By TESSA JAMANDRE
NOW it can be told.
On Feb. 24, 2006, on the 20th anniversary of People Power, former President Corazon Aquino was supposed to have linked arms with both the forces that were loyal to her and had threatened her government during the 1989 bloody coup attempt.
Aquino, with Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim and retired Gen. Voltaire Gazmin would have marched to the EDSA Shrine, holding streamers instead of guns to join the people demanding for change in government.
Lim and Marine Col. Ariel Querubin were young captains when they led the December 1989 coup attempt that left about 100 of their comrades dead. Querubin, leading the attack on Camp Aguinaldo, was among those who ended up in the morgue. Gazmin was then commander of the Presidential Security Group that repelled the military rebels.
But the linking up on EDSA in Guadalupe, Makati of the former president with Gazmin, other members of the civil society from Makati and the composite team of the police and the military that was supposed to come from Fort Bonifacio through Pasong Tamo never happened. Two days later, Aquino ended up leading a vigil near Fort Bonifacio after she was denied entry to the camp while there was a standoff at the headquarters of the Philippine Marines.
Lim said their unity on that day would have been the most powerful message behind their action, the very same spirit of EDSA that restored democracy.
Earlier today, at the necrological services held for his mother at the Manila Cathedral, Sen. Benigno “Nonoy” Aquino III said that over his objections, his mother went to the Marine headquarters in February 2006 to lend support and push for a peaceful resolution to the standoff.
Young officers
As a young officer back in 1986 assigned at the Philippine Military Academy, Lim was among those who supported then Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile and Vice Chief of Staff Fidel Ramos when they broke away from Marcos in a mutiny that unraveled to EDSA.
But with expectations set too high from the newly restored democracy, disappointments also quickly set in among the key players of the People Power revolution. Months later, Lim and Querubin found themselves challenging the government they helped install by people power through the power of their gun.
Lim now says the bloody coup attempts that rocked the Aquino administration in 1987 and 1989 were not about violence for the sake of violence, nor were they an attempt of forces loyal to Marcos to retake the government.
In retrospect, Lim and Querubin spoke about the fire and idealism of junior officers that prodded them to challenge the new government of the country’s and Asia’s first woman president.
Said Lim of the 1989 coup attempt: “We never wanted bloodshed, it just so happened that we came from the military. But the motivations were more than the stride. It’s not merely adventurism or what they later on attributed to mercenary motives for willing sacrifices. It’s never for self-aggrandizement, never for selfish or partisan political ends. It’s not for personal career but for the career of the nation.”
Lim, a West Point graduate and the operations and training officer of the First Scout Ranger Regiment, was involved in the planning and execution of the coup plot, as he was able to build about 1,000 forces on their side.
Presumed dead
Querubin, on the other hand, was assigned battalion commander tasked to assault Camp Aguinaldo. A shrapnel pierced his scalp when his command vehicle was hit by a rocket and presumed dead when a helicopter gunship opened fire at his position. He was moved out of the morgue and to a hospital only when a doctor examined his class ring and his finger twitched.
“I was willing to give it all up back then, especially if you have a cause you believe is worth fighting for,” Querubin said.
He escaped from the hospital and lived a life of a fugitive but was later caught and incarcerated.
“It was my incarceration that brought change in me. I was given time to improve myself physically and spiritually. I read the Bible and had time to reflect. When I was released, my paradigms on life had changed for the better,” he said.
Lim and Querubin were among the military rebels who were granted amnesty by the Ramos admnistration. They were reinstated and again worked their way up the ranks in the military. Lim got his first star rank ahead of his contemporaries while Querubin reaped medals in the battlefield, among them the highest award for combat, the Medal of Valor.
Grateful to Cory
Now they are back in jail for allegedly challenging another woman president, in a case of mutiny for allegedly attempting to withdraw support from President Arroyo in that supposed February 2006 non-event.
The military’s chain of command prevailed upon Lim and Querubin after they met with their chief of staff the night before. The two did not want a repeat of the bloody 1989 episode, so they informed then AFP Chief of Staff Gen. Generoso Senga of the plan of the junior officers to peacefully join the protest rally on EDSA without arms. But they were ordered to return to barracks.
They did. But Malacanang still ordered their confinement for what it alleged as a destabilization plot and declared a state of emergency thereafter. Marines Commandant Maj. Gen. Renato Miranda was sacked and it triggered a standoff at the Fort Bonifacio.
When Querubin protested the unceremonious relief of his commandant, he called for people to rally behind the Marines, and Aquino was among those who went but was denied entry to camp.
“It is my regret that I never had the chance to meet her personally or even just shake her hands in this lifetime. Since the 2006 Marine standoff in Fort Bonifacio, I wanted to personally thank her for heeding my call to a peaceful protest. Amidst Proclamation 1017 at that time, she braved the dark of the night and the anti-riot police to be one with the people in prayer,” Querubin said in a statement issued through his son and spokesperson days after Aquino’s passing.