Burying the dead

The nation may be heaving a sigh of relief now that President Aquino has announced his decision not to allow deposed strongman Ferdinand Marcos to be buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. But the relief may be short-lived. As long as the Marcos family would find a remotely willing chief executive who could be compelled by reasons of political expediency to see things their way, they would press on with their claims that the deposed president merits nothing less than state honors and burial at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

In the first place, President Aquino should not have entertained the ministrations of the Marcos family and political supporters. Perhaps because he’s an Aquino and the son of the archenemy of the strongman, and perhaps feeling a heightened sense of propriety or “delicadeza,” he lent his ears to the plea of former first lady Imelda Marcos for her spouse to be interred at Fort Bonifacio. And perhaps to emphasize further his objectivity and trying to act in the best interest of the nation, he passed to Vice President Jejomar Binay the task of mulling over the pros and cons of the Libingan burial. Binay, feeling prematurely presidential like his boss, likewise went the way of objectivity and fairness, recommending military honors but thumbing down Marcos’ date with the Libingan. His recommendation was Solomonic and ultimately political: it tried to please all sides and ended up dissatisfying everyone. Thus, an issue that should have long ago been buried was resurrected and given ministerial recourse, opening old wounds and to some extent, revealing how certain sectors of the nation could be so forgiving as to forget all requirements of justice.

Let there be no mistake. While Marcos was a president and commander in chief and the Libingan hosts the remains of former chief executives and generals, his ouster and his ignominious record as dictator and autocrat disqualify him from the honor. The Edsa revolution of 1986 was a milestone in national—and international—history, embodying the power of the people to topple authoritarian regimes that suppress rights and maim or murder people in the quest for power and perpetuation. Many of those who argue for state honors and a Libingan interment for Marcos argue mainly on the hackneyed technicality that Marcos was a veteran and former president, glossing over the fact that he declared martial law in order to perpetuate himself in power, removed all obstacles to his dominance by strong-arm tactics, rewrote the constitution in a base act of political prostitution, and plundered the economy such that his legacy—massive debt, poverty and penury—continue to hobble the nation more than half a century after he was deposed.

All of those who argue for a Libingan burial seem to miss out on the fact that Marcos wasn’t just an ordinary president who stepped down when his term ended: He held on to power, betrayed the confidence of the people, killed his enemies, formed a new oligarchy partial to his interests, fostered or perpetrated corruption, ran the economy to bankruptcy, and was ousted in the end by a popular uprising that has become the model for peaceful revolutions worldwide, including this year’s Arab Spring. To give him burial at the Libingan would not only be an insult to the memory of the heroes whose remains lie there, it would also be a setback to people empowerment and the history of pro-democracy revolutions.

In the end, the quest of the Marcos family and supporters to have the strongman buried at the Libingan is a quest for nothing less than historical revisionism and political rehabilitation. They have had the gall to compel a rethinking of history because since Fidel Ramos allowed the return of the Marcos remains and family during his watch, the Marcos family and some of their political supporters have staged a remarkable comeback, brazenly represented by the fact that the Marcos son has been elected to the Senate, whose advantages the strongman used to win—through means legitimate or foul—the presidency of the country in 1965, the one milestone that marked the nation’s decline from being an Asian power to a global disgrace.

But the nation was able to redeem itself in 1986, and although it has not been able to sustain the new respect it won as a result of the People Power revolt, it has remained, warts and all, a beacon of democracy and good grace. By demanding state burial for the strongman, the Marcos family and supporters are demanding that the nation return to its old state of disgrace. The people’s response to that should be clear and unequivocal: Never again!