckily hurdled together with 14 other lucky examinees the most rigorous series of government entrance tests before one could be appointed our Republic’s officer in its diplomatic corps.

I had the good luck of having been designated to move up to work in the Office of the Foreign Secretary after about a year initially as the Department’s Chief of Personnel. And so I became one of the Special Assistants of then Foreign Affairs Secretary Carlos P. Romulo who was already in his 80s then.

From the vantage point of the inner sanctum of the DFA, I saw a number of things which opened my eyes to how government worked – or did not. There was for example the assassination of former Senator and long-time Martial Law detainee “Ninoy” Aquino right upon his arrival at the NAIA, then called MIA. While we at the DFA tried to monitor the return movements of “Ninoy”, we found out that he was back in Manila only when news broke that he had been gunned down at the MIA tarmac and another “gunman” Rolando Galman was also found dead on the tarmac. (There is no truth to the rumor that the latest findings indicate that “Ninoy” and Galman had committed mutual suicide!)

After CPR’s retirement was finally accepted by Marcos in 1984 when CPR reached the ripe old official age of 84, I was finally “released” by the DFA and got a taste of my first foreign posting to our Consulate General in Los Angeles as Vice Consul.

And barely one month after I had assumed my duties in L.A., former Senator Sergio Osmena, Jr., a victim of the Plaza Miranda bombing and Marcos’ political foe who ran for president against him in 1969, passed away while on exile in L.A. – I’m sure partly due to the serious wounds he sustained during that bombing.

No Consul in L.A. wanted to seal the casket of Serging, a requirement before the remains could be shipped back to the Philippines. So when my senior officer asked me if I would do it, I readily said “Yes” – adding that Serging was to me a hero. Then I found out the reason for the hesitation of the other Consuls to go to the mortuary for the sealing of the casket. When I went there, many of Marcos’ political opponents were gathered for the viewing. But I took advantage of the occasion to get to know a number of them, including the political exile Serge Osmena III who, together with Geny Lopez of ABS CBN and the Meralco Lopez family, had years earlier escaped to the US from their military camp prison in Manila. Others present were Raul Daza, Senator Jovito Salonga, and a few political figures who were very prominent in the anti-Marcos movement in the US.

From then on, Serge and I started our underground exchanges of information, mostly on the goings-on of the Marcos regime.

And so it came to pass that right on the very first day of the people’s revolt on EDSA, Serge called me up very early on February 22 to tell me that the revolt against Marcos had started in Manila and he asked me if I would join them. Without any second thought, I told him that I had waited for this inevitable event for years and that it was high time.

We at the L.A. Consulate then declared that we no longer supported Marcos’ presidency and would wait for the legitimate president to be installed after that disastrous snap elections that Marcos had called earlier. While Marcos tenaciously clung to the trappings of his power throne, we announced our move to the 24/7 Los Angeles tri-media – ergo, to the whole world.

Many of my diplomatic colleagues in various capitals of the globe witnessed our daring move and a number kept calling us to find out more about our situation. To many colleagues who were able to reach me, I told them that we had been dropped from the DFA rolls, our office bank account had been ordered suspended, and that we were not sure what would happen to us and our careers should Marcos prevail over people power and stay on.

At the same time, I cautioned my colleagues that if they were willing to join our L.A. renegade diplomats, they should do it soon for a day’s wait could spell the difference between them being branded heroes — or opportunists. Some bravely cast their fortunes with us, others hesitated, while a lot more just waited and sat on the fence to wait which way the axe would fall. It seems that we are never rid of this kind of opportunists – then graphically and “fruitfully” dubbed the “balimbings”, those Jasons with more than 2 faces.

I tried to persuade those colleagues who had hesitated about joining our – the first ever! – diplomatic revolt that the worst that could happen to us was that we won’t be able to return home while Marcos stayed in power, but that we should think of the greater good – the fate of our nation and our people who had long suffered under Marcos’ yoke – should Marcos prevail and continue to abuse his Martial Law powers.

The rest is history, as they say.

Part of which history was my having been sent by then Foreign Secretary Raul Manglapus and President Cory Aquino to head our Consulate in Honolulu while I was still a junior Consul to be Cory’s Marcos-watcher. I and my lean staff of 8 personnel (there used to be about 24 staff personnel in the Philippine Consulate General in Honolulu, many of whom were political protégés on vacation at government expense in that Paradise State; when Buddy Gomez took over after EDSA ’86 as Consul General there, he immediately pruned that bloated personnel complement to only 8 were put on 24-duty by Cory’s then Executive Secretary Frank Drilon with specific orders to monitor the remains of Marcos and to make sure that said remains would not be smuggled out of the US and back to the Philippines where, I imagined then, the Marcos body could become the rallying point for the Marcos loyalists, a group which remained a sizable force to reckon with.

There was also the eventful return to Manila in 1991 of former First Lady Imelda Marcos with Honolulu as her staging point, and understandably so since Hawaii is teeming with our Ilokano compatriots who looked up to “Manong” Ferdie as their benefactor, if not their minor god. I predicted then and told the DFA that Imelda would run for President, which she did a year later in the 1992 elections. My inquiries revealed that Imelda had chartered a Boeing 747 for half a million US dollars which she used to board for free her many Ilokano loyalists from Hawaii. I stayed at the Honolulu airport that night and until three o’clock the following morning processing expired passports and issuing travel documents to those who wanted to go on that free ride, and to be witness to the triumphant return of Imelda who would wrest the power throne again.

I can tell you scores of anecdotes and vignettes on my adventures related to EDSA ’86, but I think that the more relevant issue now is what has happened to us as a people after EDSA ‘86?

After 34 years in the foreign service of our country, and having witnessed, at times first-hand, a number of unfolding national events and developments, I sadly note that there remains much to be done to improve the lot our teeming poor people. Experience continues to bear out the sad reality that in our country the rich continue to get richer — and the poor get … children.

While our current President P-Noy continues in his single-minded march to stem the continuing rampant corruption in government, the forces that continue to oppose his every move are formidable. Although we might be the only county in Asia which has put two past presidents in prison, that is not enough.

These all brings me back to the basic questions posed by my former fellow idealistic students and friends committed to social change –

What is wrong with us as a people?

What is wrong with our system of government?

What is wrong with our collective national values?

While our neighbors Malaysia, Thailand and now even Vietnam have marched on with their people’s economic development, the once next-only-to-Japan nation in Asia has continued it downward spiral from the time of Marcos’s presidency and martial rule. Our leaders have to concentrate on business and trade, not politics; while our people have to engage in serious business, not show business.

PEDRO O. CHAN
Consul General