Velez: I must remember, you’re a Marcos

“You must remember I’m a Marcos”, that’s what you said during the vice presidential debates on explaining why you’re getting all the heat.

And you said that with a grin. Maybe because you think you’re topping surveys and swooping young people over your propaganda. That grin pasted everywhere in posters littering Davao City alongside Duterte as if you’re the un-official running mate.

You’re telling us to remember that name. And a lot of people do remember that name and the memories of pain and rage it brings.

Those memories of being jailed for defying your father’s Martial Law, as what happened to three of my Ateneo teachers in English – Rolly Bajo, Palanca awardees Don Pagusara and Mac Tiu. Sir Rolly remembers the cigarette burns searing his body and Sir Don remembers the bullet on his leg.

Those childhood memories of friends visiting their fathers in jail on weekends, their fathers whose “crime” was to stand up for the poor against the monstrosity your father wrecked on Mindanao. These detainees include the late human rights lawyer Larry Ilagan, his fellow lawyers Marcos Risonar and retired prosecutor Tonyboy Arellano, and ex-priest turned mayor Leoncio Evasco.

Many survivors of Martial Law remember losing friends who fought until the last breath of their lives. Writers Evella Bontia and Eman Lacaba, teacher Nic Solana, student activists Socorro Par and many others.

The Assumption sisters remember very well how they hosted the funeral rites for the slain labor leader Alex Orcullo in their school gym while fully-armed police stood watch on their gates.

The farmers from Davao del Sur remember how at nights soldiers would rap on their doors and drag them out, check if they are NPAs and beat them with their boots and rifle butts.

Those memories can go on and on. Fourteen years of Martial Law brought not peace but rather tears and blood flowing like the names of thousands of martyrs carved on that wall of the Bantayog ng Bayani.

Yet you deny and refute those memories, and you say you have nothing to apologize for. You say we’re just after your family’s money, the unexplained wealth estimated at $10 to 20 billion. You want to shrug these attacks as mere political rivalry with the Aquinos.

There’s one sad thing happening here, as many observed that there is no collective remembering and sealing of the wounds on the Marcos years. Survivors are still telling their stories, yet textbooks state Martial Law as a time of order. There’s a big disconnect. Indeed, our history is now being revised not just by Marcos but by the Aquinos who claim Edsa is theirs.

Neither Aquino nor Marcos nor any other president after made our country better. Instead, everything your father has done still lingers on: lumads, activists and journalists snuffed out for exposing the truth; soldiers lording over the countryside; the poor that protest would be thrown to jail like in Kidapawan; politicians getting rich through pork and other deals while the economy sinks with loans, foreign investments, plunder of resources and our laborers going abroad.

Do you plan to change all that if you win? I doubt if you would. Because this race is not about that. It’s about vindicating your name. You’ll do everything to win at all cost, just like you’re switching running mates from Miriam to Duterte. Your father before jumped from Liberal to Nacionalista. Balimbing politics may have started there.

So I’ll remember you’re a Marcos. Always. And I’ll also remember that a Marcos should never ever come back to power.

*****

tyvelez@gmail.com

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