In his column “The Supreme Court as historian” (9/23/21), retired Supreme Court justice Antonio Carpio wrote: “Those who seek to revise the historical narrative of the Marcos plunder during martial law will run against a formidable wall of authoritative decisions of the Supreme Court which were rendered after the Marcoses were duly heard.”
Indeed, numerous decisions of the highest court of the land had long settled the issue of whether or not the Marcos family was a bunch of thieves after finding ill-gotten wealth in their Swiss bank accounts amounting to almost $670 million, and ordering the same “forfeited in favor of the petitioner Republic of the Philippines.”
But not so fast, Justice Carpio. The same Supreme Court virtually hailed the late dictator, Ferdinand Marcos, a “hero” deserving to be buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani in its 2016 decision by a majority of nine votes—three of them by Atenean justices (Arturo Brion, Mariano del Castillo, both retired; and Estela Perlas-Bernabe, retiring in May 2022). That “hero’s burial” would never have happened and Marcos’ carcass would have remained in a refrigerated coffin had the latter three justices dissented (or at least abstained) as the five dissenting justices had, resisting President Duterte’s importuning to accommodate the Marcoses, who had extended financial support to his election campaign. Dahil lang sa pera, niyurakan ang dangal ng Pilipinas. We became the laughingstock of the whole world.
That 2016 decision being the latest from the Supreme Court concerning the despicable rule of the late dictator, all those prior pronouncements adverse or derogatory to Marcos seem to have become meaningless now in the face of the “heroism” judicially bestowed on him. No wonder the Marcos heirs have now found the gall to rewrite history to conform to the “heroism” of their disgraced patriarch. And, to the disgust of many, this is all thanks to the three Atenean magistrates who should be remembered for having been too confused to tell the difference between a hero and a world-class thief.
SCARLET S. SYTANGCO
sssytangco@gmail.com