Wednesday, August 27, 2008 Sula: For crying out loud By Jun Sula Commentary
THE trouble with Cory, so casually remarked by a senator of the realm during a weekend visit, is that she thinks everything Marcos did was wrong.
The comment, unsolicited and untimely, was said in the context of the country's energy problem and how politics has stood in the way of providing workable solutions.
Nuclear is one of them, he said with strong conviction, and we have a mothballed nuclear plant in Bataan that should work for the country, except that Marcos built it, and Cory didn't want to use it.
It was a week of remembering the 25th anniversary of the late Ninoy Aquino, Cory's husband martyred during the brutal regime of the late dictator. Talking about what right Marcos did at the time was both politically incorrect and impolite.
But the senator, apparently, was more concerned with practical issues than with political ones, and the idea of remembering a lamented dictator for the right things he left behind did not cross his mind as improper.
There should be merit in the senator's random thought, one whose political resume qualifies him to be in Marcos or Cory's shoes, if ever, depending on how power changes or corrupts him. Marcos also did something good, along with the bad.
Unfortunately, politics is harsh and unkind to those whose memories are destined to be obliterated both by their grievous wrongs and by those who had to suffer as a result.
The evil that men do, Shakespeare wrote, lives after them, and the good interred with their bones.
Marcos, in his time, believed that history would ultimately vindicate him.
In his case, history may need the help of a senator, at least.
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It's probably a malaise of the psyche among politicians, the vicious tendency to erase the memory or legacy of an erstwhile rival as to render him virtually non-existent in the past, present and, more importantly, future.
We have had one or two examples in recent memory, involving a former mayor of the city whose congratulatory streamers had simply vanished one after the other. The usual was the suspect as the suspect was the usual, which may not be accurate and, therefore, unfair.
The former mayor had, in his time, erected two lantern-like structures atop small pyramid-like bases along the now Jose Abad Santos Avenue near the Paskuhan Village. One of them was obviously damaged and needed repair. In time, the symbolic structures were done away with and what remain today are the bases.
Are the missing structures and the missing streamers related in the scheme of local politics?
It's interesting to find out as well if the stowing away of the portraits of former governors of Pampanga for months before they were belatedly (begrudgingly?) installed back recently at the provincial Capitol lobby followed the same mindset.
