I was a lone witness the day retired (now Chief Presidential Legal Counsel) Senator Juan Ponce Enrile returned the "missing" Marcos diaries labeled “Marcos Diary 1970” (kept inside a vault) to President Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr.
This happened one fine October morning seven years ago today in the residence of the senior statesman who turned 100 years old recently.
So momentous and so important was this event that I believe the contents of these diaries handwritten by his visionary-father prepared Bongbong well for the presidency.
When I asked him what took so long to return the diaries, he replied, “'There is a perfect time for everything.' I was safekeeping it under instructions from the president and to give it to Bongbong at a time I would deem it to be appropriate as he faces uphill battles toward his destiny.”
I could not control my emotions seeing history unfold right before my very eyes.
From eleven green-colored folders were the handwriting of President Marcos Sr., as if to instruct his son, now president himself, what to do in case matters of national importance were to arise – and what he did when he was president.
For indeed, isn’t a diary a love letter to the one who would read it one day long after the writer is gone?
It was a heartwarming moment seeing a grown-up man shed a few drops of tears as he read some of the contents of his father’s diaries. The silence at that moment was deafening, knowing in my thoughts that history would be kind this time to a rightful heir because now many questions have found their answers in these diaries.
I can only imagine some of the contents, from the real reason why Martial Law was declared and his thoughts on the "New Society." The same Martial law that brought electricity to the countryside and irrigated our rice lands throughout the archipelago, among many other accomplishments under the Marcos Sr. administration that were not given their due accolades.
These folders now complete the whole set of the Marcos diaries, just like finding volumes 6-17 from a 24-volume encyclopedia.
Rebuke Duque
Remember how former President Rodrigo Duterte defended his Health Secretary Francisco Duque III asking the public to give him a reason to fire him?
Well, here it is, though late. And, at one point during a Palace briefing with the Malacañang Press Corps, Duterte said he will stand with Duque even if it will drag his name down.
Now comes the news from Duques saying that it was Duterte who ordered him to directly transfer PHP47.6 billion from the Department of Health (DoH) to the Procurement Service of the Department of Budget and Management (PS-DBM) for the purchase of Covid-19 supplies in 2020.
They were believed to be overpriced.
Francisco Duque III comes from a line of public servants, but many believe this to be a misnomer. He is closely associated with former President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, being the son of Francisco Duque Jr., a former head of the Philippine Medical Association (PMA) and he too was appointed Health Secretary by GMA’s dad former President Diosdado Macapagal.
He then quit in 1963 to run for Pangasinan governor. The younger Duque was GSIS chairman before being appointed to the DoH.
Remember too that Mocha Uson was closely allied with Duque, both coming from Dagupan, Pangasinan. Uson is daughter to Judge Oscar Uson, who was a close friend of Duque’s brother Gonzalo, a close friend of Duterte.
See the connection now? I do. Recently, the Ombudsman ordered the filing of graft charges against Duque and ex-DBM undersecretary Lloyd Christopher Lao over the contentious transfer.
It was all too quick to link these persons from Lao to Go, to Duque to Duterte. The paper trail is clear as a whistle.
Thus, Senator Richard Gordon who once headed the powerful Senate Blue Ribbon Committee which investigated Pharmally’s involvement on the matter is hereby vindicated.
Duterte’s intellectual brown-nosers
It makes me laugh out loud each time I read about Duterte’s keyboard warriors defending him like he was a saint.
Just recently, I came across one who called PBBM a madman and a warmonger simply because the President said the killing (God forbid!) of a Filipino constitutes an "act of war" by China to PH and would certainly invoke the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) with the United States.
The question was asked should a water cannon create a casualty among Filipino seamen or fishermen over the disputed waters but are obviously ours.
Marcos replied, “If by a willful act a Filipino, not only a serviceman but even a Filipino citizen is killed, then that is what I think is very, very close to what we define as an act of war, and therefore we will respond accordingly.”
He continued by saying, “Once we get to that point, we would have crossed the Rubicon. Is that a red line? Almost certainly, it’s going to be a red line.”
So tell me, what would you have answered if you were asked the same question? While I claim no expertise on matters such as these, I think that the killing of a Filipino invokes a natural reaction of anger belligerence ahead of any activation of established treaties.
It’s a Filipino thing. I don’t know about Duterte’s emerging fifth columnists.
-o0o-
This column recently got a reaction from a previous article on JPE The Centenarian asking who a certain Roberto Reyes was to the Aquino family.
In answer, Roberto Santos, aka "Commander Felman," was a close-in aide and security detail of former Senator Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr. and a principal commander of the NPA.
Felman was a card-bearing Communist supremo and was responsible for many of the atrocities that happened in the province of Tarlac when Ninoy was governor between the years 1961 to 1967 and up until he was a senator.
-o0o-
Factoid: Two of Emilio Aguinaldo’s namesake descendants still see Kawit, Cavite as their true home. They are Cesar Emilio Aguinaldo Virata, Ferdinand Marcos’ Prime Minister, and Joseph Emilio Aguinaldo Abaya, Benigno Aquino III’s Transportation Secretary.
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