NHCP study on Marcos’ war records
As chair of the National Historical Commission of the Philippines (NHCP), I wrote President Duterte, appealing to him to reconsider his decision to allow the burial of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the Libingan ng mga Bayani. This appeal is based not on a narrow and shortsighted reading of the law; this is based on historical grounds.
The President is aware that the NHCP has studied Marcos’ war record and found that:
- Marcos’ claims about his war medals from the United States are highly questionable. There is strong reason to doubt that he ever received them, let alone in a foxhole during the war, as he claimed in one of his authorized biographies.
- Marcos lied about his rank.
- His guerrilla unit, Ang Mga Maharlika, was never recognized by the US government.
- His leadership of the unit was also doubted at official levels, and his practice of double listing his name on different guerrilla rosters was called a “malicious criminal act.”
- Other acts of Marcos officially called into question:
- His command of the Allas Intelligence Unit (described as “usurpation”);
- His commissioning of officers (without authority);
- His abandonment of USAFIP-NL ostensibly to build an airfield for Gen. Manuel Roxas;
- His “illegal collection” of money for the airfield.
- Right after the war, US officials were already aware that, as one put it, “Marcos … had enough political prestige to bring pressure to bear where it is needed for his own personal benefit.”
Our study covers only a fraction of Marcos’ record as a public official. A broader picture is presented by Republic Act No. 10368 (Feb. 25, 2013), which attributes to the Marcos regime massive and grave violations of human rights. The integrity and historical basis of the government’s effort to monetarily compensate the victims of these violations of human rights would be wiped out by the singular act of burying the man at the helm of this dictatorial regime in a national shrine like the Libingan ng mga Bayani. What one hand gives, the other takes away.
If healing is the burial’s aim, then, the wounds of the past are best dealt with by coming to terms with them fair and square, not by denying them, deflating their effect, or ignoring them altogether. Historical truth was what Rizal had in mind when he proposed in his “Noli” that the country’s ills should be “exposed… on the steps of the temple so that each one who would come to invoke the Divine, should propose a cure for them.”
Andres Bonifacio, as Apolinario Mabini recalled, “was wont to say … that we should fear no one except History and indeed History is implacable in doing justice, and its judgment is terrible against the offender.”
The justice of History, anchored on historical truth, is far greater than that which any court, including the highest court of the land, can render (or in this case, fail to render).
As the highest official of our Republic, President Duterte has the unique opportunity and obligation to heed the demands of the justice of History, and thereby lead the way to true healing.
MARIA SERENA I. DIOKNO, chair, National Historical Commission of the Philippines
