'Goodbye, Superboy: a Fond Farewell to the Last Romantic Essay\r'

'MANILA, August 21, 2003 (STAR) BY THE track By Max V. Soliven †Much has been write about Ninoy Aquino, whose name needs no introduction to homoy a(prenominal) of our readers. Commuters pass by his statue daily on Ayala Avenue in Makati’s Golden Mile, and a nonher depository to him in capital of the Philippines. scarce monuments and statues, and glowing encomiums do not a hero make. But my thesis is that to mean solar mean solar day, Ninoy is a forgotten hero. at that place was so much hype in the first halcyon old age newr onwards the oerthrow of the tyrant Ferdinand E. Marcos, and too armament personnely silly celebrations, with excessive hoopla, of individually deliver the justs anniversary of the EDSA â€Å" plenty violence” diversity (and then an EDSA II, and, sanamagan, even an EDSA III so-called) that the man whose heroism and sacrifice inspired not merely the first good deal condition barricades, but a national wad I prefer to call â €Å"The affection of 1986” has been forgotten. These years, in fact, the Filipino life-time has been dampened, our impudence crushed on a lower floor the weight of each revealed inequity, and tales of resurgent corruption, graft, vaulting ambition †add-on the disgraceful debacle of a drippy escape of the Jemaah Islamiyah mad-bomber, Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, from police â€Å"prison.”\r\nThis is a magazine for us to think back a man who believed the Filipino was â€Å" deserving dying for,” and from him rumple the renewed resolve that the Filipino is worth living for, as well. But let us not sound maudlin. Ninoy would submit laughed at such sticky moveimentality. When he was sent by the old opusila eras to cover the Korean struggle (the 50th anniversary of whose conclusion was well(p) commemorated some calendar weeks ago) he was 17, the youngest correspondent of them all. The Time’s editors Dave Boguslav and Joe Bautista had spotted th at gung ho timberland in Aquino that was to rocket him to fame †and, in the end, ram him remorselessly to his final rendezvous with perfidy at the Manila International Airport. Ninoy was a hard-nosed newspaperman, and what set him apart from so many others was precisely his nose for the news. He had an eidetic memory for facts, figures and detail. â€Å"You get the facts,” Dave Boguslav told him when he sent him off to war, â€Å"and I’ll prosecute cargon of the grammar.” Ninoy delivered †and a star reporter was born. Ninoy paid his dues as newsman.\r\nHe took risks where others best-loved to be prudent. For him life was a bully adventure †and a short and fantabulous life punter than a distantsighted and dull hotshot. God granted him his wish. Everyone has already written a torrent of words about how Ninoy had been a Young Man in a Hurry. He became the youngest town mayor †just a civilization underage; the youngest deputy governor , then governor, the youngest Senator (he most topped the polls, coming in slimly behind late his comprobinsyano, Tarlac’s old Sen. Jose J. Roy). If a absolve election had been held in 1973 (but martial faithfulness intervened and dashed that prospect), Ninoy †whose unaccompanied rival in his own freehand Party was the late Senate President Gerry Roxas †would to the highest degree certainly create been elected president. Aquino had that gilt tongue to which every politician aspires, but with which only a few are gifted. It goes beyond rhetoric or fluency on the entablado: a strange power to move hearts, provoke laughter, attract faithfulness and affection, whip a crowd up to a frenzy and the fervor of a crusade, inspire apply in listeners miserably perched in the brink of despair.\r\nNinoy was so silver in English, Tagalog, Kapampangan, and even Ilocano (his native Tarlac, afterward all, is a province of three dialects) that he was accused of glibness. He was dubbed â€Å"Superboy,” partly in admiration, party in derision. It took martial law and cruel imprisonment to make us realize that the Boy had become a Man. By a quirk of fate, I was assigned to be his cellmate in the utmost security compound of Fort Bonifacio when we were arrested as â€Å"subversives” in September 1972. Out of the cd prisoners crammed into the Camp Crame gym, after we had been picked up surrounded by midnight and dawn, 11 of us were singled out by name and told by a colonel to meter forward.\r\nNinoy had nudged me cheerfully in the ribs and exclaimed in a stage whisper, â€Å"Eto na, eto na! departure team na tayo.” (This is it, this is it. We’re going to the Firing Squad). Yet, they didn’t slay us. They trucked us sooner to Fort Bonifacio, where they sent a military chaplain to hear our confessions †thus reinforcing our conviction that we were to be executed. Once more, we were disappointed. All throughout, it was Ninoy, who positive(predicate)ly agnize he was the number one target, Marcos’ dearie bete noir, the dictator’s pet nemesis, try to cheer us all up. The days of captivity stretched into weeks, the weeks into months. Nobody who has never been in prison can understand what you nurture from is simply being caged †you suffer from the dubiety of it all, and from boredom. You never know when your military jailors, who construct the power of life and decease over you, leave alone drag you out and shoot you, at any hour of day or night. After a while, the conception outside becomes a memory †you light to forget that there are streets with race and vehicles in them, and noise, and hustle and bustle, and glittery colorise and pretty girls. One gray day follows the other and you learn to live from one day to the next. Yet, I wasn’t bored, because I had Ninoy to entertain me. We pour forthed, we read.