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<img loading="lazy" src="https://cdn.kahimyang.com/resources-9/aquino-just-before-his-death-sm.webp" alt="Ninoy Aquino just before his death" />
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(Ninoy Aquino just before his assassination)
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"You have to be ready with your hand cameras because action can become very fast. In a matter of three or four minutes, it could all be over, and I may not be able to talk to you again after this."

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Ninoy Aquino has been canonized as a martyr with an annual commemoration of his assassination on the tarmac of the Manila International Airport on August 21, 1983, the country's premier airport that was renamed in his honor.


His widow, Cory, and son, Noynoy, were both elected president of the country.


Cory was president from 1986 to 1992 and Noynoy, from 2010 to 2016.


Quite a feat for Ninoy, who had the flair for the dramatic when he was still alive.


How Ninoy Aquino was able to predict his assassination is something for the books.


Why was Ninoy so sure that he was going to be assassinated?


Before he boarded the China Airlines plane in Taipei, the former senator said he might be "hit" at the Manila International Airport, and his assassin would be shot in turn.

Holding up a bullet-proof vest, Ninoy said, "But if they hit me in the head, I'm a goner."


Rolando Galman, a hired gun from Tarlac, Ninoy's home province, shot the former senator in the head with a .357 magnum revolver, according to the government investigation into the murder.


Galman, who was wearing the uniform of airport maintenance personnel, was in turn, shot many times by soldiers, who fetched the ex-senator from the plane.


Why did Ninoy know he was going to be shot in the head and that his assassin would be shot by his escorts?


As the plane was about to land, Ninoy handed his brother-in-law, Ken Kashiwahara, his watch.


When Kashiwahara asked, "Why are you doing this," Ninoy replied, "I just want you to have it."


Was the gesture a premonition, or did Ninoy have foreknowledge of what was about to happen?


Ninoy was very sick - he was allowed to go to the United States for coronary heart bypass surgery - and he probably knew he was dying; thus, there's no telling if he could have stage-managed his death.


The former senator was a publicity-seeker, whose every word or action was the stuff of headlines.


What baffles many people until now is why Cory and Noynoy, with all the power at their fingertips, did not form a panel of investigators to determine who was behind the assassination.


The US government made an in-depth probe into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, and a commission was formed to do that.


Air Force M/Sgt. Pablo Martinez, in an interview with this columnist at the New Bilibid Prisons, took full responsibility for the dastardly deed but said his fellow soldiers, who were convicted with him, were completely innocent.


Martinez said it was he and his superior, Colonel Romeo Ochoco, deputy chief of the defunct Aviation Security Command (Avsecom), who knew about the plot.


Martinez told me he handed Galman the .357 magnum days before Ninoy was to arrive and had the gun test-fired on the trunk of a tree.


My interview with Martinez was published in my column at the Philippine Daily Inquirer during Noynoy's presidency.


Why didn't Noynoy take a cue from that Inquirer column item and form a panel of investigators like the US government did on the Kennedy assassination?


There could only be one reason: the Aquinos and Cojuangcos wanted to let sleeping dogs lie.


The probe would probably have opened Pandora's box.


Ninoy was no saint as a public official, and his flair for drama was legend.


The former senator exposed a plot by the government in the 1960s to send a commando unit to Sabah to help residents, mostly Filipinos from Sulu, launch a revolt against the Malaysian government, which would have led to the return of Sabah to the Philippines.


If he had been a true patriot, Ninoy wouldn't have exposed that secret plan as it was a national security issue.


Ninoy was reported to have brokered the formation of the communist New People's Army (NPA) at his residence in Hacienda Luisita in Tarlac.


He was absent when a grenade was thrown at a Liberal Party election rally in Plaza Miranda in Quiapo on Aug. 21, 1971 - is it a coincidence that that incident and his assassination 12 years later were of the same month and day? - that killed nine people and wounded scores of others, including his party mates.


Why was he absent at that election rally when his presence was important?

Ninoy Aquino: Why are we even celebrating the death of a fake hero?