HOW did Ferdinand Marcos remember his Jan. 26, 1970, Sona?
One State of the Nation Address that has gone down in history was that delivered by Ferdinand Marcos on Monday, Jan. 26, 1970. Nobody remembers that he spoke on national discipline because of the violence that followed the speech. Newspapers the next day carried the now iconic photos of truncheon-wielding policemen and bloodied students. At 11:05 that evening, in the safety of Malacañang, he wrote in his diary:
“Opening session of Congress. State of the Nation Address and Riots by the demonstrators in front of Congress.
“Two students reported killed. [Philippine General] Hospital Dir. [Reginaldo] Pascual reports 45 demonstrators and 5 policemen treated. Cars in Congress destroyed like that of Sen. [Jose] Roy.
“The invocation of Father Pacifico Ortiz, Ateneo head, was in poor taste. It castigated the government referring to goons, high prices, streets not being safe, the threat of revolution and how the citizens were ready to fight for their rights even in the barricades. It was an attempt at the state of the nation. I hope he is happy with what he has helped to bring about.
“Raul Manglapus engineered this with the help of the Jesuits apparently for all the Catholic schools had delegations. But apparently they were infiltrated by the Kabataang Makabayan who, with some students, started the violence.
“After the State of the Nation Address, which was perhaps my best so far, and we were going down the front stairs, the bottles, placard handles, stones and other missiles started dropping all around us on the driveway to the tune of ‘Marcos, Puppet’ chant.
“As the intelligence reports it, the demon- strators had brought a coffin which they carried from the street below to the site of the flagpole, where they pushed it into the faces of the policemen. The policemen then threw the coffin to the street below and may have hit two demonstrators. The latter then took out a stuffed alligator from inside the coffin and threw it at the policemen who threw it back. Then the wood, bottle and stone throwing which caught us at the front stairs. I could not go into the car as Imelda kept standing on the stairs. Col. [Fabian] Ver tried to push me inside but I ordered the First Lady be fetched and put inside first. Since she could not be pulled by anyone, I had to do it myself. I am afraid I pushed her into the car floor much too hard. Anyway I bumped my head behind the right ear against the car’s door side and twisted my weak right ankle again. Wemoved out under a hail of stones. But PSA agent covering me, Agent Suson, was hit in the forehead and left eyelid and took four stitches. I thought it was Col. Ver as his ‘barong’ was splashed with splotches of blood but Suson’s blood had spilled on him as he was onmy right.
“We saw some of the action over television after we arrived at the palace.
“Raul Manglapus is hoping to become the President of the Constitutional Convention. And the extremists are using these demonstrators to provoke violence for their purposes. Some advisers are quietly recommending sterner measures against the Kabataang Makabayan. We must get the emergency plan polished up.”
To validate events mentioned by Marcos in his diaries, I have been reading the Manila Chronicle from Jan. 1, 1970, and am often derailed by other news, like a series on the state of the Philippine National Archives: the dispute between Director Domingo Abella (whose wife was related to Mrs. Marcos) and some disgruntled staff that made public scams regarding land titles and birth records, and the loss of important documents like those on the Philippine claim to Sabah. Then in an article by Nick Joaquin that appeared in the Philippines Free Press in March, he stated that Marcos showed him the handwritten diary entry for Jan. 26, 1970, from which he quoted whole sections that are longer and more detailed than the handwritten version transcribed above. Was Joaquin given access to a copy of the Marcos diary? Or did Marcos read from it—leaving Joaquin to take everything down through memory, since he held a San Miguel Beer bottle more often than he did a tape recorder or notebook. What was the chain of custody before these diaries came into the possession of the Presidential Commission on Good Government after the Marcoses fled in February 1986?
———— Comments are welcome at aocampo@ateneo.edu