\r\nWe swapped ideas, jokes, argued ideologie s. We dreamed dreams. We went jogging during the make for hour and steeled ourselves to run a greyback in heptad minutes. It was then that I realized that Ninoy Aquino, for all his wit, his air of b well(p) cynicism, and his veneer of tough political pragmatism, was an incurable romantic. He had visions of the Filipino rising up to overthrow any tyranny. He had pinned his hopes on the Filipino’s love of immunity and his will to resist either compulsion or seduction. He had faith in the Filipino. At nightfall, the soldiers †many of them Ilocanos †would come to our barracks-prison and Ninoy would provide them with stories of the Korean War. Or the Vietnam War, which we had both covered. We would communication of the Huk campaign, which we also had covered. Ninoy’s spellbinding recollections were so mesmerizing that after a week or so I had warned him: â€Å" train out brod. You will soon be accused of conducting teach-ins.\r\nThose guards are beginning t o ilk us too much.” Sure enough, after three weeks, we lay out a grade on our bulletin board. The guards had all been replaced. The bill said: â€Å"Our guests (yep, that’s what they called us at the â€Å"Bonifacio Hilton”) are requested not to conversation to the guards who have been ordered not to talk to them.” â€Å"You see, you see,” I chided Ninoy. â€Å"Those poor fellows have been sent to the battle effort in Mindanao, just because they laughed at your jokes!” When this writer and the rest of us were released, Ninoy and the late Pepe Diokno were left behind, but in pick out barracks. Ninoy spent seven years and seven months in solitary confinement. On the front page you’ll get hold a motion picture of the two of us arm in arm with each other. This was taken when he was allowed pedestal at get †under heavy guard †for a legal brief â€Å"Christmas leave” after seven years in jail. We hugged each other at the entrance of his Times Street home in Quezon City: â€Å"Max, Max,” he laughed.\r\nâ€Å"How right you were. I thought I would be out in six months or a year because the people would enquire for my freedom, but you were the one who told me to dig in for the long haul †I remember you said from five years to 10 years. But you know, prison has been good for me. I have had time to think, to read, to formulate my ideology, to find God. What is ambition? It’s nothing. I have put all ambition remote †all we essential fight for is for our people to be happy, and to be free.” We talked about proposing a formula for a return to free elections to Marcos. He had written Marcos a letter, he said, suggesting national reconciliation. Everybody knows the rest. Aquino, after his two-week furlough, went back to his lone(prenominal) prison. He suffered a heart attack.\r\n discerning about international reaction, particularly the knock of the American governmen t (although President Ronald Reagan and Nancy were good friends of Macoy and Imelda) they let Ninoy go off to Texas, and exile, for an emergency brake heart operation. We warned him not to return. I told him, â€Å"They will kill you.” But on Aug. 21, 1983, a Sunday, he came home to die in his own country. In a last interview with Radio Veritas, Aquino had declared: â€Å"Kamatayan lamang ang makapipigil sa identical (Only death could stop me from coming home).” around politicians bet on a sure thing. Ninoy gambled on the goodness and sense of decency of the Filipino. A pragmatist would have kept himself safely in the United States preserving his life â€Å"until a better day.”\r\nBut Ninoy was a romantic who believed that promises must be kept, pledges must be redeemed, and death †if awaited him †must be go about in order to show the people that there are things more outstanding than life. When he died, I penned an adieu entitle: â€Å"Goodbye, Superboy! A Fond Farewell to the brave Romantic.” Thus the title of this piece. Yet, I hope Ninoy was not the last romantic †for such romantics are what we desperately need in these painful days of harsh and acidic realities. Someone once said that it is far better to soar with the eagles, braving the hunting watch’s gun, than to scratch on the ground with the chickens. The hunter’s gun finally found Ninoy Aquino at the airport which now bears his name. His spirit was freed to soar among the stars. I am high-flown to have known him. To have been moved(p) by him. To remember him now.\r\n'