Schizo borders

Ferdinand Marcos’ remains shouldn’t be interred in Libingan ng mga Bayani, Vice President Jejomar Binay said. But for his “service as a soldier,” Marcos can be accorded military honors—in Ilocos Norte.

“Solomonic” gushed Binay’s apple polishers. Or is this just political schizophrenia?

This controversy has rankled since 1993. After People Power exile, Marcos’ embalmed corpse has been displayed in a Batac mausoleum. “It is ringed by fuchsia, bougainvillea, white sampaguita,” Viewpoint noted. “There are no yellow flowers.”

Then, 216 congressmen lofted House Resolution 1135. Allow Marcos’ burial in the 142-hectare cemetery, it asked President Aquino.

“As longest serving president … Ferdinand Marcos built the modern foundations of the Philippines,” the resolution’s author Rep. Salvador Escudero claimed. “He remained a Filipino patriot to the end of his life and, in death, deserves to be honored as such.”

What country cites longevity as a dictator, as basis for honors? Onli in da Pilipins. Marcos reserved a tomb for himself among heroes, AFP’s Grave Service Unit website shows. But Edsa I intervened.

Libingan graves for Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr. and herself apparently never crossed Corazon Aquino’s mind. Without no ifs ands or buts, she rejected a Libingan burial for Marcos. Was she made of sterner stuff than her son?

The President, meanwhile, tossed the issue to Binay because “people will say I’m biased,” P-Noy explained. Binay cobbled this Ilocos-Norte escape hatch, based on opinion sounding. “It is well-balanced and considers all views,” he tells anybody within earshot.

The buck has returned to the President’s desk. A wishbone won’t do for a backbone. No more dodges now.

“[That] seems a reasonable compromise,” Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. told the Inquirer. “We just like to bury our father in a way that he deserved.”

“Reasonableness” drapes the first public, albeit indirect, acknowledgement by the Marcoses that their 18-year campaign to inter the strongman in Libingan may be dead in the water. Resistance to HR 1135 persists.

Escudero’s claim that Marcos built the modern foundations of the Philippines is “historical revisionism at its deceitful worst,” the Makati Business Club recently declared. His “true legacy consisted of autocracy, ruined democratic institutions, violent political repression, unprecedented wholesale corruption, shameless nepotism, crony capitalism, a crushing debt burden, and widespread social inequity and marginalization.”

“We don’t want to preempt the President,” Malacañang Deputy Spokesperson Abigail Valte told journalists: “It’s not as simple as it seems… There are not just historical issues but there are issues also on protocol.”

“Anyone who considers protocol unimportant never dealt with a cat,” an old saw goes. Still protocol ranks low in a controversy that involves more fundamental values like justice and accountability.

These values anchor a democratic society. In an Inquirer op-ed article “Marcos and social memory,” Rex Lores of the Center for Philippine Futuristics Studies underscored this point.

Chile’s Gen. Augusto Pinochet, France’s Justice Minister Pierre Laval and Marshal Philippe Pétain, along with Korean Presidents Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo occupied their country’s highest posts—as Marcos did here. Yet, they were sanctioned for corruption and betrayal of public trust, Lores recalled. Chile refused to allow burial of Pinochet’s ashes in military grounds. Laval was executed by firing squad. Old age (89) saved Pétain from his death sentence. Chun and Roh were imprisoned.

May we tack on a short footnote? In 1961, the embalmed body (like Marcos’) of Josef Stalin vanished from display at Red Square’s sarcophagus (like Batac’s mausoleum). Premier Nikita Khrushchev earlier denounced Stalin for purges that led to the death of millions, as is happening now with our homegrown strongman. Weeks later, a new grave appeared in inner Kremlin walls with a granite stone marker: “J. V. Stalin 1879-1953.” Only this year, did Moscow acknowledge the Katyn forest massacre. Over 23,000 Polish officers were killed there on Stalin’s orders.

History exposes the sham of HR 1135. “The attempt to revise history, and count Marcos among our fallen heroes is an assault on our memory,” Lores wrote.

Do we Filipinos prefer to forget? The 1999 Ateneo-Wisconsin University conference on legacies of the Marcos dictatorship, “Memory, Truth-Telling and the Pursuit of Justice,” asked that question.

“In this country, everything seems infinitely negotiable,” noted Ateneo’s Alfredo A. R. Bengzon. “The truth frequently becomes whatever pleases the powers that be… It is young people who can confirm that our memory of dictatorship can not be erased.”

Try this task in the context of schizo borders.

Most of Marcos’ 27 medals were bogus, the New York Times revealed in a series based on US National Archives. US Army records state that “no unit, designating itself as Maharlika, ever existed as a guerrilla force.” Will these medals and Maharlika turn real within the schizo borders of Currimao, Sarrat or San Nicolas?

The Supreme Court ruled on July 15, 2003 that the Marcoses massively embezzled public funds. The Swiss government returned $823 million to the Presidential Commission on Good Government. Will Paoay and Batac rule the court wrong within schizo borders? Will Bangui or Nueva Era prod the PCGG to return the loot to Geneva?

That would mix up the real with the phony. Bizarre acts follow from a screw-up. Shrinks call this schizophrenia. Is that what a “Solomonic” solution prescribes?

* * *

Email: [email protected]