Can an Aquino death be proud time after time?

I ROUTINELY wake up from a short sleep at 2 a.m.and after a quick coffee, start tinkering with the keys of my computer, scanning by habit The Manila Times online edition. I begin, as ever, with favorites, and this being Friday morning, I click Lt. General Antonio Parlade's column, Decisive Point, with today's title, "CPP's forte: Lies, half-truths, deception." Rather uncharacteristically long, the piece deals with, as the title indicates, the monumental deceits committed by the Communist Party of the Philippines-New People's Army (CPP-NPA) in its half-century conduct of "protracted people's war." A unifying thread of the multiple issues raised in the discussion is the role played by the late senator Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino Jr. in the formations of the CPP, the NPA and the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), his massive ventilation in Congress and all over the media of the farcical Jabidah Massacre, which culminated in a sellout to Malaysia of the Marcos plan, Oplan Merdeka, to retake Sabah. According to Parlade's view, Ninoy's revelation of the plan constituted a treasonous act.

A citation of a piece. "Knowing Ninoy Aquino," in my blog, Kamao (kamaopunch.blogspot.com), suggests the duplicity of Ninoy Aquino with Jose Maria Sison in the bombing of Plaza Miranda on Aug. 21, 1971, in which the entire senatorial ticket of the Liberal Party in that year's midterm elections was nearly killed but for one - Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr. Why, of all people, Ninoy should be absent from the event, the deeply discerning just could not swallow. According to Sen. Jovito Salonga, who, among other injuries, lost an eye in the grenade blasts, Ninoy was the star of show, and yet how amazing that he should be the one single absentee at the rally. The late Ferdie Ramos, who was Ninoy's public relations man at the time, had this story spoken in whispers to close associates: he got a radio call from Ninoy moments before the grenades were thrown, asking to see him and where he was; Ferdie said he was right onstage in the rally, waiting for Ninoy to arrive.