Cory-Doy and 1Sambayan’s parallelism
The road to 1986 beckoned with an entanglement.
But so is the road to 2022.
How poetic, if not ironic, is it to witness history unfold itself once more, although under different sets of conditions and circumstances, in an eerily similar manner and dispensation?
To allow people to reflect and delve deeper into the challenges of today’s opposition force in the face of another upcoming electoral battle, there is a need to consult history itself.
Back to 1985.
As early as 1984, on the heels of the opposition’s sweeping victory in the 1984 Batasang Pambansa elections (whose victory can be ascribed to the outrage flowing out of Ninoy Aquino’s treacherous murder in 1983), Ferdinand E. Marcos’ dictatorship saw itself standing at the crossroads. The bases of support for the dictator were slowly disintegrating, crumbling into severed pieces.
Concomitantly, a motley of scattered opposition movements had been initiating talks between different forces to broaden the horizon of the anti-Marcos movement. Since Ninoy’s murder became the galvanizing point for the entire array of forces opposing the dictatorship, the question shifted on the paradigm of unity.
But a gigantic Marcosian blunder intervened; it was a blunder that spelled Marcos’ downfall.
Raymond Bonner’s definitive account of the Marcos dictatorship vis-a-vis its relationship with the United States recounted: former American president Ronald Reagan’s informal aide and ally, Senator Paul Laxalt, claimed to have hawked to the ailing dictator the idea of a snap elections in 1986, a year before the actual presidential elections. The US State Department, held back by skepticism over the probability of communists overtaking any chance within an early election, rejected the idea. But Laxalt’s prodding on the dictator prevailed, and with a dramatic flair, Marcos appeared on This Week With David Brinkley to announce the snap presidential elections scheduled on the first half of 1986.
It was an American theater performed in Manila, all for Marcos’ and Reagan’s benefit.
Also, for the very survival of Marcos’ legitimacy — if he still had any.
Into Bonner’s words in Waltzing with a Dictator, “[i]t was not an election for Filipinos; it was an election for Americans, specifically for the American critics of his regime.”
Marcos’ sudden turnaround, after months of speculative chatter about a snap elections, posed a stirring dilemma for the anti-Marcos movement. American officials were correct in their misgivings about the opposition’s fragmentation even as the very fervent of opposition against the Marcos regime was on the rise.
The other half of this broad movement, the underground Left, was no more than a boycott force. Out of a calculated and irrevocable fear that Marcos would cheat his way to victory, the Left united behind the clarion call to boycott Marcos’ electoral farce, thus sparking ceaseless debates on whether or not boycott or participation would invariably be more favorable to the cause of Marcos’ removal.
At this crux, the moderate opposition found itself confounded.
Marcos announced snap elections in November 1985. Opposition groups had started to mobilize, in pockets, following the dictator’s abrupt decision. Since 1984, in what Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) founder Jose Maria Sison called “discordance” within the broad anti-fascist movement that sprung out of Ninoy’s assassination, the major challenge has always been uniting these fragments of forces. Without a single broad stroke pulling them together, Marcos would prevail.
The National Unification Committee (NUC) was established to streamline the official candidate against Marcos, devoid of the opposition’s ramshackle quality. Some three decades after, under the trappings of another populist and murderous dictator, 1Sambayan was created in order to streamline the official candidate against President Rodrigo Duterte’s anointed successor in the forthcoming 2022 elections. This is where the crucial points of parallelism, drawing from a historical lesion (albeit with totally different circumstances), would figure.
In 1986, the Gordian knot was three-way — between Ninoy’s widow, Cory; Salvador “Doy” Laurel, one of the active opposition leaders who formed and led the United Nationalist Democratic Organization (UNIDO); and former senator Jovito Salonga, a veteran leader of the Liberal Party, which martial law had browbeaten.
