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Eto na, pusila! Garci, yung dagdag!

It’s no big deal on a historic scale. But political analysts are beginning to see a very notable parallel between the 1983-1985 period of the US-Marcos dictatorship after Benigno Aquino Jr. was assassinated, on one hand, and the present period of the GMA regime after the “Hello Garci” tape scandal blew wide open.

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On August 21, 1983, as Aviation Security Command (Avsecom) troopers escorted Ninoy from the JAL plane exit down to the tarmac of the airport that now bears his name, media people on board shoved each other to get pictures, video and audio footage of the scene. All they got were a confused record of commotion with troopers yelling, shots ringing out, people screaming, and glimpses of Ninoy already sprawled lifeless on the ground.

Most people knew in their hearts it was the soldiers, on orders from way up the chain of command, who killed Ninoy. But Marcos and his generals insisted that the killer was a hired gun named Rolando Galman who somehow slipped through airport security, got close to Ninoy as he was being led into an Avsecom van, and shot him pointblank with a Magnum .357 before being mowed down himself by enraged troopers.

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No photo or video record that showed the actual killing ever came to light. That was because Ninoy’s killers took extreme care to block the plane exit and prevent people with cameras from getting a clear shot of his descent onto the tarmac and into the maws of murder. It was a brazen behind-the-curtains killing, and the culprits figured they could get away with smoke and mirrors.

But they underestimated two things. First, the relentless groundswell of daily protests that cried out, “Justice for Aquino, Justice for All!” And second, the persistence and intelligence of people in ferreting out the hard facts about the killing that could pin down the real masterminds.

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Under intense public and diplomatic pressure, Marcos first proposed a fact-finding commission on the Aquino killing to be headed by then Chief Justice Enrique Fernando. The Fernando Commission was supposed to be in the mold of the Warren Commission, headed by then Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court Robert Warren, which investigated the 1963 assassination of John F. Kennedy and which ultimately upheld the “lone gunman” theory.

The problem was that Justice Fernando was widely perceived to be a Marcos lackey. (In many a public occasion, he was often seen holding an umbrella over the First Couple even in fair weather.) His commission was thus prematurely decommissioned. Instead, Marcos was obliged to form a more independent body headed by retired Justice Corazon Agrava.

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The Agrava Commission’s feisty chief investigator, Andres Narvasa, did his work very methodically. He doggedly collected all available evidence, mobilized a wide range of expert witnesses, and established a credible chronology of events and an impressive gallery of time-coded images surrounding Ninoy’s murder.

Among the evidence was a video footage that failed to show the actual killing but preserved for posterity a bedlam of sounds, screams and voices. Enhanced by sound engineers, the tape yielded one of the Agrava Commission’s most revealing bits of evidence: a trooper barking the now-famous command: “Eto na, eto na! Pusila, pusila!” (“Here goes, here goes! Shoot now, Shoot now!” in idiomatic Visaya), then a single shot, then more yelling and shooting.

Some AFP wiseguys had offered a funny alibi to wiggle out of those damning words. Ninoy’s escorts, they explained, had merely said “Eto na po sila!” (“Here they come, sir!”) to inform higher-ups that they had Ninoy under custody. It was an innocent “Eto na po sila,” they claimed, not a murderous “Eto na! Pusila!” The public laughed at the pathetic alibi, but Agrava and Narvasa were not amused.

(It was such a witty ploy, however, that the Apo Hiking Society, then in the thick of the anti-Marcos movement, used the same play of words to produce a long succession of popular shows with titles like “Eto nAPO Sila,” “Sa Linggo nAPO Sila,” and so forth.)

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To make a long story short, the Agrava Commission delivered on its promise, tolerably. In October 1984, it produced two reports, both concluding that Ninoy was killed by a military conspiracy. The majority report included Gen. Fabian Ver, Presidential Security Command chief and loyal Marcos hitman, as among the 26 conspirators. The minority report excluded Ver and named a smaller number of conspirators.

At any rate, the Agrava reports added more gaping holes to the sinking ship of the Marcos dictatorship. But the regime refused to go under just yet. It would take 16 months more, including political maneuvers in the newly-formed Batasan and a snap election in early 1986, before People Power would emerge to oust Ninoy’s killers from power and install his widow as new president.

Through the years, the names Agrava and Narvasa would gradually fade from the public eye. Even the infamous “Eto na! Pusila!” would morph into a harmless showbiz catchword, thanks to the APO. But the tale of the tape would be played, paused, rewound, and replayed again and again.

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Fast forward to 2005.

Unlike Marcos, GMA did not kill any opposition leader. At least she did not literally kill FPJ, despite Susan Roces’s emerging role as her nemesis, an avenging widow like Cory Aquino. Just the same, GMA is widely perceived as having stolen presidential votes and the presidency itself – a crime which is just as bad as political murder, if not worse.

Like Marcos, she has denied any wrongdoing. Marcos admitted only a “lapse in security” on the part of Avsecom, while GMA admitted only a “lapse in judgment” in chatting with a Comelec official.

Like Marcos, GMA is bedevilled by the Tale of the Tape. Only now, the tape doesn’t yell, “Eto na, eto na! Pusila, pusila!” but coos, “Hello Garci? Yung dagdag, yung dagdag!” in that unique dominatrix voice dripping with phony charm.

Like Marcos, GMA is being pressed to set up a Truth Commission, presumably to pinpoint the truth among the hopeless haystack of lies.

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And now we come to the end of the parallelism.

Marcos allowed the Agrava Commission to conclude that Ninoy was a victim of military murder, perhaps with an assurance that the dictator himself won’t be implicated. It was a gambit where Marcos traded a favorite general in exchange for more time and space for political maneuver. Thus, he could stay in power for 16 months more, until he challenged the opposition in a snap election.

GMA cannot win on the same gambit. This time, it is her own neck on the block, not merely that of subalterns like Ver under Marcos. “Eto na, pusila!” was uttered by an Avsecom hitman, not Marcos. “Hello, Garci. Yung dagdag, yung dagdag!” was uttered by no less than GMA herself.

I won’t go so far as to predict that GMA will eventually junk the CBCP proposal to form a Truth Commission. But she will fight tooth and claw to stop whatever fact-finding body is formed from getting hold of the original source tapes and subjecting it to technical scrutiny to establish authenticity and voice identities.

With the Agrava Commission, Marcos sacrificed a powerful rook-and-pawns combination so his King could escape an imminent checkmate while he tried to force a stalemate.

With a Truth Commission of any degree of integrity, GMA’s King cannot but open itself to more frontal attacks and more loss of initiative. However, without a Truth Commission, GMA will surely suffer – perhaps even more quickly – a fatal checkmate with ample bishop support.

It’s a no-win situation for GMA. So what else can we say, but “Eto na po sila, ang dagdag at marami pang dagdag na people power. Goodbye, Ma’am!” #

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