“UNTIL the lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunter,” An African proverb.
“History is but a confused heap of facts,” Lord Chesterfield (1694-1773)
“We learn from history that we learn nothing from history,” George Bernard Shaw
Citizen Juan Ponce Enrile (JPE) is lying to his teeth. The whole world knows that he executed Martial Law’s arrests, tortures, disappearances and murders of political dissenters. But worse than a liar, he is totally bereft of morals. His motive in glorifying Martial Law with Bongbong Marcos can’t be anything but vile.
I just had to write that to vent my anger. But my point here is really that Martial Law seems to have never been told from its victims’ point of view. We complain about it being revised but did we, the lions whom Ferdinand Marcos Sr. and JPE hunted, bother to write and make sense out of the “heap of facts” of Martial Law?
I have not seen the history textbook today’s millennials studied but the fact that Imelda, Imee, and Bongbong got elected back into positions of power is sufficient evidence that we didn’t bother (because we couldn’t?) to write our story.
Neither did we learn from our story because statistical facts have shown that the votes of the generation that suffered under Martial Law, not so much those of millennials, returned the Marcoses to power.
The Edsa revolution did not change Philippine society, did not democratize its exclusive economy, and did not lead towards political maturity (people still sell their votes) for the simple reason that the Enrile-Ramos-Cojuangco faction of the oligarchy took over the reins of government after it.
JPE now confirms in his tete-tete with Bongbong that his group deceived the people into thinking they rebelled against Marcos to free the Filipino people from tyranny when all they wanted was avoid being wiped out by another group of political hunters that wanted to take over government from the dying Marcos.
Ordinary Filipinos, their pent-up anger bursting, rallied and carried JPE and company to victory. But since spontaneous revolutionaries were not ready with political machinery, it was JPE and company that took over and ran the government from behind Cory’s throne.
If there is a lesson, therefore, to learn it is that next time people rise against the oligarchy they should be ready with the needed machinery for a government that is truly of the people, for the people and by the people.
Like, I don’t think the Red October group will succeed. But if they did, it will be one group of hunters’ victory over another. The lions would still be out in the cold needing a victory that will improve their lives because they, not the hunters, would be telling the story of it.