POST-SABBATICAL NOTES. SUNDAY. 21 SEPT 2014. N3. Quote, unquote on when Martial Law was declared per Sen. Rene Saguisag. From the account of Ricky Torres on BusinessWorld Online, here is the correction of the dates of (mis)history: “I am forlorn that Marcosian numerology persists. Marcos was fond of seven and its multiples so he sponsored the myth that September 21, 1972 was when martial law descended upon the land. Simply not true. Proclamation No. 1081 declaring Martial Law was not then announced, proclaimed, or implemented,” he added. Mr. Saguisag remembered he was “San Beda Law’s Prefect of Studies or Vice Dean” at the time. September 21, 1972, was a Thursday, he said, “and as head of the San Beda Free Legal Aid Clinic, I monitored in school by radio a huge rally in Plaza Miranda, Quiapo, featuring Ka Pepe Diokno, Charito Planas, et al. as speakers. Just another day in the office. No dispersals or arrests. Uneventful in that sense. No need to go. “Ditto the next day, Friday, September 22. But, when I was driving from San Beda my trusty Beetle on top of Ayala Bridge -- to our rented Sandejas, Pasay apartment -- the car radio blared a supposed failed assassination attempt on [then] Defense [Secretary] Juan Ponce Enrile. “This episode [Mr. Enrile] confessed as fake on February 22, 1986, in a disingenuous attempt to gain the people’s sympathy -- which worked. Revision of the dying declaration came in his Memoirs two years ago; there really was that ambuscade, he said, a Churchillian terminological inexactitude, a lie, from where we sat,” Mr. Saguisag’s e-mail said, referring to the autobiography that Mr. Enrile published in 2012 and that claimed, among other things, that his ambush on the eve of Martial Law was real. Mr. Enrile -- now detained on plunder charges from last year’s pork barrel scandal -- had asserted otherwise at the height of the People Power Revolution of 1986. Among other archival sources, a news report by the Manila Times of February 23 that year quoted him as saying that the ambush -- the presumed basis of Martial Law -- was “staged.” “In journalism and history, we should have a passion for precision in expression,” Mr. Saguisag said in his e-mail. “Indeed, NEVER AGAIN! -- should we play up September 21 as Proclamation No. 1081 day. For Ninoy and a few others, it was midnight of September 22. For the rest of the nation, September 23, when the day began with no radio, TV and no newspapers.” Malacañang also officially recognizes September 23, 1972, as Mr. Marcos’s actual declaration of Martial Law -- the proclamation of which was since antedated to September 21, to accord with Mr. Marcos’s “obsession with numerology,” the Official Gazette said. Source: BW Online, 21 Sept 2014.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Sep 2014 00:06:04 +0000
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