TRAGEDY OF UNTOLD PROPORTIONS. I was a young Manila-based correspondent of the Jiji Press, a Japanese news agency, when this tragedy struck on the Experimental Cinema of the Philippines (ECP) building in the reclaimed Manila Bay area. I was among the journalists, who responded to cover this tragedy. But we were prevented to go near the ECP project. Upon orders of dictator Ferdinand Marcos and the powerful Imelda Marcos, its chief mover, the military cordoned off the project from onlookers and curious journalists like myself. We hardly saw the collapsed scaffolding and the areas where bodies of workers, who were working overtime, were said to have been buried. What the Marcos dictatorship did was to impose a total coverup of the tragedy. But we knew that families of workers, who suddenly disappeared as a result of the tragedy, were frantically asking for their whereabouts. We heard that Marcos minions gave them plenty of cash to keep quiet, but we could not confirm it until after Marcos was toppled. Since then, the place is said to have been haunted. There are many stories about those spirits in agony, all their cries of pain. The late Teddy Benigno, Agence France press Manila bureau chief and one-time spokesman of Cory Aquino, once told us he attended a canao there to appease the spirits. What we could see here is the arrogance of power that defined the Marcos regime.
Posted on: Wed, 07 Jan 2015 18:27:20 +0000
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