March 8, 2006
Last days EDSA revolt by Fernando del Mundo
No shot had yet been fired, but when Hermie Rivera faced the wrong end of an assault rifle on the Palace corridor he thought he would be the first casualty of 1986 People Power revolution.
Rivera’s confrontation with the Galil-wielding son of President Ferdinand Marcos followed his father’s decision to go on national television to reassure the world he would not attack the rebels.
A trusted press officer with full access to the inner Palace sanctum, Rivera had arranged for Marcos’ television address hours after Washington had warned of dire consequences if the President mounted an offensive.
Ferdinand Marcos Jr., nicknamed Bongbong, had opposed his father’s decision taken on the second day of the breakaway by rebellious Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile and Gen. Fidel Ramos, the Armed Forces deputy chief of staff.
A mainstay of the popular late 60s, early 70s dzHP news team, Rivera said he had been called to the Palace at around 6 p.m. on that lazy Sunday – Feb. 23, 1986 — and had taken with him dispatches from Washington to brief the President.
“Why am I going on the air again?” Marcos asked Rivera moments after he was ushered into the President’s private room. Rivera had just started explaining when Bongbong wearing jungle fatigues, butted in, “No! Don’t go on the air!”
A veteran broadcast journalist and boxing aficionado who had managed such ring greats as World Bantamweight Champion Luisito Espinosa, Rivera continued his briefing. It was essentially that US President Ronald Reagan had threatened to withdraw support if Marcos ordered an assault on the rebel-held camps Aguinaldo and Crame in Quezon City.
“Bongbong was vociferously objecting to the TV appearance of the President while I was trying to explain the need for that, based on the wire stories and the radio reports that I had heard,” Rivera recounted.
As Bongbong continued his tirade, Marcos turned to his valet and said in the Ilocano dialect: “Can you get the makeup artist? There is something shiny in my forehead.” “I took that as a cue that he was disapproving Bongbong. He was going on the air!” said Rivera.
Rivera went to get the technicians and outside the room came face to face with Bongbong, this time carrying a Galil – the Israeli assault weapon. “He came to me, stopped me short and said, ‘Nakialam ka naman! Sinabi ko na sa iyo na huag kang makialam’ (You interferred again. I already told you not to meddle).” “I tried to explain to him. I was pleading. ‘Hindi po. Hindi ho ako nakikialam. Napaguutusan po lang tayo’ (No, sir. I am not meddling, sir. We are just following orders.)” “No, no, no, no,” said Bongbong, then a mop-haired, 28-year-old Army lieutenant. “All sorts of invectives came out of him,” said Rivera.
“What I was concerned most was not the viciousness of his tirade, but more on the prospects of being killed. For what?” After what seemed like eternity, Bongbong mercifully turned around and left him. “I think that singular incident tells us just who was the real author of what the world hailed as a bloodless revolution,” said Rivera. “Paradoxically, Bongbong helped in the peaceful resolution of the conflict by not pulling the trigger on that fateful night with me.”
The 67-year-old Rivera said he decided to come out with his story for the first time to let everyone know that the People Power revolution wasn’t all about the movers and shakers. It was also about bit players whose roles were no less significant.
It was beautiful
Nothing happened after the President went on the air, counseling his soldiers not to move at all, to keep the status quo for the sake of the country,” said Rivera.
It wasn’t like that at all on the first day of the breakaway on Saturday, Feb. 22, 1986, a day filled with tension and uncertainty. Rivera said the pall of gloom seemed to have descended upon the Palace a week earlier—when Marcos made a surprise announcement that he had accepted the resignation of Gen. Fabian Ver as armed forces chief—a move that stunned Ver. Marcos had designated Ramos as head of the military. But to Ramos’ chagrin, Marcos agreed to extend, on Ver’s request, the turnover of command to allow Ver to express his gratitude to the troops in the field.Curious, Rivera had called Ver to ask why he had resigned. Ver told him, no he had not, but that he had turned in a pro-forma resignation, as a matter of courtesy, following the snap election. And Rivera had wondered if there would have been any revolution at all had Ramos immediately taken command of the armed forces. He recalled that Ramos himself had called Malacanang several times asking when this would happen.
Special envoy
The day the revolution broke out, there was Ver at the Palace with his son, Irwin, the chief of the Presidential Guards who was unusually clad in full battle uniform, anxiously pacing about.
