Speaking before graduates at the Ateneo de Manila University, Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno urged vigilance and warned her fellow Ateneans of possible abuses that martial rule could spawn.
The occasion was reported thus: “Citing several Supreme Court decisions, Sereno said the Marcos dictatorship committed widespread human rights violations such as torture, rape, summary execution and hamletting. There was also unprecedented plunder of the nation’s coffers, absolute control of government and the country’s economy declined from being the second most vibrant in the region, she said.
“These excerpts (from Supreme Court rulings in the past) … are a testament to our country’s resolve to never again allow ourselves to return to those dark and terrible times,” she intoned, in a direct allusion to the threat that President Duterte has foisted upon the nation by declaring martial law in Mindanao (“Sereno, Ramos warn of martial law abuses,” News, 5/27/17).
But that speech rang so hollow and so lame in the wake of the epic tribute—paid by a majority of nine justices in her own Court—to the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, bestowing upon him the “honor” of being a “good man” who served the country well, deserving a “hero’s burial” in the Libingan ng mga Bayani. To be sure, without the dastardly votes of three “bright” Atenean justices (Arturo Brion, Mariano del Castillo and Estela Bernabe) added to the six votes of the diehard Marcos loyalists in that Court, that would never have happened.
Sereno and self-anointed historians should now shut up and stop reminding us about the atrocities of martial law under the Marcoses because no less than the Sereno Court has spoken and belittled the evils committed under that regime. Being the latest “commentary” on that criminal regime, that decision has rendered all other past decisions of the Supreme Court about the Marcos family’s kleptocracy and brutality totally irrelevant. As Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said as he gloated over that Supreme Court decision: Let’s move on na lang kasi!
MARIA MARGARITA AYTONA, marimar_ay@yahoo.com