Eventful August

In my lifetime, there were unforgettable events that impacted me in one way or another. Here is a short list of them:

21 August 1983. Senator Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino was assassinated by alone gunman's bullet on the tarmac of the Manila International Airport (now called the Ninoy Aquino International Airport). Thirty years after the mastermind of the crime is still unknown and could still be alive and walking free amongst us.

28 August 1987. Colonel Gregorio Honasan, former top aide to Enrile, leads rebel soldiers to launch an attack against Malacañang early morning. The siege is repelled within hours but with several military and civilian casualties. Cory’s only son, Noynoy is wounded during the siege.

Honasan leads soldiers seizing portions of Camp Aguinaldo, including Department of National Defense headquarters. Other rebel soldiers seized other parts of the Philippines: parts of Villamor Airbase, military camps in Pampanga and Cebu, Legaspi City airport and three television stations in Manila. However, at the end of the day, government troops are able to recapture most of the rebel-held facilities. (http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/features/07/21/09/timeline-events-life-cory-aquino)

29 August 1987. The previous day’s coup ends leaving 53 people dead and over 200 wounded. Honasan evades capture while Enrile denies involvement in the coup.

26 August 1991. At the height of a tropical storm coupled with monsoon rains, I lay in my hospital bed, giving birth to my second child. This has always been an standing joke in the family, because my other two children had significant holidays on or around the time of their birth. My daughter was born on an Easter Sunday in 1986. My youngest child was born a day before Mother's day in 1993, while my middle child was born during a typhoon.

1 August 2009. President Corazon "Cory" Aquino lost her fight with colon cancer. The housewife of Ninoy Aquino led a country fed up with the atrocities of Martial Law and the declining state of living of the ordinary Filipino. 

23 August 2010. The hostage taking drama at the Quirino Grandstand in Manila. The suspect, Police Senior Inspector Rolando Mendoza, dismissed from the service on drug related charges, hijacked a tourist bus and held all 22 Chinese nationals as hostages together with 3 Filipino tour guides. After 10 hours, the drama was all over, leaving the suspect dead. Two other fatalities were reported, while five others suffered injuries.

Fast forward 2013.


19-23 August 2013. Monsoon rains battered the entire island of Luzon. Floods submerged numerous provinces, and caused an economic standstill in the National Capital Region. The monsoon claimed 8 lives, injured hundreds, displacing thousands of families and causing millions of damage to crops. 

25 August 2013. Today, I write about the corruption in my Philippines from the standpoint of a lowly taxpayer. For the past weeks, the pork barrel scam has been the biggest news in my Philippines. P10B of taxpayer money was squandered by people elected into public office, assisted by a certain Janet Napoles. This caused a big stir in the labor force. Workers are trying hard to make ends meet, unable to do anything about at the rising cost of basic commodities and utilities, and then they find out that some privileged few and their cohorts are living in luxury, with money that was supposed to alleviate the suffering of the common Filipino. Enraged at this new blow to an already disgusted workforce, a mass movement to protest the misuse of pork barrel funds will take place tomorrow, August 26. If I could only refuse to pay income taxes, I would! If I had enough power and influence, I would propose that taxes on income be stopped until such time that all the P10B is recovered.

For more information about this plague that is engulfing my Philippines, click on the following links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_Pork_barrel_scam.
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/473759/7-napoles-conduits-named-in-nbi-affidavits

25 August 2013 5pm. More than 2000 members of the police force are starting to be mobilized in preparation for the mass rally that will be held tomorrow.

25 August 2013. 9pm. Another restless night for my Philippines. Lets all pray that tomorrow's mass protest will be peaceful.

This is an infograph on the basics of the Priority Development Assistance Fund scam, produced by the Assembly, the Political Science Organization of the Ateneo de Manila University. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.