Who should the Marcoses thank?

Ferdinand Marcos’ family and loyalists are rejoicing that the dictator’s remains can be buried in the Libingan ng Mga Bayani for now. If they would care to know, there are three good reasons for their luck, embodied in persons and institutions to whom they should be thankful.

First of all, the Marcoses should be thankful to former president Corazon Aquino for her inaction in punishing Marcos’ widow Imelda, his heirs and his cronies during her term. Many view this inaction as an act of mercy or delicadeza, or attribute it to her deep religiosity which others criticized as a mere manifestation of weak and unassertive leadership. Had Cory or her son P-Noy done it, anyway, they would have been labelled vindictive by the Marcoses and their loyalists.

Said Tonyo Cruz of the Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses to Malacañang: “Just imagine, had President Cory made use of her revolutionary powers—and upheld the revolutionary verdict of the people—to push the speedy and open trial of the Marcoses to help lead the way towards accountability for the plunder and human rights violations they committed.” Then Imelda, the Marcoses and their cronies would have been agonizing in prison cells today like other notorious corrupt leaders all over the world.

Second of all, the Philippines’ adversarial system of criminal court procedures set them free. In this system, a trial can be a contest where people are more interested in winning than in discovering the truth. More often than not, the more clever, persuasive side wins in this system. In Philippine courts, one would likely win due to technicalities rather than greater facts or reasons.

Well-meaning lawyers prefer the inquisitional system in the courts of France and much of Europe using these procedures based on Roman law. At the end of the free trial hearing, the judge in an inquisitional system recommends a trial only if there is sufficient evidence of the defendant’s guilt. If a case goes to trial, the judge who conducted the pretrial hearing retains control, asking questions based on records from that hearing. The trial is a questioning-reasoning procedure, not a technical competition (“Law in Other Cultures,” Gordon W. Brown et al., McGraw Hill Pub.).

Third of all, the Marcoses and the loyalists, including the paid hacks, should be grateful to President Duterte who flexed his presidential muscle to transfer the dictator’s remains from Ilocos Norte to the Libingan ng Mga Bayani. They are certainly indebted to the President who cannot forget and forgive the historical injustices and atrocities committed during the Philippine-American war, but will forget the 70,000 imprisoned critics of the dictator, including Marcos’ charismatic nemesis Ninoy Aquino, as well as Jose Diokno, Edgar Jopson and hundreds of other opposition leaders and journalists; the 35,000 tortured young and old suspects of rebellion; the 3,257 murders of perceived enemies of the state; and the 50,000 arrests during Marcos’ despotic rule.

In a testimony, Karapatan chair Marie Hilao-Enriquez noted: “The Hawaii and United States supreme courts [found] Ferdinand Marcos Sr. guilty of human rights violations against 75,730 martial law victims in a class suit filed and spearheaded by the Samahan ng mga Ex-Detainees Laban sa Detensyon at Aresto (Selda) on Dec. 4, 1984. Bongbong and the Marcoses must admit and ask forgiveness for their sins against the Filipino people, return all the money they stole, and render justice to the martial law victims.”

Now that my 550 students at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines in Sto. Tomas, Batangas, are adding their voices to the resistance being aired against the nine Supreme Court justices who voted to allow the burial of Marcos’ remains in the Libingan ng Mga Bayani, they are also echoing Inquirer columnist Solita Collas-Monsod’s call of “Justice, not technicalities” (Opinion, 11/5/16).

Pit M. Maliksi ([email protected]) is a graduate of library science from the University of Santo Tomas and of second language teaching from Central Texas College in the United States. He is the founder of Mga Apo ni Tomas, a civic society of 1,000 young professionals in Santo Tomas, Batangas.