Very bad idea, too

Vice President Jojo Binay has made a decision on Ferdinand Marcos. He is not to be buried at Libingan ng mga Bayani, he is to be buried instead with full military honors in Ilocos Norte.

Does this make things better?

No.

It shows yet again how P-Noy (President Benigno Aquino III) did the country a disservice by shirking his duty to make that decision himself. At the very least that is so because he is not an ordinary president, he is an “Edsa president,” a president made so by the people wielding People Power, if in quite a different way, by raising a government in lieu of toppling it. His instinct should have been to defend the spirit of Edsa, his reflex should have been to thwart the very thing that assails that spirit, which is to turn Marcos into a hero.

At the very most that is so because, contrary to his assertion, he is the one person without bias. He is not biased toward political expedience. He may not run again, nor has he any intention of doing so even if he could. He could have made that decision without the encumbrance of casting a moist eye on the next elections.

Binay has that encumbrance. His decision is clearly made with an eye to appeasing the public and the Marcoses whose followers may prove useful in a closely fought presidential fight. But as usually happens when you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one.

There are at least a couple of reasons why burying Marcos with full military honors in Ilocos Norte is wrong.

The first is that last I looked Ilocos Norte had not yet seceded from the republic. Last I looked Ilocos Norte was still flying the Philippine flag. Although Hawaii, which Marcos apparently mistook for Paoay, has been known to have two kinds of migrants from the Philippines: Filipinos and Ilocanos.

Frankly, I can’t understand why that place, or at least some parts of it, has been allowed to defy the Department of Education itself and teem with classrooms that extol the virtues of the ousted despot. I understand some textbooks still depict Marcos as hero, the apotheosis of the unfolding of the nation. It is one thing to uphold freedom of expression, it is another thing to condone historical revision. Or be passive in the face of it.

We do not allow Zamboanga, which speaks a corrupted form of Spanish, to teach its kids that the Spaniards were right to have executed Jose Rizal in Bagumbayan. As with other parts of this country, including Muslim Mindanao, we demand that it makes Rizal’s heroism known to every child there and encourages them to emulate his example. The first thing government should be doing is teach the children, in Ilocos particularly, the tyranny of Marcos and the heroism of those who fought to topple him. The last thing it should be doing is reinforce the myth of his martyrdom.

Arguably, being buried with full military honors is not quite the same as being buried in Libingan ng mga Bayani. But it comes pretty close to it. In a place particularly where Marcos’ memory has been allowed to flourish in glorious Technicolor, in contrast to the black pit he reduced the country to, there’s precious little difference between the two. It makes Da Apo out to be as larger-than-life as his bust in Agoo.

Second is that last I looked Senior Insp. Rolando Mendoza was never given military honors, full or partial, when he was buried. That was the request of his kin and friends. At least they asked that he be buried in uniform with the Philippine flag draped over his coffin. Which astonishingly some public officials were willing to grant on the ground that he had been a police officer after all. Thankfully, good sense prevailed, he wasn’t buried with honors, and nobody particularly cares where he is now.

Mendoza’s crime was merely holding a bus of tourists hostage. Marcos’ crime was holding an entire nation hostage. Mendoza’s crime was “merely” gunning down some of his hostages after his demand, which was to be allowed to go back to service, was denied by the authorities. Marcos’ crime was decimating a sizeable portion of the population, which he called communists, defined as everyone opposed to him, after his demand, which was to stay in power after his second term, was refused by the people. Mendoza was a mere terrorist, Marcos was a fascist.

The logic is simple: Mendoza spat on his uniform the day he held up the tourist bus, whatever his reasons. He turned his back on his oath, which was to serve and protect the public, the day he harmed and slaughtered them. Other cops and soldiers have had their medals or even uniforms ripped off their backs for so much less. You do not send off someone like that to the afterlife with the symbols of the very things he betrayed.

Marcos spat on his uniform the day he mugged democracy, for no other reason than that he wanted to prove he was taller than he was. Hell, he spat on his uniform the day he himself affixed imaginary medals on them for imaginary deeds. I do not know that the soldier’s code of honor includes lying through your teeth. The AFP has already done the public wrong by including Marcos in its pantheon of heroes for having received the Medal of Valor, a thing given to him for usurping Fernando Poe Jr.’s role of singlehandedly pushing back the Japanese hordes with a fictitious Maharlika unit. He does not deserve more medals in the form of being buried with military honors. He deserves being stripped of them, in more ways than one.

By all means let Marcos be buried anywhere other than Libingan ng mga Bayani, we’re still a Christian country and we allow kin to bury their dead according to custom, however their dead insults the very earth they rot under. But not with any honors, military or otherwise. That is not a good compromise.

That is a very bad idea.