Table Of ContentD E B U N K E D
UNCOVERING HARD TRUTHS ABOUT EDSA,
MARTIAL LAW, MARCOS, AQUINO, WITH A
SPECIAL SECTION ON THE DUTERTE
PRESIDENCY
Selected Essays by
RIGOBERTO D. TIGLAO
Columnist
D E B U N K E D
Uncovering hard truths about EDSA, Martial Law, Marcos,
Aquino, with a special section on the Duterte Presidency
Selected Essays by Rigoberto D. Tiglao
Copyright © 2018 by Rigoberto D. Tiglao
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed,
or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording or otherwise), or stored in a database or retrieval
system, without the prior written permission of the author.
Published by Akropolis Publishing
Book Design by TV
Printed in the Republic of the Philippines
ISBN: 978-621-96047-0-3
Also by Rigoberto D. Tiglao
COLOSSAL DECEPTION:
How Foreigners Control Our Telecom Sector
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Preface
Introduction
THE EDSA REVOLT
How The U.S. Maneuvered To Put Cory In Power
Hidden Facts About Edsa
Why Celebrate A Divisive Event?
China’s Failed “Edsa 1”
Did People Power Matter?
BENIGNO SIMEON AQUINO AQUINO
Benigno Simeon Aquino Aquino
Hero Or Political Opportunist And U.S. Pawn?
Ninoy’s Fatal Miscalculation
He Believed Martial Law Was Necessary
Son Didn’t Care To Bring Killers To Justice
THE JABIDAH HOAX
Jabidah: The Yellow’s First Big Fake News
Clearest Indicators Of A Hoax
Aquino Leaked Marcos’ Sabah Plan
Behind The Fakery: Warlord Versus Warlord
FERDINAND EDRALIN MARCOS
A Brief History Of Martial Law
The Elite And The Military Supported Marcos
Liberal And Communist Parties Provoked Martial Law
Helped By Communists, Oligarchs Demonized Marcos
Martial Law History Is The Propaganda Of The Victors
Days Of Shame: August 21 – 1971 And 1983
The Truth Behind The Human Rights Abuses
Inside The Marcos Prisons: A Personal Story
It Is Ramos Who Should Apologize Over The ‘Abuses’
Virata And Technocrats Ran The Marcos Economy
Why Didn’t Dictatorship Work For Us?
THE COMMUNIST INSURGENCY
Our Elites Let The Last Maoists On Earth Flourish
Cpp-Npa’s Botched Plan To Ignite A Civil War
Dark Secrets Of The Communist Party
The Bankruptcy Of Sison’s Communist Party
Red’s Demands Will Cause Economic Collapse
GLORIA MACAPAGAL ARROYO
The Gma Years: Lost Or A Very Good Decade?
Arroyo, Farmers Victorious Over Aquino Hacienda
Massacre Suspect Is Sole Witness Against Her
A Preposterous Plunder Case
THE CORONA IMPEACHMENT
Aquino’s Attack On The Judiciary
Impeachment Was All About Hacienda Luisita
Colossal Deception On Corona’s Accounts
Impeachment Charges Collapse
BENIGNO SIMEONE COJUANGCO AQUINO
The Worst President Ever
The Cojuangcos Wanted P10b For Hacienda Luisita
Commuters Suffer Daily Due To The Mrt-3 Graft
He Axed Arroyo’s Key Flood Control Project
Fake Anti-Graft Campaign
He Never Bought Or Sold A Porsche
The Yolanda Fiasco
Did He Coddle And Protect Drug Lords?
The Pork Barrel Regime
Dap: The Biggest Hijacking Of Government Funds Ever
The P3.5b Dengvaxia Deal
Such A Shameless, Sociopathic Liar
Aquino And The Yellows’ Abomination
A Morality Tale
THE MAMASAPANO MASSACRE
The Worst Crime Ever
Americans Cared More About Saving Saf Than Aquino
Did Smart Have The Smoking Gun?
TERRITORIAL DISPUTE
We Owe Marcos Our Spratly Territories
Aquino And Del Rosario Lost Us Panatag
Foreign Secretary Admits He Was Hoodwinked Into Giving Up Panatag
They Hid Their Loss Of Panatag From The Nation
The Correct South China Sea Policy
Aquino, Del Rosario Begged Us To Use Its Military In Panatag Stand-Off
Suit Vs China A Us Machination
NATIONALISM
One Major Factor For Asian Tigers’ Growth
Reviving Economic Nationalism
Death, Nationalism, China
Independence: To Be ‘Run Like Hell By Filipinos’?
When Will We Have ‘Philippines First’?
RODRIGO ROA DUTERTE
Dogmas Duterte Demolished
Iconoclastic President
At Last, We’re No Longer The Us Lackey In Asia
Even With Ejk Allegations, Massive Support For The War Vs Drugs
Five Leadership Lessons
Duterte’s Anti-Church Stance: It’s About Time
Oops, His Critics Are Portraying Him As The New Rizal
Duterte Shows Political Will In Taking On Boracay’s Elite
How The Yellows Demonize Duterte On The World Stage
Downside Of ‘Globalization’: Brain And Brawn Drain
What Explains His Popularity: Bravery
STRONG REPUBLIC
All Asian Tigers And Tiger Cubs Grew Under Strongman Rule
A Strong Republic Essential To Our Development
MEDIA
Rappler Spread Lies To The World
A Classic Instance Of Western Media Spin
Us Media On An All-Out Campaign Vs Duterte
Pulitzer Prize-Winning Piece Peddled Fake News
Press Crucial To Nation-Building
Western Media Fooled The European Parliament
HARSH REALITIES
Born Into A Class, You’ll Die In That Class
How They Fool People Through Polls
Rizal, Bonifacio, And The ‘Masa’ Myth
The Party-List System: A Mockery Of Democracy
The Three Worlds Of Philippine Society
About The Author
PREFACE
The 92 articles in this book were among 872 columns published in the Philippine
Daily Inquirer (March 2010 to January 2013) and The Manila Times starting
January 2013, except for the essay “The Strong Republic” which I wrote in 2002
when I was a research fellow at the Kyoto University’s Center for Southeast
Asian Studies.
