NOTEBOOK: If Marcos gets a hero’s burial, does that make Ninoy Aquino a villain?

NOTEBOOK: If Marcos gets a hero’s burial, does that make Ninoy Aquino a villain?

Of the 285 members of the House of Representatives of the Philippines, otherwise called congressmen, 204 voted for a resolution calling for a hero’s burial for the late Ferdinand Marcos.

Marcos was the Philippines’s president who turned dictator in 1972 when he imposed martial law and placed the whole country under military rule. He abolished Congress, the courts, the media and imprisoned his critics. In a period of a few days alone in September 1972, more than 10,000 were detained in Camp Crame in Quezon City. And this is not to count those arrested in the other parts of the country. Among those detained were senators, congressmen, other public officials critical of Marcos, workers, peasants, youth and student, women leaders, urban poor journalists and professionals. Torture, enforced disappearances, summary execution (then called “salvaging,” now tagged “extrajudicial killing”), were not uncommon.

The Marcos dictatorship, backed by U.S., came to an end after 14 years, in 1986, in what is now called the EDSA uprising. Most of us know the so-called People Power overthrew the Marcos regime. There were countless stories of horror, some written in books, from the people who went through all those years of repression. The monumental corruption too that earned for Marcos the title biggest thief in history given by Guinness Book of Records. His estimated loot was at least U.S.$10 billion.

Then there is the class action suit lodged in a court in Hawaii which ruled that the Marcos estate should compensate the estimated 10,000 victims of human rights violations during martial law with a sum of about U.S. $2 billion. Just recently, 25 years after Marcos was overthrown, cheques for $1,000 were distributed to some of these martial law victims.

Now, who are these congressmen, all 204 of them, who would ignore these facts of history? But more than facts, let’s talk about justice. Marcos’s martial law destroyed the lives of millions of Filipinos who suffered for 14 years under a represssive military rule. There were those executed by his military and police agents without the benefit of trial; those who were tortured and imprisoned for many years. There were those whose properties and assets were confiscated, whose businesses were seized.
Government powers were concentrated in the hands of his family and cronies while his critics were stripped of their public positions.

Meanwhile, the military assumed absolute power under him. That was when millionaire generals started to emerge — the predecessors of the current generation of generals and military comptrollers whose scandalous wealth is being probed by the Senate.

It makes me wonder how these congressmen developed a collective amnesia all of a sudden and forget history. It would be interesting to see the list of these solons who insult the Filipino people by choosing to declare Marcos a hero.

Could this list be approximately the same list of congressmen who, in the time of ex-president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, readily, dutifully and repeatedly voted against her impeachment?

When Joseph Estrada became president, his first act was to allow a hero’s burial for Marcos. It was met with outrage from many sectors of the Philippine society. Estrada backed off and the issue took a back seat for many years.

What is interesting now is the nonchalant reaction from the current president, Noynoy Aquino. He asked, even before the House resolution was passed, his vice president, Jojo Binay, to form a committee to study the matter of a hero’s burial for Marcos.

Although in the news reports, it is said that he maintains that he believed the late dictator ordered the assassination of his father, Ninoy Aquino.

If and when it comes to pass, that Marcos would get a hero’s burial, without the opposition from Noynoy Aquino, would that make his father, the assassinated Ninoy Aquino, a villain?

I mean, this would be hard to explain to our kids. A hero would not order the killing of another hero, would he? But since Noynoy believes Marcos ordered the killing of his dad, he has a lot of explaining to do to his people and to history if he would not oppose this treacherous act of the congressmen.

For me, it’s simple: tyrants and their supporters have no other place but the dustbin of history. After paying for their crimes, of course.