by Joanne Rae M. Ramirez
MANILA, Philippines – He was the much-awaited baby boy, coming into his parents’ lives when his father’s star was ascending fast in the Philippine political firmament.
Benigno Simeon Aquino III was born at the Far Eastern University Hospital in Manila 50 years ago tomorrow to Tarlac Vice Governor Benigno Simeon “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. and his wife, Corazon “Cory” Cojuangco. He was the third child of the prominent Tarlac couple.
“Dad and Mom were so happy because they were already hoping for a boy when I was born, more so with the third child,” says Pinky (now Mrs. Manolo Abellada), Ninoy and Cory’s second child. “At the time, Mom and Dad were so close to Danding and Gretchen Cojuangco and Noy and their daughter Lisa were born on the exact same day.”
Little did anyone know that on this third Aquino child’s shoulders would fall the honor and the burden of carrying on the torch of two democracy icons, which his parents would turn out to be decades later.
But on that nippy February morning in 1960, “Noynoy” was just the much-anticipated first son, the male heir that ensured the preservation of the family name.
Ninoy would constantly tell his only son as he was growing up that he (Noynoy) bore not only his name, but his grandfather’s name as well and he would do well to cherish it.
“The only valuable asset I can bequeath to you now is the name you carry,” Ninoy wrote his son in August 1973. “I have tried my best during my years of public service to keep that name untarnished and respected, unmarked by sorry compromises for expediency. I now pass it on to you, as good, I pray, as when my father, your grandfather passed it on to me.”
Cory and Cora
Delivered by Dr. Gloria Aragon, Noynoy was, as his maternal aunt Passy Cojuangco Teopaco remembers, such a “cute baby.”
“In fact, when we were kids, he was the best looking of all of us,” says his ate Ballsy (now Mrs. Eldon Cruz), the oldest of Ninoy and Cory’s five children.
Like his sisters, Noynoy first went to Institucion Teresiana for nursery and was surprised that there was a third language he had to learn — Spanish. For Prep, he went to the Ateneo, where he was blindfolded during the entrance test, given three pieces of a puzzle and told to form a horse.
“But only God can make a horse!” Noynoy, who loved horses as a child, protested to the proctor. He was given another test.
The two most important women in Noynoy’s childhood virtually had the same name – his mother Cory and his yaya Cora. Noynoy’s yaya was a strong-willed woman, who during the martial law years was imprisoned three times because she refused to testify against Ninoy. She was six months pregnant on her third incarceration, but still refused to testify. Cora was tough and feisty, and would take on Ninoy’s bodyguards when they were laughing too loudly while Noynoy, whose room was near the garage, was taking a nap. Cora, especially when she was incarcerated, reinforced what Noynoy’s parents had taught him: Fight for your principles, fight for what you think is right (Later, when Cory became president, she asked Cora to be the mayordoma in the Arlegui mansion, where the First Family then resided.)
Taller than most of his classmates at the Ateneo and bigger than his older sisters, Noynoy was never the bully, says Pinky. “Even if he was bigger and ready to hit me, he would always stop himself because Dad’s instruction to him was never to hit your sisters. We were four kids then (Noynoy was followed by Viel) and shared a room and a TV but I don’t recall fighting over TV shows.”
Already mapagbigay (willing to share) even as a child, he would just retreat to a neighbor’s house, where there were three boys who were his playmates.
Noynoy remembers being whacked with a belt by his dad twice – once when he lit up sheets of Kleenex tissue on his mom’s dresser, amazed at how they would disappear into thin air. He never tried that again. When Noynoy was naughty, Cory didn’t spare her hairbrush on his butt, either.
Noynoy always did well in school, placing at the top 10 of his class at the Ateneo. One of his first actual lessons in honesty came from the manongs in the Ateneo cafeteria.
“You were this kid who didn’t know how to add or subtract, you gave them money to buy your snack and they would give you change that was correct down to the last decimal point. Looking back, I realized they never shortchanged me even if it was easy to do so. That was the clearest example to me, at that young age, of what honesty was all about.”
