I HAVE, time and again, said that I will be vigilant against any abuse. But what exactly were the abuses during the 21-year regime of Ferdinand Marcos?
Aside from the obvious and well-publicized political abuses, there were so many abuses to the economy.
There were projects such as the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant, considered as a ‘white elephant’. It cost US$1.88 billion, which do not even produce any kilowatt of output until now.
In 1970, Malacañang issued a $63-million (PHP 379-million in 1970; PHP 21.08-billion in 2013) credit to the Sugar Producers Cooperative Marketing Association to build a new fertilizer plant. Analysts back then argued that this was unnecessary, since the local fertilizer industry was suffering from lack of demand and not shortage in supply.
The move was even opposed by Cesar Virata, then Chairperson of the Board of Investments. Another anomaly was the price of the project: the planned fertilizer plant was originally estimated to cost $43-million (PHP 259-million in 1970; PHP 14.39 billion in 2013) (Kiunisala, 1970).
On land reform, by 1970, agricultural lands from only 154 towns (a mere 6% of the total municipalities back then) had been "reformed." This translated to 457,770 hectares of distributed rice farms, which was then only 10.6% of the national total.
In other words, share-cropping still prevailed in 90% of the agrarian lands in the country. Farmers remained poor, with an annual average income of PHP-500 in 1971 (PHP 27,774.73 in 2013 prices). All these despite the PHP 53.4-million (PHP 2.97-billion in 2013 prices) spending of the government for land reform from 1966 to 1970 (Kiunisala, 1970).
In a privilege speech on 28 June 1971, Senator Benigno Aquino claimed that the Development Bank of the Philippines entered into an anomalous purchase of three real estate properties from Felipe Ysmael, Jr., who Aquino alleged as a Marcos crony. The properties, appraised at PHP 40-million (PHP 1.94-billion at 2013 pesos), were bought by DBP at PHP 100.4-million (PHP 4.88-billion at 2013 pesos). One of the properties purchased was a mountain in Looc, Batangas which, according to Aquino, was "not cultivated, without tenants, a haven for smugglers and lawless elements." Furthermore, DBP absorbed Ysmael's liabilities to the Philippine National Bank, GSIS, SSS, and the National Investment and Development Corporation that totaled PHP 13.81-million (PHP 671-million at 2013 pesos) (Tutay, 1972).
Congressional hearings found that much of the PHP 100-million (PHP 6.4-billion in 2013 prices) Barrio Fund budget in 1969 had been unaccounted for. Journalists claimed that a fraction of the budget was used by the re-electionist Marcos to distribute PHP 2,000 (PHP 127,936.53 in 2013 prices) to each barrio captain during the 1969 presidential elections.
For 1970, the Office of the President requested a PHP 68-million (PHP 3.78-billion in 2013 prices) Community Development Fund, on top of another PHP 100-million Barrio Fund (PHP 5.55-billion in 2013 prices) (Rama, 1970).
These are just a few of the economic abuses during the Marcos regime.
SO MOVE ON! Easy for you to say, you are not one of the people who lost (and never found the body) of his loved one. You are not a son or a daughter of someone who got handicapped, physically, mentally, emotionally, and did not see how a loved one suffered living in disability through the years. You are not in relative poverty right now as an effect of the billions that were stolen from our country during his reign.
If you cannot be emphatic nor be sympathetic, do not go out parading and saying to people to just move on. You healed differently. Do not expect others to heal just like you do.
If you just choose to forget because you have healed, do not forget though who gave you the wound in the first place. If you have physical scars caused by someone, and are now healed, you still remember how that someone hurt you, don't you? How much more emotional scars?
If you choose to be apathetic and indifferent, remember that whatever happened in the past has its ways of being repeated in the future if you choose not do anything. If you think you are in a safe place, think again, the people usually caught in the crossfire are the ones in the middle of the field.
Now, tell the people in the statistics mentioned in the photo, who were victims of abuses during that dictatorship, which multiplied into much greater number including their descendants and friends, MOVE ON.
Because if I were someone in the statistic and you told me to MOVE ON face-to-face, I will reward you with a physical slap on the face to wake you up to reality.
This is not politics anymore. The law may say it is legal that soldier who was dishonorably discharged, who killed his way up to becoming a president of this nation is a hero, ETHICS and MORALITY say otherwise.
I mourn for our nation. We have lost our values. We are now a nation where murder and is already a way of life and a murderer is a hero.