Between a rock and a hard place …

Is where the Supreme Court justices find themselves. Expected in September to rule on the interment of Ferdinand Marcos’ remains in the Libingan ng mga Bayani, they set the issuance of their ruling to October, and then to Nov. 8.

Shortly after assuming power, PRRD directed the military to prepare for the Marcos burial in the Libingan, an order forestalled by an appeal lodged at the Supreme Court. He has since said he would accept the high court’s verdict.

Notwithstanding this assurance, it is imprudent, even for members of a coequal branch of government, who presumably know the law as well as PRRD, to defy the decision of a popular president. But can they render, in deference to the President, a judgment whose wisdom future generations of lawyers will question and that will indelibly mark their respective places in the history books?

The agreement that allowed the Marcos family’s return to the Philippines included the condition that Marcos’ remains stay in his region. PRRD believes he can rescind this agreement, arguing that the Libingan, which had been established for soldiers and presidents, should make room for Marcos, who had served as both.

Will the Supreme Court now affirm that anyone who served in the military can demand Libingan interment as a right? Given the costs of dying these days, every soldier should make a bid for Libingan real estate. But surely, the Libingan was meant for those who had served the country with distinction. Or, at least, had not caused it injury and shame. Declining entry to infamous criminals should be reasonable.

That Marcos should be considered innocent of the crimes alleged against him, because he had not been convicted in a Philippine court, should carry little weight with PRRD. Risking extrajudicial executions, he has unleashed the police against drug offenders he feared the courts could not touch. But a US court has convicted Marcos for martial law atrocities and plunder. Filipino and foreign historians have also exposed to the world his fraudulent claims of heroism. Can the Supreme Court turn a blind eye to this public record?

PRRD has virtually admitted that a Libingan interment was part of the price for the Marcoses’ electoral support. Nevertheless, the justices must still evaluate his claim that the bargain he made will also bury the controversies over martial law, unite the country, and allow it to move forward.

How many living today know about the 1906 US massacre of Muslim rebels at Bud Dajo from a contemporary of the victims? But PRRD, who has shown a commendable sense of history, has neither forgotten nor forgiven the Americans for this century-old atrocity. Dredging out of the blue an incident that had not surfaced as a public policy issue, PRRD denounced the Americans for never having expressed remorse over the historical injustice committed at Bud Dajo.

Martial law is not just a historical issue. Its living victims feel as a present reality the injustice they suffered that has not been redressed. But PRRD, who feels the historical injustice of Bud Dajo so keenly, now wants these martial law survivors to forget the injustice they continue to suffer, for which the Marcoses have never offered restitution as authentic remorse. The victims include the country whose plundered wealth the government continues to seek and from which the Marcoses continue to benefit.

A Libingan burial for Marcos will reinforce attempts to revise history: to persuade the people that Marcos ushered in a golden age of progress and prosperity. If so, his overthrow at Edsa, which the world celebrated with the Philippines and which we annually commemorate, was a misfortune and a mistake. How will propagating this narrative unify the country?

The Supreme Court justices, by their ruling, will make a judgment on our history. In turn, history will make a judgment on their decision and its reflection on their wisdom, their integrity, their courage.

Edilberto C. de Jesus ([email protected]) is professor emeritus at the Asian Institute of Management. Prof. Rofel Brion’s Tagalog translation of this column and others earlier published, together with other commentaries, are in https://secondthoughts.ph.