We got respect for US Secretary of State John Kerry.
During the 1986 national elections that paved the way for the People Power revolution, he was in the Philippines as an observer representing US Congress.
And an unwitting game changer.
“One of the braver acts was done by Senator John Kerry. He left the U.S. delegation to speak with data clerks, at the request of some Roman Catholic priests. The priests found that the numbers typed in by the clerks were not the same numbers that showed up on the screens,” remembers Bill Sweeney, president and CEO of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems.
“Senator Kerry spoke to the clerks, in front of cameras, and the world came to know that Marcos’ people had actually pre-programmed the results, in some areas. I do not know what the final returns were, but on election night there was plenty of evidence of tampering.”
The rest, as they say, is history.
But his ties to the Philipppines goes deeper: he is related to William Cameron Forbes, governor-general of the Philippines from 1908 to 1913, and after whom the road in Sampaloc, Manila, and the exclusive subdivision in Makati was named.
Yesterday at the US Embassy in Manila, he examined a portait of Forbes, who is his grandfather’s cousin.
Photos from US State Department’s Flickr account/Public Domain.
Top: Kerry signs the Malacañang guest book. Above: Kerry checks out Forbes’ portrait at the US Embassy.