Doy’s pivotal role as a leader of the moderate opposition against Marcos had made him viable a candidate for the 1986 snap elections. Meanwhile, Jovy’s long history with the liberals made him the cut above the rest within their ranks. But there was an undeniable atmosphere welcoming the entrance into the presidential realm of Ninoy’s widow, a cloud of entrancement for Cory wafting across the anti-Marcos movement.
That was the dilemma: who among them should run against the dictator?
Cut to 2021. The dilemma posed by choosing the broadest, even wisest, candidate to defeat whomever Duterte endorses to succeed his authoritarian regime presents a five-way battle of choice: Vice President Leni Robredo; Manila’s chief executive Isko Moreno; Senator Nancy Binay; Senator Grace Poe; and former senator Antonio Trillanes IV, one of Duterte’s more visible opponents.
Of course, let the discourse not get lost in the variances of circumstances surrounding the two identical electoral muddle. Aside from being, by the word itself, “snap,” the 1986 snap presidential elections were a referendum for Marcos’ American patrons, a ratification of his shattered legitimacy to alleviate the anxieties in Uncle Sam’s nerves. Meanwhile, the 2022 presidential elections, apart from being the prescribed constitutional end for Duterte’s tenure, is a litmus test for five years of Duterte’s misrule — whether or not the people would catapult a second referendum for Duterte’s rough-and-tumble populist regime.
In 1986, the dictator was already clocking in at twenty years of one-man rule. 2022 would merely be the opening of floodgates, if Duterte succeeds, for the construction of his dictatorship.
1986 was the endgame for Marcos; his victory or loss would spell the end for him. In Duterte’s universe, meanwhile, 2022 is a launching pad; the ultimate test for this dictator’s wet dreams.
What binds the 1986 movement and the 2021 coalition is their ultimate goal: to topple the dictators in their time, furnished with high socio-political stakes and factors.
Especially back in 1986 — when no less than American diplomats and officials led an all hands on deck operation to sell the elections, lest the United States assent for the only other alternative to the martial law regime: the CPP’s proletarian revolution. Of course, the US would not budge. The snap presidential elections had to push through, and Marcos had to be driven out with a vote.
Back with the NUC. In his memoirs, former Manila mayor Lito Atienza recalled the intense rivalry inside the anti-Marcos opposition: the rift between young and old Liberal guards was initially a moment of reconciling the choice between not fielding any separate candidate and fielding Salonga against Marcos.
But since all of them who huddled together in the house of former president Diosdado Macapagal, whom Marcos defeated in 1965, shared the thought that, should Ninoy had not been killed, he would have been the certain rallying candidate against the dictator who could also unite different factions behind him, the 30 Liberals who met to discuss the snap elections fatefully chose to throw their backs on Cory.
But within the NUC, Cory’s backers were still a handful, according to Atienza. Among the Members of the Parliament (MP) from the opposition, only 15 were campaigning for Cory; the rest, some 40 MPs, were backing a Doy Laurel candidacy.
It was a presidential stalemate, exacerbated by Cory’s initial reluctance to run, that could have emasculated the broad united front against Marcos and gave the old tyrant a win.
Until the young LP leaders met again sometime in September 1985, coinciding with martial law’s month. The vacillation afflicting the opposition on the question that was Marcos’ snap elections left Cory sobbing in burden, young leaders agitated, and the movement’s grassroots confused. It was a decisive moment of indecision.
In Atienza’s recollection, that meeting in Hotel Intercontinental in 1985 was a tipping point. Cory regaled to them the rough process under which she was living, until she laid out the condition that would compel her to throw her hat in the snap election’s ring: a million signatures urging her to run. The late Don Chino Roces — Manila Times’ publisher, Ninoy’s cell-mate — had put himself to task, galvanized the Cory Aquino for President Movement, and gathered a million signatures by October 1985, which he presented to Cory immediately. By November, Marcos would announce that snap elections will occur on February 7, 1986.
The die was cast — except for the quandary that was Salvador “Doy” Laurel.
