DEVELOPMENTS in two vital national concerns have been among the points of interest in the first 50 days of the administration of President Rody Duterte: the planned burial of deposed dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos, Sr., and the resumption of the peace talks between the Philippine government and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines (NDFP).
These two concerns are inter-connected and interact in various aspects and at many levels.
I propose to add transitional justice as a lens and field that further links the two, but also as a key element that would contribute to the success of the GPH-NDFP peace process, not just in terms of agreements reached but more importantly their implementation.
There are many definitions of transitional justice, which is also referred to as “dealing with the past” or DwP. But among the most striking for me is a paraphrasing of the words of Atty. Carlos Castresana Fernandez, Public Prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Spain and a member of the Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala.
Castresana describes DwP as the efforts of a society with a violent past to ensure that violence will not accompany it as that society moves into the future.
The key principles of DwP include the rights to know, justice, reparation, and guarantees of non-recurrence, as well as anti-impunity, citizenship and conflict transformation. These are based on principles espoused by the United Nations but also borne out of international peace practice over the long-term.
There are at least two transitional justice processes in the country: the one concerning Philippine society post-Marcos dictatorship, and the other involving the Bangsamoro. One is incomplete, and the other hopefully will prove to be an ongoing commitment.
The signs are encouraging that the new administration will act on the recommendations of the Transitional Justice and Reconciliation Commission (TJRC) report. The TJRC was created under the Normalization Annex of the Framework Agreement on the Bangsamoro (FAB).
I say the transitional justice processes with the Marcoses is incomplete because 30 years after they were booted out of Malacañang, the results of the May 2016 elections and the issue of the burial (or re-burial as some would put it) highlight the reality that we Filipinos have not been able to successfully “deal with the past”.
There have been efforts to provide reparations to victims of Martial Law under RA 10368 (Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act of 2013), and there are also plans to set up a memorial museum on the Martial Law era that would include artifacts, memorabilia and other items.
But the near-win of Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. in his bid for the vice-presidency with 14,155,344 votes, and the strong resolve of Pres. Duterte to bury Marcos Sr. at the LNMB indicate a lack of shared understanding of the Marcos years.
rGroups like Konsyensya Dabaw, the Coalition Against Marcos Burial in the LibinganngmgaBayani (CAMB-LNMB), and the Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses to Malacañang (Carmma) have responded to the reasons cited to support the burial: the fulfillment of a campaign promise, to bring closure to the issue, and simply because the deceased was a soldier and former president.
But the persistence of these thinking over the documented realities of massive human rights violations, the plunder of the Philippine economy, and the stunting of governance and social institutions point to deeper reasons. (To be continued tomorrow)