The Marcoses were able to bury Ferdinand Marcos in the Libingan ng mga Bayani — in collusion with President Duterte — to perpetrate the lie, in a clear distortion of history, that Marcos the plunderer and human rights violator is a hero. Now the son of the dictator wants to make the lie complete with his push to revise our history books.
We should oppose this sinister move of the Marcoses, pursuant to our collective responsibility to pass to the next generations what really happened during the dark days of the Marcos dictatorship.
Failure to do so may again allow tyranny to rule this sad land of ours. We are now, in fact, experiencing a gradual descent into another tyranny, sadly because many of us are oblivious of our past and have really not learned the sad lessons of our history.
That Marcos was indeed a dictator who robbed our people of their basic rights and freedoms, who violated their human rights wholesale and who plundered the nation’s wealth is already beyond dispute as acknowledged by the Supreme Court itself in a number of decisions.
Speaking of Marcos, for instance, who on his deathbed had signified his wish to return to the Philippines, the Court declared:
“This case is unique. It should not create a precedent, for the case of a dictator forced out of office and into exile after causing 20 years of political, economic and social havoc in the country and who within the short space of three years seeks to return, is in a class by itself… We cannot also lose sight of the fact that the country is only now beginning to recover from the hardships brought about by the plunder of the economy attributed to the Marcoses and their close associates and relatives, many of whom are still here in the Philippines in a position to destabilize the country, while the Government has barely scratched the surface, so to speak, in its efforts to recover the enormous wealth stashed away by the Marcoses in foreign jurisdictions.
“Then, we cannot ignore the continually increasing burden imposed on the economy by the excessive foreign borrowing during the Marcos regime, which stifles and stagnates development and is one of the root causes of widespread poverty and all its attendant ills. The resulting precarious state of our economy is of common knowledge and is easily within the ambit of judicial notice.” (Marcos v. Manglapus, GR No. 88211 Sept. 15, 1989).
SEVERO BRILLANTES
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