The two arrived at the Study Room shortly after Marcos had received US President Ronald Reagan’s special envoy, Philip Habib, who had called to report on his observations on the conduct of the snap elections.The meeting, which began at 10 a.m., lasted three hours. Immediately after Habib left, Rivera went to do his usual task – to ask the President what he would like the Malacanang press corps to know about the meeting. But Ver beat Rivera to the President. The two repaired to a private room and later Ver called Irwin to join them. When the three emerged 70 minutes later, Marcos told Rivera to prepare a press release simply reporting that his meeting with Habib centered on how he had won the snap election “fair and square.”
Coup plot
Rivera went to the press office, unaware that Irwin had reported to the President how he had uncovered a plot by Enrile to mount a coup d’etat on Sunday and that a crackdown against the suspected putchists had begun.
Hush-hush
I thought something was amiss.There was a hush hush atmosphere,” said Rivera. At 3 p.m., he went to the Manila Hotel, where the foreign press types hang out, to try and find out what was going on. He ran into Time photographer Robin Moyers, who told him, “How come your guys are deserting ship now? We’re going to Enrile’s office. Something’s going to be announced.” Close on Moyer’s heels came Time Correspondent Sandra Burton, who told Rivera, “I can’t talk now. I’m rushing. I’ll see you later.” Rivera strode to the coffee bar and saw JV Cruz, the Philippine ambassador to the Court of Saint James. Rivera told him everybody seemed to be heading for Camp Aguinaldo. “Is that true?” Cruz said. “If I were you, I’d go back to your post,” Rivera said. Cruz took one big gulp of his scotch, called his driver and proceeded to the airport .“The next thing I knew, he was back in London,” said Rivera. “It was then about 4 p.m. I tried reaching the President, trying to figure out how I could make a sense of it all. I tried to call in the next several hours but couldn’t get through. I thought that was unsual.There had never been an instance when my calls to the President had been rejected,” said Rivera. After Enrile announced the breakaway at around 6 p.m. “All hell broke loose,” said Rivera.
Dialysis
Shortly after 8 p.m. Col. Arturo Aruiza, the President’s senior military aide, came on the phone and told Rivera that the President was on the line but that he had to be very brief. Rivera summed up what he had learned so far. Rivera later learned from Aruiza the reason why Marcos was unavailable during those turbulent hours.”He was being given his usual dialysis, which I understood rendered him incommunicado for at least four hours,” Rivera said, revealing for the first time Marcos’ condition at that time. Marcos’ kidney problems, the subject of so much speculation, had been a closely guarded secret since 1979. Even in his book of the Marcoses escape to Hawaii—”Malacanang to Makiki”—Aruiza was vague on the subject of Marcos undergoing dialysis, saying only that during those critical moments on the first day of the revolution, he could not see Marcos because he was resting under the care of doctors and nurses. An hour after Rivera had talked on the phone to Marcos, the President went on national television to announce the capture of the first mutineer. In all, four were shown in public confessing their participation in the aborted coup d’etat. Apart from the confrontation with Bongbong, the next two days at the Palace were uneventful, from Rivera’s perspective, even as word came of massive crowds at Edsa and defections to the rebel side.
At around 2 a.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 24, a call came to the safe house where Rivera and several other Palace media aides stayed. A member of the kitchen staff said the First Family had made a decision to leave, but Marcos would go through with his inaugural that day. The decision to depart came after a series of exchanges between the White House and Malacanang with the message that Marcos should step aside — a clear position succinctly relayed by Sen. Paul Laxalt in two early morning phone calls.
That morning, Rivera came to the Palace, and went to see Marcos for his inaugural at the Palace Ceremonial Hall. “Is everything set? The teleprompter?” Marcos asked Rivera. Rivera said that tight security outside the Palace had prevented the technician from reporting for work.
Disappointed
“He looked disappointed. I wanted to make light of it,” said Rivera, a man with a sense of humor and a sunny demeanor. In normal times, he could draw a smile from the President.“There was no way to make things light. The events totally devastated the man,” said Rivera. “A very wan smile creased his troubled face. He looks at me and says, ‘I understand there is a large crowd outside the balcony. See to it that everything is set up’.”
Rivera went down to see how the address was being received by the throng that had gathered on the Palace ground. That was the last time Rivera saw the President at the Palace. The two would meet again months later—this time in Hawaii, where Marcos had gone into exile.
