IN LAW, as much as in life, there is need to find closure. Issues that have lingered and festered for so long and which unnecessarily divide the people and slow the path to the future have to be interred.”
So began the Supreme Court in its en banc decision to allow the burial of deposed dictator Ferdinand Marcos in the Libingan ng mga Bayani (LNMB).
Good beginning statement but wrong application. And as cross-eyed as President Rodrigo Duterte’s insistence that Marcos’ burial in LNMB would bring national healing.
Whose healing? From their actions, the healing was reckoned from the Marcoses. Why them? Shouldn’t healing be reckoned from the families of the victims and their families, they who suffered the torture, abuses and excesses of the dictator, particularly in the 14 years of martial rule?
The Marcoses enjoyed their heydays in Malacañang, raked up billions of ill-gotten wealth, escaped to Hawaii to avoid possible lynching, even lived in wealth throughout their exile.
Any suffering they had, could only be that the self-proclaimed hero, complete with his fake 27 medals of valor, could not be buried in LNMB.
And while they continued to spend their ill-gotten wealth in Hawaii and even Morocco, we Filipinos could only agonize over the onerous debts they left behind. Debts grandchildren had to pay even before they were born.
Worse, the Marcoses were allowed to come back, refuse to this day to apologize for their treacheries, have crept back into political power, and even now aspire to tamper with history books.
True, it’s now water under the bridge, but allowing them back into the country was a huge blunder.
Our participation in such blunder was that we shared the hope behind the move.
The hope that the Marcoses’ remorse would be so complete that they’d return all they stole, and just retire into the sunset to lead quiet lives.
Someone should have reminded us about the story of the scorpion--that it’s foolhardy to think it could be a pet.
It would still bite the owner, because it is in its nature.
Treachery is in the nature of the Marcoses. As they slithered back into the Philippines and eventually back into political power, they slithered Marcos’ body from Ilocos Norte to LNMB.
Slithering from the sky in three helicopters, including the Marcos widow, children and other relatives.
No government funds were used, we’re told. Instead, the Marcoses footed all the bills for using those big birds in the sky. Who’s to say now that the payment did not come from the huge coffers of ill-gotten wealth?
Coincidentally, Duterte left for Peru on the same day of the burial. Did he know beforehand about the burial?
AFP spokesperson Col. Restituto Padilla said “The President is always kept aware of everything that’s happening in the country.” And PNP Chief Rolando de la Rosa said it was unlikely that Duterte did not know because “he speaks regularly with the Marcoses.”
Presidential Spokesperson Ernesto Abella said that Duterte did not know. But notice how much faster he blinked, akin to one who, psychologists say, look to the left when they lie.
Finding closure yet? The protests in the streets, the ringing of the Carillon in the UP campus, the move to cite for contempt the Marcoses and the military for the premature burial, and the wrath and seething over insult added to injury.
Mr. President, you are so grossly wrong. This nation is far from healing.
(lelani.echavez@gmail.com)