Maglana: Dealing with the dead
THE annual Kalag-kalag, Undas to the Tagalog-speaking, is traditionally about remembering the departed, a charge done best with one’s family and community. But this year’s Kalag-kalag has an added dimension, that of the societal responsibility of dealing with the dead.
I say ‘dealing with the dead’ because these are matters that we must contend with and address as a nation. They concern justice, and have implications on who we are turning out to be, and where we are headed.
By ‘dealing with the dead’ I refer to the plan to bury Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr. at the Libingan ng mga Bayani (LNMB), the questionable deaths of OFWs abroad and those still languishing in death row and extrajudicial killings.
Marcos died in 1989 but has unfortunately become a prop to continuing efforts to whitewash the family name via a hero’s burial.
His family and supporters initiated the “Ilibing Na” campaign, which is blatantly misleading the uninformed into thinking that those opposing the LNMB burial are unfairly preventing his interment. In truth, it is the Marcos family who refuses to comply with the 1992 agreement with the Philippine government that the burial would be in Ilocos Norte and not at the LNMB.
The campaign is disrespectful to the deceased Marcos. It ignores his final wish to be laid to rest beside his mother who is interred in Ilocos Norte. It uses the dead to blackmail society into becoming complicit to measures that would politically rehabilitate the Marcoses, revise the narrative about the Marcos dictatorship and ultimately restore their stature.
It is already ironic that the son of Nanay Soling Duterte, among the stalwarts of the anti-dictatorship movement in Southern Mindanao, would instead privilege his father’s long past association with Marcos. But President Rodrigo Roa Duterte has also time and again made clear his gratitude to Governor Imee Marcos for supporting his candidacy, even publicly saying that she had borrowed money to contribute to his campaign. Governor Marcos denies this, prudently so since she was not listed in the Statement of Contribution and Expenditures that the Duterte camp submitted to Comelec.
Also on the line are the claims of those whose rights were directly violated during the Marcos years, particularly those who died: the 3,240 summarily executed and the 1,000 disappeared.
Some say that this is political compromise typical of the Duterte brand of leadership. But this compromise is not necessarily for a social good. Despite messages that package the burial as an accommodation of the interests of Ilocanos, it clearly is intended to repay electoral and political favors.
The Supreme Court is set to decide on petitions about the burial on November 8.
Speculations are rife whether they would rule based on the letter of the law, or its spirit.
If a Marcos burial at the LNMB transpires we would be known as the people who let a dictator be buried at a place set aside for heroes. Perhaps in time we would be able to live with that, but not without suffering what in Cebuano is referred to as ‘pagbisgo sa kalag’, a fundamental unease that afflicts one’s very soul.
The Mindanao Migrants Center for Empowering Actions, Inc. urged remembrance of Filipino workers who had died overseas. Many, like Dabawenya Apple Dayot Gamale, died under suspicious circumstances and have yet to know justice. Also, there are still 92 OFWs like Mary Jane Veloso on death row around the world, many due to drug charges.
This Kalag-kalag my family added “and the victims of extrajudicial killings” to the names we intoned in the novena for the departed.
We neither confined our intentions to activists, environmentalists and Lumad who had been summarily killed since the late 1980s, nor did we exclude alleged lawbreakers like drug addicts and dealers, those killed by their fellow criminals, or who reportedly fought it out with the police. They were all killed without due process in a country that by law does not allow killing even with due process and is aspiring to rebuild trust in governance institutions.
Beyond remembering every Kalag-kalag, it is in our interest to justly deal with the dead now so that the specters of our choices and responses do not haunt us in the future.
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