The columns have been edited and revised for this collection, but some were
kept in their original form. Most titles were changed for brevity. I have resisted
the temptation to update the articles to reflect current events as I believe the
analyses and data I have presented have withstood the test of time.
The dates at the end of each article refer to when it was published. I am
proud to say that I was during the past regime among the very few columnists
who were not bewitched by the Yellow Cult and were critical of Benigno Aquino
III’s presidency. Subsequent events have proven such views to be correct.
This book would not have been possible without the editorial guidance,
editing, and moral support of my dear wife, Getsy, an accomplished journalist
herself and currently a Wednesday columnist at the Manila Bulletin.
I am deeply grateful to Dr. Dante Ang, owner and publisher emeritus of The
Manila Times and to the Inquirer’s late Letty Jimenez-Magsanoc for inviting me
to write these columns in their newspapers, which have been reincarnated as
essays in this collection.
This book is dedicated to my inspiration, my children Ria, Xandro, and Dart
— and my grandson Ocean.
INTRODUCTION
Journalism, it is said, is history in a hurry. Reporters write, as an American
editor popularized the phrase in the 1960s, “the first rough drafts” of history,
documenting important events in a nation’s life, narrating the concerns of its
people.
Columnists or opinion writers, however, are a specialized breed of
journalists. They also tackle the news but they do one better: they analyze,
probe, criticize, berate or praise, harangue when needed, with the intent of
helping readers know the meaning and significance of the “straight news.”
The best columnists in general are former reporters, because of their
profession trained to gather facts and glean their meanings. But columnists are
not bound by the same convention as reporters. Almost by definition, opinion
columnists expound their analyses, their take, their reasoned but personal view
on mostly current news developments. They explain what they think a particular
issue means for their readers’ lives, or for the future of their nation.
They have, by nature of their job, a bias for their own perspective and
judgment of news events and more so, of the people that are in the public eye.
This is not to say however that columnists can just run roughshod over the
facts. Columnists still need to stick to standards of factual accuracy, even as they
interpret these events through the prism of their minds formed by their varying
education, pursuits, passions, and other life experiences.
I have been lucky to have lived, as they say, a life path less-travelled, from
which I have drawn many elements and inspiration for my column writing. My
opinion pieces published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer and The Manila Times
of which this book contains a sample of, aren’t in the mold of traditional
columns though.
Many are investigative pieces that unearthed information that were unknown
to the public before, such as the Indonesian control of our major public utility
firms, a subject most in mainstream media wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole.
These columns were the material for my earlier book Colossal Deception.
I have also uncovered through the research for my columns a view of the
Marcos era radically different from that I myself had embraced in my younger
years and disseminated by the Aquino clan’s “Yellow” political cult.
Several of my columns also debunked what have been practically myths of
our time, such as the so-called Jabidah Massacre that didn’t occur, but served as
propaganda weapon for the Liberal Party bent on stopping Marcos from winning
a second term in 1969. Another modern-day myth being fostered is that one
stormy day, China simply grabbed Panatag Shoal from us, when the fact is that it
was Benigno S. Aquino III and his officials who lost it due to their bungling.
I have strived to back up the opinions I have expressed with as much data as
I could muster. This empirical bent springs from my early dream to be an
astrophysicist: I had entered Ateneo de Manila’s honors course as a B.S. Physics
major in 1970.
I had thought I could just tinker with the huge telescopes and the devices at
the physics laboratory at the Jesuits’ renowned Manila Observatory. Instead, I
found myself struggling in mind-numbing courses such as Multivariable
Calculus and Mathematical Logic, which made me conclude that I’d never be a
physicist.
I had my first dip into the waters of journalism when I wrote several articles
in the Ateneo’s student newspapers. One of my accomplishments when I became
a radical (read: communist) activist was getting together with Perfecto Martin Jr.
for the literary magazine Heights to be published in Pilipino and renamed
Panday. To the horror of our Jesuit overseers, one issue had as its cover — in a
shade of commie red — Nilo Tayag, the chairman of the Kabataang Makabayan,
the youth front of the Communist Party, who had just been captured at that time.
I was drawn to the communist movement in 1969, together with my late
wife Raquel, a heroine of activists and feminists in that era. After heading its
regional Youth and Students Bureau in the early 1970s, I became in 1972 the
head of the Communist Party’s Manila-Rizal Regional Committee, which post
would have made me a member of the Party’s purported policy-making body, the
Central Committee.
As much as to my background in humanities and science, I owed my initial
training and work in journalism to my involvement in the Party, particularly to
the ideas of Russian revolutionary Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, founder of the first
communist-controlled state on the planet.
Lenin saw newspapers as having a crucial role in the task of fomenting
revolution. In a 1901 article, he pointed out: “The role of a newspaper is not
limited merely to the spreading of ideas, merely to political education and
attracting political allies. A newspaper is not only a collective propagandist and
collective agitator, but also a collective organizer.” Indeed, much of the
Bolsheviks’ success in fomenting revolution and capturing power was through
its newspaper founded in 1901, Iskra.
