What would put closure to anti-Marcos hatred

It is pathetic that some clowns are now eyeing to petition the Supreme Court to order the exhumation of Ferdinand Marcos’ remains. That, after the anti-Marcos detractors sat on their a—s (natulog sa pansitan) and only woke up when the Marcos burial in the Libingan ng mga Bayani was already in progress. That, after their lawyers—fairly seasoned in their own right—had apparently thought the burial could not legally proceed before the 15-day period granted for the filing of a motion for reconsideration (MR) shall have lapsed.

As it turned out, that notion was wrong. Sheer common sense simply dictates it is not so much the grace period as the actual filing and pendency of an MR that makes a court ruling not yet final and executory.

On the other hand, methinks the anti-Marcos lawyers knew all along it was next to impossible to reverse the Court’s 9-5 vote against them. And so, maybe—but just maybe—they had intended to file the MR very close to or precisely on the 15th day. Indeed, given the extra days for the Court to rule on the issue with finality, they could have gained more time to conduct as many left-and-right indignation rallies as possible before the final ruling could be handed down. That, for me, was wanting to have their cake and eat it, too. Unfortunately, that strategy gave them less cake than they desired.

That said, I do not mean to worsen any further the anger and pain now seething in the hearts of the frustrated millions of Filipinos. Truth to tell, the Marcos burial is not—no, it will never be!—a closure to this country’s age-old political divisiveness. Not unless true justice is given to the thousands of Filipinos who were killed or tortured by the Marcos regime. And the kind of justice I have in mind is not merely for the surviving Marcoses to kneel down and apologize for the strongman’s sins; neither is it for his remains to be buried in Ilocos or in less hallowed grounds.

Let me call a spade a spade: This age-old issue against Marcos is essentially driven by money. Proof is, former president Fidel V. Ramos has never been part of the anti-Marcos hatred, although as then chief of the Philippine Constabulary he was the one directly responsible for all of the martial law atrocities. What, indeed, could the martial law victims gain in including Ramos who, unlike Marcos, is not known to have billions of dollars in foreign banks to pay them?

Put more bluntly, what martial law’s surviving victims really want is the monetary compensation promised to them by all of the past administrations (including Cory’s), but which remains unfulfilled until now.

An international court has reportedly awarded the victims’ claims and already some money has been ordered set aside for it, perhaps out of the Marcos ill-gotten wealth so far recovered by the government. The problem is the government seems to want to dip its dirty fingers into it.

Well, President Duterte is known to be correcting his predecessors’ shortcomings; it is now up to him to make their promises a reality. Then, only then, perhaps, may the elusive closure at least begin to take shape in our eyes.

RUDY L. CORONEL, rudycoronel [email protected]