In the primary years, he and his classmates were asked to form groups that alternated in cleaning the classroom. He became an expert with the bunot (coconut husk used to make the wooden floors shine).
It was while Noynoy was in the third grade that he realized his father was no ordinary man when his teacher, a Miss Libele, congratulated him.
“What for, Ma’am?” he asked.
“Your father just won his underage case in the Supreme Court. He can take his oath as senator!”
At the time, Noynoy recalls, all he could think about was, “Sino naman kaya ang may ayaw sa Daddy at kakalabanin pa siya (Who would not like Daddy that they would oppose him)” Such innocence. Later on, he would ask himself that same question when his father was jailed, and then assassinated. But by that time Noynoy already knew the answer.
Growing up too soon
Noynoy’s first campaign sortie was to a Goya factory at age seven. For every campaign leaflet of his dad that he gave away, the workers would give him a chocolate bar. (Years later he was to realize campaigning was no piece of Goya chocolate, especially when he saw the fate that had befallen the Liberal Party slate in Plaza Miranda during a rally in August 1971. He remembers seeing blood, bandages, and gore on television. “Ang Tatay ko, at risk talaga,” he told himself. He knew then that politics was risky business and that his father was ready to face the bullets.)
A year later, his life changed completely when Ninoy was arrested after the declaration of martial law in 1972. He saw old friends abandoning them, one by one, but he also witnessed how some would remain true, like the mayor of his dad’s hometown, Concepcion, who would continue celebrating Ninoy’s birthday year after year even while Ninoy was in jail. Noynoy cannot forget, too, how his classmates and their parents gave him rousing applause when he received his high school diploma in 1977. Ninoy was in jail and Noynoy knew the applause was meant for his absentee father, who longed to stand by his only son at his high school graduation. In fact, Noynoy never had his father present in any of his graduations – grade school, high school or college.
Most traumatic for the family was when Ninoy was thrown into a military camp in Laur, Nueva Ecija in 1973. “He and Sen. Pepe Diokno were blindfolded, handcuffed and taken in separate helicopters to a place they didn’t know about. Dad timed the flight and thought they were in Camp Capinpin in Rizal, but he was mistaken. At the time, the family didn’t even know where Dad was – just that they surrendered all that was in his cell to us, even his toothbrush. When Mom asked why even the toothbrush, the WAC officer said, ‘Hindi na niya kakailanganin pa ito’ (He will no longer have any need for this).”
It was a nightmare for Cory and her children. Kris, the youngest, was just two. After pressure from human rights groups was exerted on the government, Cory and her five children were driven to a seemingly God-forsaken place in Laur.
“Pakitid ng pakitid ang daan (the road became narrower and narrower), then I saw what looked like a German concentration camp that I would see in the movies. There were barbed wires all over, with electric wires attached to them.
“The Dioknos went first to see their father. We had always looked up to the Dioknos as strong, but when they filed out after their visit, they were crying.”
Noynoy would soon find out why. He says his encounter with his emaciated father through the barbed wires of Fort Magsaysay was “the start of truly growing up.”
“Son, bahala ka na sa Mommy mo at sa mga kapatid mo (Son, it’s up to you now to take care of your Mommy and sisters),” his father told him. He was only 13 years old.
All of them were in tears, except for Cory, who would confide years later that she had taken a tranquilizer and was glad she did.
Noynoy’s emotional aging, if you will, was accelerated during a second traumatic experience – Ninoy’s sentencing to death by musketry by a military court in 1976. “If we are on the right side, why are we the ones being punished?” he remembers crying to his Ate Ballsy. That was the one and only time he cried publicly as an adult.
The pain, he says, was compounded by the death of his beloved maternal grandfather, Lolo Pepe Cojuangco, who was so “disturbed by the death sentence on my dad.”
“Lolo Pepe and my dad were very close and he wanted to offer himself to take dad’s place in prison. He was so disturbed by news of the death by musketry verdict on my Dad and died of a cerebral hemorrhage shortly after.”
The Laban noise barrage of 1978 was one bright light in the dark days of his father’s imprisonment. His father ran for a seat in Parliament, even if he knew his chances at victory under the dictatorship were dim.
