Rallies, Fireworks, Puppets Mark 3rd Anniversary of Aquino Slaying

Thousands of Filipinos have streamed into a downtown government museum this week to tour an exhibit featuring the bloodstained T-shirt and bulletproof vest worn by former Sen. Benigno S. Aquino Jr. when he was gunned down three years ago at Manila International Airport.

At suburban country clubs and downtown hotels, half a dozen Cabinet ministers, key figures in the government headed by Aquino’s widow, have delivered speech after speech recalling the life and ideals of the slain leader.

On Wednesday night, the government put on fireworks displays, puppet shows and a theatrical presentation starring friends and relatives of Aquino--a nationally televised event attended by President Corazon Aquino and her entire Cabinet.

It all adds up to a weeklong national circus, a kaleidoscope of fun and games and prayer commemorating the killing that Filipinos call the Murder of the Century.

The highlight of the seven-day celebration, which President Aquino calls “Peace and Freedom Week,” will come today.

Schools have been closed nationwide, and the government is encouraging children to attend the many rallies scheduled to mark the day. Masses will be held across the country, and local governments have scheduled blood-donor drives, tree plantings and dedication ceremonies for halls of justice and avenues that will bear the assassinated dissident’s name.

The main event is to take place at 1 o’clock this afternoon, three years to the moment after Aquino fell beside the jetliner that brought him back from the United States to challenge the 20-year regime of Ferdinand E. Marcos.

Flanked by diplomats, government ministers and Coretta Scott King, the widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., the president will dedicate a granite slab on the exact spot where her husband fell.

Etched in the slab is an outline of Aquino’s body as it lay after he was shot in the back of the head by a still-unidentified assailant.

Beside the figure are the words: “Wherever a martyr has shed his blood for truth, justice, peace and freedom, there is sacred ground. The sun cannot bleach, the wind cannot blow, the rain cannot wash that sanctity away.”

Three years after his death, Benigno Aquino Jr. continues to play a greater role in Philippine affairs than he did in life, and his widow’s government clings to the slain leader’s memory as a rallying point to help stabilize and unify her government.

So great is that effort that one political critic charged this week that the Aquino government is virtually a government by ghost.

Francisco Tatad, a former information minister under Marcos, who fought the now-deposed ruler for a decade, said: “We are forming a government of euphoria instead of a government of programs. It is still very much a symbolic environment in the country today.”

But for President Aquino and her Cabinet, the symbol of the man known universally in the Philippines by his nickname, Ninoy, has been a vital tool in their effort to consolidate a factious coalition government that took power after Marcos was overthrown last February.

At lunch at a Manila country club Tuesday, Aquino’s minister of land reform, Heherson Alvarez, said that without such a symbol, the nation could “wither in apathy.”

“Ninoy has planted the seed,” Alvarez said. “We have already brought it to life. Now, hard work needs to be done--the work of reconstruction and rehabilitation of the national spirit.” Otherwise, he said, “the martyrdom of Ninoy Aquino will be in vain.”

Another speaker, Napoleon Rama, who is vice chairman of a commission drafting a new constitution, offered a deeper justification for maintaining “the ghost of Ninoy.” Without the former opposition leader, he said, none of the present ministers, nor President Aquino herself, would be in power.

“Cory Aquino is really president by proxy,” Rama said. “She could never have been president without Ninoy Aquino.”

The identities of the ministers appointed by Aquino, who was a politically inexperienced housewife before she assumed office Feb. 25, are constant reminders of the role the slain leader continues to play in the Philippine government.

Each minister was handpicked because of his or her close relationship with the president’s husband. President Aquino’s executive secretary, Joker Arroyo, was Benigno Aquino’s personal attorney during Aquino’s eight years in solitary confinement.

Alvarez and Natural Resources Minister Ernesto Maceda were Aquino’s confidants during his exile in the United States. Agriculture Minister Ramon Mitra, the government’s chief negotiator in peace talks with Communist insurgents, was a frequent visitor during Aquino’s years as a political prisoner.

Critics like Tatad have cited the composition of the Cabinet, as well as several policy decisions taken by Aquino and her government, as evidence that the president’s overall approach to administering the country is too simplistic.

“It is almost as if her whole philosophy is ‘that which was Marcos is bad; that which was Ninoy is good,’ ” Tatad said. “It is important that we do not forget Ninoy Aquino, but it’s even more important that we assume our duties and just let him be dead.”

There is growing sympathy for this view, even within the government. Alvarez said earlier this week that the president wanted to play down this week’s celebrations in order to avoid “the appearance of a conflict of interest” and let her husband’s memory begin to fade, but that the relatives and several Cabinet ministers persuaded her to approve the planned events.

In a speech last week, the president said she deliberately avoided declaring the day a national holiday, but that her education minister and the business community took it upon themselves to cancel classes and work.

Alvarez and other ministers said they believe this week’s events will probably be the “final burst” of government-encouraged public fervor for the slain former senator.

But other prominent Filipinos disagree. Events themselves, they say, will continue the momentum.

For one thing, the Supreme Court is expected to order a retrial soon for the 25 soldiers acquitted of murder charges last year in the Aquino slaying, and “with the new trial coming up,” Tatad said, “the whole thing is going to start all over again now.”

Most Filipinos still believe that Aquino was killed by a government soldier in a conspiracy that may have reached as high as Marcos. Aquino, whom Marcos considered his political arch-rival before the slaying, was surrounded by nearly 2,000 soldiers when he was shot, and an independent fact-finding commission recommended that 25 officers and enlisted men, among them Marcos’ military chief of staff, Gen. Fabian C. Ver, be charged with murder.

The charges were filed, but all 25 were acquitted in a nine-month trial that ended in December.

Most of the publicity about the case died soon afterward. But in recent weeks, since a court commission recommended a retrial, newspapers have been filled with articles recounting the incident and the trial.