It was exactly 37 years ago today when then President Ferdinand Marcos formed a fact-finding committee to investigate the assassination of Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino.
It was short-lived, however, due to strong public suspicion.
This led to the creation of a new committee on October 22, 1983, known as the Agrava Board.
It was headed by former Court of Appeals Justice Corazon Agrava with lawyer Luciano Salazar, educator Amado Dizon, trade union leader Ernesto Herrera, and 59-year old businessman Dante Santos who was personally handpicked by Marcos himself following recommendations from community leaders.
“When others shied away from the burden of social responsibility, Dante did his patriotic duty and held on,” says researcher and former Oxford University scholar, now Assistant Director of the Maritime and Ocean Affairs of the Department of Foreign Affairs (DFA), Geronimo Suliguin, who explored the early life, career, and service of Santos in his latest essay.
A Native of Rizal
Santos' family was originally from Bulacan but the family moved around a lot.
It was because the family patriarch was a school principal and before the onset of the Second World War, they had gone around from Zamboanga to Iloilo to Parañaque, and eventually, Pasig, where the young Dante Santos was raised, finishing high school at Rizal High.
Santos took engineering at the University of the Philippines.
When the war ended, he went to the United States to continue his studies in Mechanical and Electrical Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle. During summer, like most students, he worked at a cannery in Alaska.
It was in Seattle where he met his wife, the then Henrietta Regala, who was pursuing her degree at Berkeley and was vacationing in Seattle. Regala was the daughter of former Consul General, Justice Roberto Regala.
The two tied the knot in 1949.
Santos started to carve his career by moving to Australia to join a company manufacturing refrigerators. After three years, he decided to go back to the Philippines to found the Philippine Appliance Corporation (PHILACOR) with another UP product, Hilarion Henares Jr., in 1963.
PHILACOR became the leading manufacturer of freezers and refrigerators in the Philippines with approximately 1,500 employees. It was ahead of its time in terms of private sector response to HIV/AIDS.
It was also involved in publishing Philippine-themed books under Philacor Young People’s Library such as "Games Filipino Children Play," "Pagdiriwang: Stories of Filipino Rites and Rituals," "Filipino Myths and Legends," "A Heritage to Be Proud Of," "The Seven Golden Cities of the Sun," "Stories Filipinos Tell," "Great Filipino Battles," among others.
Agrava Board
As members of the Agrava Board, Santos and his team went about their task “without restraint.” In eleven months, the board took testimonies from 194 witnesses at 146 public hearings, examining more than 1,400 photographs.
After initially making little headway, the Agrava Board in October 1984 concluded that several military officers, including AFP Chief of Staff Fabian Ver, conspired to kill Aquino, this despite a separate dissenting report made by Agrava herself.
The Board likewise rejected the contention that Aquino was murdered by communists.
Suliguin noted in his research that then US State Department Spokesman John Hughes praised the Board for carrying out an "impressive and thorough investigation,” of the matter, deeming it a testament to the “vigor of democratic traditions” in the Philippines.
In contrast to the public reception of its chair's report, which was “roundly booed” at that time, the majority report was “greeted with applause.”
While former Senator Salvador Laurel hailed Santos and company as deserving “full credit for their rectitude and courage,” others, mostly, pro-Marcos personalities criticized the report as “damaging, most serious and grave.”
For all its shortcomings, the majority report submitted by Santos and company was enough to divert the trajectory of this nation.
Post EDSA Revolution
Rene Saguisag later wrote that had Santos run for a Senate seat in 1987, there would have been five Rizalians in the Upper Chamber. He added, there would have been two Tau Alphans there, too, with Vicente Paterno ’44 also earning a seat.
Santos, a M.A.P. Management Man of the Year in 1983, however, opted to shun politics and decided to help rebuild the country in another way.
He accepted the offer to lead the Philippine Airlines, eventually restoring its glory.
His legacy is still felt at PAL today with every plane carrying the distinctive livery with the rays of the flag on each tail symbolizing the bloodless revolution of 1986.