OF COURSE, it's a done deal. It is of no moment now, whether the opposing parties will file a motion for reconsideration before the Supreme Court. Time is not on their side. Neither is the High Court's majority.
The burial party for the unlamented dictator will go as planned and democracy will allow it to proceed even at its own expense. That is the first contradiction.
My personal theory is that the nine justices had a modus vivendi. The gang's goal was to decide in favor of allowing the dictator's burial at the Libingan ng Mga Bayani – regardless of the bigger flagrant contradiction, which is burying someone like him in a sacred place where he does not belong.They just had to find a way to rationalize it, technically.
Otherwise, the Court could have come up with a different decision.
What was evidently glossed over by the decision was the overarching issue that the late strongman had wronged his country and people, deeply and irreparably. The Ninoy assassination, the People Power or EDSA Revolution in 1986, the eventual crafting of a new constitution in 1987, the various human rights cases filed and won by thousands of victims of martial – all incontrovertible proof of the wrong inflicted on the nation during his reign.
How could all this have escaped the nine justices is, indeed, beyond even the ordinary citizen's mind.
Actually, their individual justifications are, to say the least, morally flawed. One of them is even outright risible and stupid. It said: Mr. Duterte's victory showed that there was no longer a “national damnation of Marcos.” The connection is hard to see. Unless, it means that Duterte is a complete Marcos reprise.
Another justice, in what can be described as a display of moral cowardice or a Pilate's crass act, said the majority did not pass judgment on whether Marcos deserved to buried in the Libingan.
Oh yes, it did. The five-point rationale of the decision explained it like it was: a deplorable craftiness that set aside truth, decency and even history aside. In effect, it even may have begun to effectively revise history itself during its darkest chapter.
For better or for worse, the High Court is a shaper of history. This truth and its implied responsibility was apparently lost on the majority.
Saying that Marcos was not really that bad a person was an unwitting admission that standards are a moveable feast for those in power or close to the powers-that-be. It misses the whole point of the issue.
As for healing the nation, the High Court's decision is telling us now (selling the idea, more like it) that there was probably no wound to talk about in the first place which, in the final analysis, is the graver injustice to the nation.
No thanks to the nine justices.