Log on to Facebook and chances are one would come across a number of posts from defenders of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos waxing eloquent about “the golden era, the prosperity, the peace and order” of the martial law years.
Given the bad grammar, the flawed logic and the rampant name-calling, one would be tempted to dismiss such posts as the work of trolls and hacks intended to advance the political stock of the dictator’s son, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., who is running for vice president. Except that the recent ascendancy of Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte, whom one recent survey pronounced No. 1 among the presidential aspirants, gives one serious pause.
Duterte is making prime capital of his swagger, hogging the news with his admission of being a womanizer and an executioner of criminal elements, and with his projection of himself as a wily foe who thinks nothing of threatening officials of the Catholic Church with the airing of dirty secrets, as a result of their taking issue with his recent objectionable reference to Pope Francis.
Bombast and quotable quotes being a media staple, he has proved newsworthy, leaving his more seasoned political rivals biting his dust barely a week after throwing his hat into the presidential ring.
The man makes no secret as well of considering the dictator Marcos as the kind of leader the Philippines purportedly needs. In fact, as though aping Marcos, he declared his intention to close down Congress should it have the temerity to contradict him. His buzzwords are “discipline” and “law and order,” the same ones that Marcos used to prop up his so-called “New Society.”
Oh, but how Duterte’s audiences lap it up—the expletives, the jokes about killing, his love life, his “what you see is what you get” persona. He is the social media’s version of the guy with the street smarts, the thug with the golden heart, the “Punisher,” “Dirty Harry,” in your face and up yours.
Previous generations have proven susceptible to such telegenic images, and catapulted Marcos and movie action hero Joseph Estrada to the country’s top post.
Are the mistakes of the past again to be repeated, no thanks to the convenient and default learning system afforded by social media? The stomping ground of millennials and young folk, social media and its capacity to go viral and reach millions with a click of the mouse makes it a most effective campaign machinery and recruiter of votes among those uninformed or ignorant of the abuses and excesses of the martial law years.
The Commission on Elections has estimated that young voters number about 35 million of the Philippines’ 100 million population, a number sufficient to swing poll results to candidates of their choice. It is logical to assume that the majority of these voters are on social media as well, clicking on the same ubiquitous posts extolling the merits of martial law.
No wonder Bongbong Marcos can so boldly revise history, blithely exhorting people to move on (“Past is past”), blaming the times for the sins of his father (“Whatever he has done or has failed to do really does not come to it because we live in a different world now”), and claiming innocence of the violence wrought by martial law (“What is there to forgive?”).
What has the schools done to counter such assumptions foisted by those who fostered and benefited from those dark years? What do the history books say of the era? How can those who escaped Malacañang by the skin of their teeth, before an angry populace stormed the gates, now hold office again? How can two Marcos clones be off and running in the 2016 polls?
“The whole point is to move forward,” Bongbong Marcos has said, and indeed, his family has so easily done so. For the rest of the nation, moving forward remains elusive. Far from an admission of wrong with subsequent atonement and restitution, and facing up to the past, the Marcoses have insisted on recasting the public memory of martial law. And some Filipinos, by lionizing candidates in the mold of the dictator and architect of martial rule, have conveniently allowed them to do so.