Why do we keep saying “never again” to what the Marcoses have done to the Philippines and to the Filipino people? As if the plunder has stopped, or that the corruption has ceased. The plunder continues—only the methodology and the maneuvers have changed. Plundered money buys sophistication. It pays trolls. It brokers Machiavellian alliances. The right amount attracts the services of analysts, the military and the police, and behavioral scientists, including psychologists. As a former lady president famously said: “Everyone has a price.”
The Marcoses have never admitted their guilt, notwithstanding convictions by several courts. They have never apologized to their victims. There has been no reparation for the wrong they have done. They have not returned the money they have stolen. They continue to inflict harm on the country. Isn’t enough enough?
The escape to Hawaii—courtesy of the Reagan administration—was only a comma, it did not put a period to the saga of evil that Ferdinand E. Marcos began when he succeeded in having his conviction for the murder of Julio Nalundasan overturned. His conviction for contempt, however, stayed.
Why are we wasting time and energy debating the “moral turpitude” of Bongbong Marcos? What morals are we talking about? A discussion on amorality might do some good, but a conversation on the morality of the Marcoses would serve no purpose. They speak as if they were the country’s liberators even as their behavior betrays predatory habits. What “golden age” are they talking about? They lie through their teeth about their competence and accomplishments and urge the people to move on when, in fact, they constitute the main obstacle for the country to be able to move on. What could moving on back to the Marcosian “golden age” mean?
To label the Marcos dictatorship as the country’s “golden age” is a brazen lie. It’s sheer trollspeak and the height of revisionism. We’re still paying for the debts of the late dictator, his widow and heirs, his cronies. And if plundered money would be allowed to determine the outcome of the coming elections, the next generation, and that after, would still be indebted.
FR. WILFREDO DULAY
Convener
Religious Discernment Group