STATEMENT OF FORMER SEN. HEHERSON T. ALVAREZ, FOUNDING CHAIR OF THE NINOY AQUINO MOVEMENT

STATEMENT OF FORMER SEN. HEHERSON T. ALVAREZ, FOUNDING CHAIR OF THE NINOY AQUINO MOVEMENT: "Respect the Global Judgment for Democracy and the Rejection of Dictatorship." | To deny honors for the burial of Marcos only affirms the historic verdict made in EDSA, witnessed and hailed all over the world. The strongman brand of reform of Marcos’s New Society is being discredited by most of the world, the latest being the Arab uprisings. | President Benigno Aquino, III. has wisely sailed on these historic winds of democratic change and reform. | Perpetrators and apologists of the discredited Martial Law might do well to acknowledge this humanist movement towards greater freedom, transparency of leadership and governance, and the rule of law. They should learn to accept and abide by this global historical judgment and reject once and for all the atavistic politics of dictatorship which always ends in popular disenchantment and resistance. | Like the Cry of Balintawak against Spanish colonialism, EDSA was the closure against inequity and massive violation of human rights and its attendant misery and abuse. The family and allies of the dictatorship should begin to learn with humility and bow to the judgment of world history just as the dominating Spanish power had accepted the error of the execution of Jose Rizal. | (The Ninoy Aquino Movement was referred to by the Wall Street Journal as the biggest and most organized Philippine opposition in the U.S.A)