Amnesia prescription

How does one bag a slot in local history, even if tawdry?  Former Election Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano prescribes a hefty dose of amnesia.

Garcillano clamped hands-on oversight of fraud-ridden elections in two crucial areas: the  2004  presidential  elections in  the Autonomous Region in  Muslim Mindanao and the 2007   senatorial shutout of  Maguindanao.  Both set  new  records of  sleaze.

Juan  Miguel  Zubiri  conceded there was ballot  rigging by an  unprecedented  surrender of  his  Senate seat. New witnesses  prodded the Department of Justice and  Commission of  Elections  to revisit these festering issues.

Former  President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, whose term straddled those two elections,  battles a rare spine  infection.  Everyone  hopes she will recover  soon.  Knock on  wood.

Still,  this  lady  knew  “talent” wherever she  stumbled upon  it, from the Comelec  to  the  Supreme Court. Her  midnight   “Hello,  Garci” call   to “confirm” her  one-million  vote lead in Mindanao demonstrated  that  skill.

In an interview in Bukidnon, Garcillano couldn’t resist tooting his   horn. “We’re talking about   elections—which  I am  known  for,” he bragged.

Given  his  “expertise,”  would  he  testify  before  Comelec and DOJ  probers?   He begged off.

“Nothing fixes a thing so intensely in memory than the wish to forget it.” So, Garci  prescribed instead  a double dose of  amnesia.  “It’s  time to forget the issue of  2004 election fraud,”  he  said. “Let’s move on.”

Forget  Edsa II,  then  President Arroyo  urged at the  2008  People Power  rites.  Amnesia “would heal wounds,” inflicted by People Power which ousted her scandal-tainted  predecessor.

Chatter about  a possible  Esda 3 rattled GMA  then.  That  had been  stoked by  back-to-back  scandals, from the  ZTE broadband scam to the looting of  Pagcor  coffers.  But  was  the lady  being original?

Hit  the rewind button to President Joseph Estrada’s Latin-American state visit.   Erap and party  touched down in Santiago, Chile, in September  1999. Half a world away,  Filipinos marked  the 13th anniversary of  People Power 1. Chile was grappling at  the time  with   remnants of  caudillo dictatorship. The Chilean  press played up reports on People Power rites.

“Why  do we commemorate  dark  spots  in our history?” an irritated  Erap  griped.    “Dapat, ang mga pangit at nakalipas (ugly parts of our past), like  martial law, ought to be forgotten.”  Why dawdle  over the unpleasant? “We should move on.”

Erap  would indeed  move on. An aborted impeachment  and People Power 2 swept him away. He became the first  Philippine president to be convicted for plunder. A protracted luxury   house arrest  followed. Was his pardon, given by  Gloria  Macapagal-Arroyo, destiny?

“It  would  be destiny if I am  elected as Manila mayor,”  Estrada  declared on a TV talk show.  “I started as a mayor, I may  end up as a mayor. That’s destiny.”

But  isn’t this the same shabby  tune local communists  sang when asked about over 1,400 slaughtered  in  paranoid pogroms in the late 1980s to the early 1990s.  A “cannibal revolution” devoured its own children, noted the  Inquirer in a Jan. 2, 2004  editorial. Innocent  comrades were killed without even  a pretense of trials. Their remains moulder in unmarked graves,  reminiscent of  Stalin’s massacre of Polish officers in  Katyn Forest or Cambodia’s  killing fields.  Some executioners today are aging,   button-down bourgeois executives in air-conditioned Metro Manila offices.

Why  recall   those  purges?  groused the Communist Party of the Philippines in an Inquirer  opinion page article on Feb. 1, 2004. The party condemned the abuses,  wrote Anne Buenaventura of the party’s information bureau. “It rectified this mistake.”

“They didn’t bother to notify us,” answered relatives in an Inquirer open letter.  Instead the party shredded the names of the victims and the location of their graves. “We should not stop remembering and reminding.”

“Forgetting  is  never an option,”  Holocaust  survivor  and Nobel  Laureate  Elie Weisel  wrote in “Hope, Despair and Memory.”  “An immoral society betrays  because it betrays the basis for humanity—which is memory. ‘’

“A moral society is committed to memory,” Weisel continued. “Never be silent whenever and wherever human beings endure suffering and humiliation. We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

Today, former First Gentleman Mike Arroyo has absolutely no memory  of ever  owning  a fleet of  helicopters. Sorsogon Rep.  Salvador Escudero authored House Resolution  1135   to bury the remains of  Ferdinand Marcos in Libingan ng mga Bayani. He can’t recall any abuse by the dictatorship.

In his novel “1984,”  George Orwell depicted a country where citizens  thrust into a “memory hole” anything that crossed the whim of rulers. As memory holes shredded remembrance, wrong became right. Lies replaced truth. And freedom turned into slavery.

Like malign genies, blotted-out memories don’t stay bottled up. They deform daily life.

The Philippines  seems caught in a long nightmare between remembering and forgetting, Alfred McCoy told the Ateneo-Wisconsion Universities conference on “Memory, Truth-Telling and the Pursuit of Justice.”   Amnesia  turns  “cronies into statesmen, torturers into legislators and killers into generals”—and  the likes of  Virgilio  Garcillano  and Co.

Sue Garci for  perjury, passport tampering and tax evasion, the Inquirer suggests. “The prospect of rotting inside a jail might make him reconsider his omerta-like obstinacy.”

Fine.   But first  make sure he doesn’t  vanish,  as  Dinagat Island  Rep. Ruben Ecleo did.

(Email: juanlmercado@gmail.com)