Two advisory councils were born out of the need to search a common candidate against Marcos: NUC and a Convenor’s Group known as the Kongreso ng Mamamayang Pilipino (KOMPIL). Doy Laurel and another Liberal stalwart, Eva Estrada-Kalaw, were the cogs in NUC’s machine, while Cory, former senator and civil libertarian Lorenzo “Ka Tanny” Tañada, and businessman Jaime V. Ongpin comprised KOMPIL.
KOMPIL’s immediate choice was Cory — the “rightful” candidate, the “people’s choice.” Manila’s influential archbishop, Jaime Cardinal Sin, backed Cory’s possible presidential bid, despite Cory’s recalcitrance. On the other hand, since manifold attempts to field a unity point of a candidate fell flat, Atienza recounted that the NUC was torn asunder; but NUC’s Nominating Convention, teeming with 25,000 delegates and convenors, eventually raised Doy’s hands.
Officially, around this time, Cory and Doy were the opposition’s two frontrunners. And this is where the anti-Marcos opposition’s Catch-22 moment surfaced: if Cory and Doy would both challenge Marcos in the snap polls, it would mean nothing but an impending loss on both, and a victory for Marcos. That was the stalemate that beset the opposition — until Cardinal Sin made an intervention.
For Cardinal Sin, two candidates opposing Marcos in an elections that the dictatorship would rig only foretells an impending victory for Marcos — and a devastating loss for those who wish to get rid of the dictator. There has to be a way out of this miasma, a compromise that would settle their differences and bind the broadest anti-Marcos, anti-fascist, and anti-dictatorship movement together.
Someone must give way — or the opposition would crumble on its feet.
Not everyone was open to a Doy bid for the presidency, especially for those who saw him as none but a traditional politician — much similar with Marcos himself — and an ambitious, overtly opportunistic political figure. Cardinal Sin’s personal choice was Cory. Other factions of the opposition, from the Convenor’s Group to the Salonga wing of the Liberals, also handpicked Cory as a viable candidate against Marcos.
Cory was not adamant to run for the presidency at first. Picking up from Ninoy’s warning (whoever replaces Marcos would inherit a huge headache), Cory tried her best to stray away from a presidential bid. But Marcos’ announcement of snap elections changed everything; Don Chino Roces’ 1.5 million signatures drafting her into the snap polls contributed in Cory’s vacillation. Sandiganbayan’s decision on December 2, 1985, to acquit former Armed Forces of the Philippines chief-of-staff Fabian Ver and a host of other suspects in the Aquino-Galman double murder case, was the final straw for Ninoy’s widow. On December 3, Cory went out to declare her intention to run against Marcos.
But Doy would not budge; Cory was, at best, indecisive. Or too reliant on political advisers, most of whom are timeworn animals in the political kingdom. As Cory ushered in, Doy’s cards started to fall. Defections within UNIDO increasingly left him in political isolation. Doy knew that he had a better edge over Cory, but political realities at that time suggested otherwise. A compromise had to be agreed upon, or the anti-Marcos opposition would be split into two.
That was when Cardinal Sin’s intervention carved a way out. Teary-eyed, and faced with a probable crossroads between his ambition and Cory’s emerging candidacy, Doy sought for the Cardinal’s advice. Cardinal Sin admonished him to yield to Cory. It was a hard, even bruising, and tough choice for Doy — who worked hard, admittedly, to lead the political opposition at a time when nearly everyone folded under Marcos’ draconian watch. But time was running out, and choices had to be made. Doy, in effect, inched his way through the road less travelled. But it wasn’t that easy.
While Doy had conceded the presidency, he still bargained a condition: Cory should run as president under UNIDO, since it was the formidable opposition party at that time, Cory dilly-dallied, forcing Doy to file a certificate of candidacy in the Commission of Elections (Comelec) to run as Marcos’ opponent. In his diary, Doy narrated:
Early the next morning, I had made up my mind. I went back to Manila and met Cory at my house. I told her I had decided to give way to her. My only condition was that she should run under UNIDO after all, it was the largest and most organized party in the country at that time. It was accredited as the dominant opposition party. Its capacity to wage and win a nationwide campaign had been convincingly demonstrated in the 1984 elections when we won one third of the seats at stake.
