Marcoses

There are enough good reasons to be anti-Marcos.

The dictator looted the nation, kept the people’s money in Swiss banks while millions of Filipinos were wallowing in unbearable poverty and at the same time the family enjoyed the luxury of living. Marcos and his military and constabulary henchmen committed human rights violations that were acknowledged in a recent US court decision. After all these things, the Marcoses are still in power able to get away from the clutches of the law after more or less twenty years of prosecution and litigation.

There are also enough good reasons to feel disgust against the government. Not a single Marcos had been indicted and jailed in Bilibid along with fellow criminals. Either state attorneys are plain and simple stupid or the defendants are clever in paying off judges to let them scot-free are the reasons for the slow turn of the wheel of justice (or can we speak of “justice” in the Philippines?).

We can forgive Imelda for saying with temerity to the ignorant public that they never committed every single act of crime imputed on them. She said they had never stolen a single centavo from government coffers. She said they never committed any human rights violations. She said they were, instead of perpetrators, the victims in this splendid drama. It is only because the PCGG and our courts had failed to fulfill their mandates.

But for those who witnessed and lived in those years of repression and scarcity amidst abundance, for those who read and knowledgeable on those things, they felt insulted and robbed of the truth. For those who had written unspeakable horrors and distasteful vanities of totalitarianism, this is something that will cause instant revulsion.

It is no wonder that Imelda is suffering from dementia. Her husband exhibited the same kind of mental illness while he was running the affairs of the state. In his diary, which William Rempel had subjected to scrutiny in his Delusions of a Dictator: The Mind of Marcos as Revealed in his Secret Diaries, Marcos was always in state of denial every time he was involved in a dirty controversy. Like the Dovie Beams affair, he was quick to disown that it happened. He saw himself as someone messianic that would save the Philippines from communism; thus he declared Martial Law.

Let Imelda continue believing in her own delusions but let us stop her from brainwashing the innocent. The role of educators is crucial in imparting to the next generation the excesses of the Marcoses and the lessons to be learned from abuse of power and privilege. That is why the state should never condone the sins of the past; these must be exposed through public discourse and instruction. That is why the PCGG must never compromise with the Marcoses because the side of the truth is with the people. That is why the prosecution and conviction of the Marcoses is the redemption of EDSA I and the people who still believe in justice. [For comments, email me at dissentpdn@gmail.com]

[First published in People's Digest Newsweekly (Dagupan City) (August 21-27, 2007)]