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JOE Burgos’ Malaya sold more copies than the three major
broadsheets in 1984 and 1985. The young, brash and daring editors
working under Joe’s guidance precisely knew what stories to place
on page 1 as the paper went to bed: anti-Marcos stories that
suggested that Marcos’ time was near.
While the stories with big, bold headlines
screamed of the coming “fall,” there was less confidence among
the young editors—in private—on the certainty of the collapse of
the Marcos regime. But one of the Malaya sources within the
anti-Marcos opposition said that stories were “prescient.”
Marcos would fall, the Malaya source said
(borrowing from T.S. Eliot), not with a whimper but with a big bang
that would lead to the fall of dictators, despots and disdained
leaders elsewhere.
That Malaya source was then opposition MP
Homobono Adaza, who was arrested a few days back for his alleged key
role in anti-government plots.
On August 13, 1985, Bono Adaza and Tony Cuenco
filed the impeachment resolution against Marcos, in a big political
move to speed up the process of that would have its climax in EDSA
Uno. Malaya was given a copy of the impeachment resolution a day
before it was filed at the Batasan. At a corner along Quezon Avenue,
near the Malaya offices on West Avenue, Bono handed to me a brown
envelop with the impeachment resolution.
I was moved when Bono Adaza told me that a
prominent play in the Malaya was good enough for him. Never mind the
others, he told me in oblique terms. Just ask Joe (Burgos) to give
it prominence. My story on the August 14,1985, issue of the Malaya
was indeed the banner-headline but it was a sloppy piece of
journalism, leading off with the overused words that said an
impeachment resolution was filed yesterday and that signaled the
“beginning of the end of the Marcos rule.”
Sloppy but prescient. Six months after the
filing of the impeachment resolution and the Malaya story on the
“beginning of the end of the Marcos regime,” Marcos fled.
The new regime failed to acknowledge the big,
brave role Bono Adaza played in the effort to oust Marcos. Marginal,
peripheral players were given cabinet posts but some authentic
anti-Marcos partisans like Bono Adaza and Wilson Gamboa were
shabbily treated by the new mandarins of the new regime. Those who
manned the barricades during the pitch battles were rudely shoved
out.
In retrospect, this was one of the earliest
strategic blunders of the new administration. A bunch of
fence-sitters and spectators got rewarded for fence-sitting and
watching from the sidelines during the dark days of the anti-Marcos
struggle. The ones who fought in the trenches—Bono Adaza and
Wilson Gamboa particularly—were deemed outcasts after EDSA Uno.
The reason, perhaps, was the fact that Bono
Adaza (this was also true of Wilson), will never be comfortable in a
cozy club of deferential bureaucrats. He will always speak his mind.
He will always ask probing and irreverent question even if such
questions discomfit the president. No form of authority can trump
the irreverence in Bono Adaza and the new mandarins of the new
regime were deathly scared of such a probing mind. What if he raises
embarrassing questions during a cabinet meeting?
Bono Adaza was for a brief period part of the
mainstream opposition in the 1987 senatorial election. He ran for
senator under the now defunct Grand Alliance for Democracy (GAD) in
the first congressional election after martial rule. Only two of the
24 GAD candidates won—Juan Ponce Enrile and Joseph Estrada—as
the dominant pro-Cory sentiment massacred the political opposition.
His two congressional runs in his native
Camiguin likewise ended in defeat. Even in his native Camiguin,
voters failed to appreciate the prestige and the gravitas that would
come by electing a representative that became twice editor of the
Philippine Collegian and trained in law at UP.
Will Bono Adaza’s recent arrest push him to
cease living the life of the gadfly and irreverent? Those who know
him doubt whether he will go gentle into that good night.
Bono will always be Bono. He will forever be
uncomfortable with the old boys club, political coziness and
authority.
mvrong@yahoo.com
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