Marcos: Dead, not gone

“Past is past, Bongbong says of dark Marcos years.” This Inquirer headline (10/22/15) recalls novelist William Faulkner’s oft-quoted statement: “The past is not dead. It is not even past.”

The announcement early this week by Christie’s, the jewelry auction house, illustrated Faulkner’s point. Christie’s discovered that an item described as “loose crystal” among over 700 pieces of jewelry left behind by the Marcoses in their flight to Hawaii was actually an “extremely rare” pink diamond believed to belong to a Mogul emperor. The entire Marcos jewelry collection was initially valued in 1991 at between $5 million and $8 million. Christie’s estimated the Mogul diamond alone as worth $5 million.

This reminder of martial law plunder rebuts Sen. Bongbong Marcos’ insistence that Filipinos should just leave the Marcos legacy to discussions among “historical analysts.” Current concerns, such as the deterioration of the educational system, domestic insurgencies, and impunity, have deep roots in the Marcos past. Historians will study the past to illuminate the problems of the present and the options for the future.

US President Barack Obama used the Faulkner quote to remind Americans that the current crises in the black community can be traced back to inequalities suffered by earlier generations under the brutal legacy of slavery. The current violence in the United States arising from race relations cannot be understood or effectively addressed without understanding its historical context. The history of human rights violations during the Marcos regime is not of the same scale and duration as those suffered by the American black community. But it requires the same comprehension of context.

Millennials may have forgotten, if they ever learned, the costs and consequences of martial law. Their elders, who lived through this not-so-distant historical period, have not. Bongbong still has to deal with living victims of the Marcos legacy, whose demand for justice remains unfulfilled.

I do not believe that the sins of the father should necessarily and permanently burden the son. Bongbong could have unloaded the weight of the martial law legacy off his back. There are two conditions. The first is if he had quietly retired from public life, if he had stayed in Honolulu and mastered, say, surfboard riding skills or whatever, instead of pursuing political office and lobbying for the interment of his father at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

The second, more onerous, condition requires a public act of contrition for the damage done by martial law to the Filipinos and the Philippines. Bongbong could probably have mustered the right words for this purpose, if he so wished. But confession and contrition will not be credible without compensation. Atonement must include the return of the plundered wealth.

The recently released autobiography of Jose Almonte, a key figure in the failed RAM (Reform the Armed Forces Movement) coup attempt against Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 and the national security adviser during the Ramos administration, renewed public interest in martial law issues. But the focus centered on whether the RAM plan envisioned the killing of Marcos and the members of his family.

Almonte’s involvement in what he called the “Great Chase” for the wealth plundered by the Marcoses drew little attention then. In the course of this chase, Almonte visited the Marcoses in Honolulu. By his account, it was Bongbong Marcos who conducted the conversations, on pay phones (to avoid “bugging”), with the Marcos Swiss bank liaison. Bongbong provided him: the identity of the account manager of the Marcos deposits, a senior VP of Credit Suisse; a letter of authorization to deal with the transfer of funds from Switzerland to a bank in Vienna; and $300,000. In traveler’s checks.

Almonte’s account is rich in details that the Marcoses have not contested. Bongbong’s advice to leave the past to historians and move on is sickeningly self-serving in evading the issue of restitution. He has to justify why Filipinos should allow his family to keep $6 billion or more in plundered wealth. For Filipino voters, this should be an election issue.

Bongbong’s prescription of “forget and move on”—not “forgive and forget,” because he has never asked for forgiveness—becomes deeply divisive because it exploits ethnic fault lines. He is counting on the family’s Ilocano connections in the allegedly solid Ilocano North to ignore the past. Although the region clearly benefited from martial law, its list of victims also includes ethnic Ilocanos from all over the country.

Forgetting the past is not a healing strategy that can unify countries which have experienced extended violent communal conflicts, especially those provoked by religious, ethnic, or ideological divisions. The protagonists nurture the memory of their grievances. The conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland had roots in the 17th century.

The historical experience of Ireland, South Africa, Chile and Argentina tells us that reconciliation—the key to national unity—requires truth-telling, contrition and reparation. Amnesia is not the antidote.

Edilberto C. de Jesus ([email protected]) is professor emeritus at the Asian Institute of Management.