August 28, 1987

I'll sneak this in as the dawn of this day approaches. 21 years ago today, sometime around 4am, we received a phone call from a family friend, virulently anti-Cory, who gleefully reported that Col. Gringo Honasan had staged a coup d'etat and that the Aquino government was about to fall. The news from good old DZRH was not optimistic. The rebels were near Malacanang and there were many casualties, including Noynoy Aquino who had been shot in the neck and shoulder while his bodyguards were killed. At around 5am, President Aquino, Speaker Mitra and Senate President Salonga appeared on all the TV stations still in operation, denouncing the coup. I was eleven, quite fascinated with the general panic, and incognizant of the real dangers to democracy and of the threats of violence.

This coup though was virtually over by the end of the day, and its place in history has been superseded by the much more dangerous 1989 coup (lots of memories of that one, check out this corner come December 1). Probably the most enduring vignette from this coup was Luis Beltran's Philippine Star column stating that President Aquino had hid under her bed as the fighting began, leading to an unprecedented libel suit from the President.

The personal memory that has stuck with me occurred a few days after the coup, when our grade school conducted an "emergency drill". Like a fire or earthquake drill, the emergency drill was prefaced by a series of bells. However, instead of fleeing the building, the emergency drill taught all of us to proceed in stealthy fashion to the ground floor classrooms, and to sit on the floor away from the windows and make sure none of our heads were visible from the outside. The teachers never explained what the exact purpose of the emergency drill was, but a lot of us somewhat understood.