Let’s call a spade a spade

Senator Francis Escudero recently proposed that the nation “move forward” by allowing the burial of dictator Ferdinand Marcos’ body at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

As a young politician appealing to young voters, Escudero appears to be courting both sides of the fence—the crony regime who will benefit from the forgetfulness, his dad being a cohort, and the majority of the exploited, misinformed and uninformed teeming masses. He is acting exactly like a traditional politician—one seemingly willing to compromise the moral compass on which good governance is based. Indeed, his proposal is a slap in the face for all the martial law torture victims, whether dead or alive, and the thousands of families left behind.

It’s a brilliant strategy I can equate with the survival instincts and cunning of Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, now detained and awaiting trial for plunder. Enrile is an architect of martial law who commanded the Armed Forces but managed to rehabilitate himself to become a shrewd politician, courtesy of the education-deprived masses. It is futile to represent our entire workforce as highly educated. We know for a fact that most college graduates were not taught well about our history—hell, not even our most recent history, including the evils of the Marcos dictatorship.

If the argument is that Marcos deserves to be buried in the Libingan because he served in the military during World War II (despite his fake medals being exposed), or he became president of this country, then use that argument to convince Germany to bury Hitler in a cemetery reserved for heroes. Do that for Pinochet, for Pol Pot, for Gaddafi.

Vice President Jojo Binay has recommended that the dictator be buried in the Ilocos, with full military honors. If he so believes the justification to accord Marcos such honors, then why not insist on burial at the Libingan? Or does he just want to accommodate the two sides of the divide, and the hell with what’s right or wrong?

Binay was a crusader who risked life and limb during martial law, only to succumb to his taste for power. Who’s he partying with? The dictator’s son and namesake, who keeps denying that his father did anything wrong. Or partying, with all the pun intended, with a convicted plunderer, Joseph Estrada. As he accommodates the dictator’s son, he must therefore accommodate the plunder convict’s son, who is in jail for the second time around for the charge of plunder.

Chiz Escudero insists that we should have closure by putting “a dot at the end of the sentence” vis a vis the dictator’s body. Well, put closure first to the crimes committed by the operators of martial law and their crony-capitalist perpetrators. How fair is it that you want to accord honor to a dictator while damning the victims—in essence the entire country and its future generations, who have yet to get a sense of justice? We have the son, the daughter, and their mother back in power, as senator, governor and congresswoman, respectively. If that’s not enough to jolt the sanity of any self-respecting citizen of the world, I don’t know what will.

You want to put closure, then at least convict the perpetrators of martial law. At least recover San Miguel Corp. from the one who used the coconut levy funds for it. At least recover the wealth from the cronies. At least recover the Marcos wealth in Switzerland, estimated to be at least $10 billion. And at least put on record the Marcoses admitting the dictator’s sins and crimes against the nation. Or put them in jail. We all know they are guilty; we just lack the political will to document the misdeeds that will convict them. Only then can we talk of closure.

Bongbong Marcos talks about what could have been had his father stayed in power, that we could have been the next Singapore. But here’s the respected former prime minister of Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew himself, writing in his memoir, “Only in the Philippines could a leader like Ferdinand Marcos, who pillaged his country for over twenty years, still be considered for a national burial. Insignificant amounts of the loot have been recovered, yet his wife and children were allowed to return and engage in politics.”

The global community with a sense of justice, of moral values, recognized the evil of the dictatorship, but we seem not to recognize it. If Marcos is buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, I don’t know how any self-respecting Filipino can face any foreign person again, let alone look at himself in the mirror.

I believe we should keep up the debate and the noise in fighting such an injustice. The few who have the resources—the dignity of quality education, material wealth and idle time—should keep the fire burning, to relay the message and moral logic to the nation. It’s a salute to those who shed blood to bring democracy back, to the fighting young who will inherit a country blessed in abundant natural resources but contemptibly and unacceptably poor.

Corruption eats at the core of our being. You have corrupted moral values, or even just a compromised sense of right or wrong, then it is logical to expect compromised decision-making when dealing with political, economic and social policies.

My worry is that the tiny, supposedly educated middle class which is expected to have a louder voice is falling into the trap and conceding to the martial law revisionists.

I have always doubted the facade that Escudero is parading. Now it’s clear as day. We should condemn such a breed of politicians. Let us not accommodate political expediency against our sense of right and wrong. Let’s call a spade a spade.

I, for one, don’t want to say “Chiz.”

Frando Sarmiento is head of commodity products at the Dubai Gold & Commodities Exchange.