But Cory could not see the point. She would not run under UNIDO.
On December 11, Cory agreed with Doy’s sole condition. He recounted:
Cory and I met at the house of my son, David in our Mandaluyong compound. She announced that she had changed her mind. She was now willing to run under UNIDO!…
At eight o’clock that evening I made up my mind. I called Cory to meet me at the house of Maur Aquino-Lichauco. My two brothers, former Speaker Jose B. Laurel Jr. and former Ambassador Jose S. Laurel III, came with me. I wanted them and Doña Aurora to witness what I would tell Cory. At about ten o’clock, I told her I was giving way to her. She was overwhelmed. When I extended my hand to congratulate her, she held it in both her hands and said, “Thank you, Doy. I’ll never forget this.”
By December 15, 1985, in a dramatic announcement in a rally held in Liwasang Bonifacio, UNIDO formally announced the tandem that would go against Marcos: Cory as president, Doy as her vice-president. Both would run under Doy’s UNIDO.
The entire anti-Marcos movement, including fragments from the Left, backed Cory and Doy.
One Cardinal’s fateful advice, and two fateful decisions, were what it took to unite a broad array of different formations, divided by political persuasions, to topple the Marcos dictatorship.
Akin to what Cory, Doy, the UNIDO, the Liberals, and other opposition forces had faced in the prelude to the dramatic showdown that was the 1986 snap presidential elections, 1Sambayan is now facing the critical juncture of a baffling choice.
Rappler recently published an in-depth piece about the same reality in Cory and Doy’s fragile time with which 1Sambayan finds itself living as well: the anxious thread of unity. The novel coalition’s goal, more than anything else, is to field a united national slate to defeat Duterte’s candidates and machinery come 2022. No less than retired Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonio Carpio himself, one of the three convenors of 1Sambayan, echoed this view with an emphatic note: “We have discussed this, again and again, and this is the understanding of everybody: That unless we are united, we cannot win in 2022.”
But it’s never an easy task — as it was not an easy task in 1985.
Specifically when the entire opposition under Duterte, riddled with fratricidal rifts since the strongman’s election, is bickering and rife with disunity and infighting.
But certain conditions make 1Sambayan’s case somehow different from UNIDO’s maze in 1985. Aside from the fact that the 2022 presidential elections is not as declining, dramaturgical, and dependent (on American largesse) as the 1986 snap elections was, and while 1986 was more of a question of the Marcos regime’s survival, the conundrum with which 1Sambayan grapples suggests two climacteric implications: that 2022 will be a decisive time of reckoning on whether the electorate would vote in the perpetuation of the Duterte clique in Malacañang — or vote the Duterte clan out of presidential apex; or 2022 will be a crucial point for the anti-fascist movement in Dutertismo’s era to foil any attempt from the president’s network to bastardize democracy by either cheating their way to victory or cancelling the 2022 elections altogether, with the COVID-19 pandemic serving as a convenient excuse.
Through this morass, the necessity of decisive action is the one factor that remains.
As it was in 1985, certain choices had to be made now.
But one thing should be a primordial consideration: that the anointed aspirant against the Duterte-backed candidate should be, first and foremost, against Duterte and everything he stands for — extrajudicial killings, authoritarianism, subservience to China, corrupt politics, and repression. Populism should be ruled out from the sine qua non qualifications of 1Sambayan’s candidate, since populist politics was the mud from which Dutertismo rose.
If there is a lesson 1Sambayan should learn from the country’s 1986 experience, it should be this: Doy Laurel was already a leader of the anti-Marcos traditional opposition years before 1986. He worked in his own field, tediously, to spearhead a substantial political machinery that could effectually oust the Marcos dictatorship.
Will 1Sambayan’s anointed candidates fit into that bill?