“Lalaban tayo dito kahit hindi tayo mananalo (We will fight for this even if we won’t win),” his father told them. When they told him Metro Manila erupted in a noise barrage in support of Ninoy, Noynoy, then 18, thought to himself, “Di pala natutulog ang mga tao. Alam pa rin nila ang tama sa mali (The people aren’t sleeping after all. They still know right from wrong).”
Why us?
Noynoy was in Tarlac one day in 1981 when he received a call from his mother. “Umuwi ka na (Come home now).”
“I said goodbye to my cousins in Tarlac and the next thing they knew I was boarding a plane for America,” recalls Noynoy. Ninoy was allowed by President Marcos to leave for the US for a heart operation, and the family packed their bags overnight and left on a Philippine Airlines flight.
On the way to their first stop, San Francisco, Noynoy kept asking himself: “Bakit kaming walang kasalanan ang kailangang lumayas sa bayan (Why must it be us who have done no wrong who must leave the country)?”
When Ninoy told Cory and the children in 1983 that he wanted to return home for a possible dialogue with President Marcos for the restoration of democratic institutions in the Philippines, Noynoy asked his father, “Bakit ka uuwi (Why go home)? Why trust anyone who has never done good by us?”
When he saw that his father’s mind was set, Noynoy proposed a backdoor entry, with a back-up force made up of supporters from Mindanao. “If we are successful (with the backdoor entry) and we get into a civil war, does anyone really win? If Marcos were cooperative in getting us back to democracy, it would have been worth the sacrifice of returning through Manila and being jailed,” Noynoy remembers his dad telling him.
It was through CNN that Noynoy found out that his father was assassinated upon his arrival at the Manila International Airport tarmac. As he listened to the CNN anchor describe how his father was “lying in a pool of blood,” shock overcame him.
“Time and space ceased. What brought me back was when the phone rang. I jumped because I didn’t want my mother to answer it, I wanted to spare her the news, but someone beat me to the phone.”
“Pag nakikita ko umiyak ang nanay at kapatid ko, doon ako pinaka-vulnerable (It is when I see my mother and sisters in tears that I am most vulnerable),” Noynoy admits.
At the time, he also admits he thought of revenge.
“In all honesty, after I had completed my filial duties, convinced my mother and sisters to leave the Philippines after the funeral, I had thought of exacting vengeance. But when I saw the millions, in Sto. Domingo during the wake and during the funeral march to the Manila Memorial Park, I realized I owed it to Dad to try his way of peace. So long as they don’t hurt my mother and sisters, I vowed to pursue my dad’s non-violent campaign.”
Cory Years
On Feb. 25, 1986, the day Cory took her oath as president, Noynoy asked for one last thing from his mother before the PSG took over his security – he wanted to go around EDSA and witness the people celebrating. “I waited so long for this moment.”
Noynoy also cannot forget when rebel soldiers put a bullet to his neck during the August 28, 1987 coup. “Blood was gushing from my neck. But I wasn’t afraid to introduce myself. I lay there bleeding for 30 minutes till help arrived.”
May 2010
And so now Noynoy takes on the torch lit by both his parents.
He heard the clamor of the people to continue the fight for clean government fought till their deaths by Ninoy and Cory, but he says it wasn’t till he went on retreat with the Carmelite sisters in Zamboanga that he made up his mind.
“The clincher was when my ate gave her blessings. She said, Noynoy, if you believe it is your duty, okay na kami (We’re okay too)…”
As he turns 50, Noynoy shares his hopes and dreams. “When I accepted the challenge to run for president I tried thinking the opposite. Why should I be a masochist and try to solve everything this administration has done and is doing? But when I saw the people during Mom’s funeral, I said, Hindi ko na iaasa sa iba. Ako na (I won’t pass the buck. I will do it).”
“Here is a golden opportunity to really transform this country. I can’t turn my back on this opportunity, otherwise I will have difficulty looking at myself in the mirror.”
His birthday wish? “That I win, that I effect the changes, and that the changes are permanent.”
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