We flicked through the dictionary for the word that fits a bizarre contrast. In one part of town, Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr. said he’d run, come 2016, adding his father’s dictatorship benefited Filipinos.
Across town, over 20,000 victims of Marcos martial law are filing claims for reparation under Republic Act 10368.
“Schizophrenia” fits the bill. It’s a psychotic disorder. Can a society go bonkers from loss of contact with reality, then careen about with delusions?
Former first lady and now Representative Imelda Marcos amplified for Junior. She wants him to run for president. The New Society was the “most democratic period in our history”. In contrast, the Human Rights Victims’ Claims Board will issue the last restitution check for victims May 2016. This P10-billion fund is drawn from recovered Marcos ill-gotten wealth.
It is different from cash, set aside by the US Hawaii District Court in 1995, for those who lodged a class suit. Some 9,541 victims got a second $1,000-check. This is reparation stemming from the court holding Marcos “liable for systematic torture, summary executions and disappearances.” Also, it’s the “biggest personal injury verdict in history.”
“Once again, the Philippines allowed America, through the Hawaii case to act as an arbiter of justice,” notes “Dark Legacy”, a University of Wisconsin study. “This jarring juxtaposition indicates that the trauma of Marcos terror remains deeply imbedded.”
Marcos’ regime racked up 3,257 extra judicial killings, 759 desaparecidos or the “disappeared”, 35,000 torture victims, plus 70,000 imprisoned, says historian Alfred McCoy. Did schizo cause Bongbong and Imelda to forget – or look away?”
“People say how thankful they were for relative peace and order that followed martial law,” Marcos Jr. recalled. Streets were cleaner, tourists flocked in and the Philippine image worldwide was “positive”. The country must move on. “Finding scapegoats is not the solution.”
Tell that to Walter Dacumos. He recalls how then 2nd Lt. Panfilo Lacson stepped on his chest.
“Inapakan ako sa dibdib” and given the water cure with now scriptwriter Ricky Lee. Both vomited blood “And what will you do with the P50,000?” asked Inquirer’s Ceres Doyo, also a martial law victim. “I will buy myself a good bed,” he replied.
The Marcos era was a “sultanistic regime”, wrote Dresden University professor Mark Thomsom in “The Anti-Marcos Struggle: Personalistic Rule and Democratic Transition in the Philippines”
(Yale University Press). Characterized by family-based rule and corruption, Marcos “exercised power freely, without loyalty to any ideology or institution….and would never step down.”
But Sen. Benigno Aquino Jr.’s assassination, triggered outrage and People Power voted in Corazon Aquino. As new president, she consolidated democracy “despite troubling legacies of the dictatorship.”
“For all the trappings of a national government, we are not far from the era of the barangay,” the late Filipino historian Horacio de la Costa wrote earlier in Justice and Development. “We conduct our affairs pretty much in the manner of Lapu Lapu and Humabon.” (Today’s legislator) who moves around with his bodyguards is not much different from the datu surrounded by his retainers.”
In November 1992, “Bantayog ng mga Bayani” (“Monument to the Heroes”), opened to honor those who defied the 14-year long dictatorship. A 14-meter Inang Bayan (Mother Philippines) monument towers. A “Wall of Remembrance” inscribed with the names of martyrs, prominent and lesser known: Publisher Joaquin “Chino” Roces, Senator Jose W. Diokno to student leader Edgar Joson. A library at the memorial’s Jovito R. Salonga building serves students and researchers.
Contrast that with a memorial of a different sort in Ilocos Norte. A mausoleum displays the embalmed body of Marcos Sr. In 1993, his family reneged on a promise to then President Fidel Ramos that burial within a week after return from Hawaii.
It “is ringed by fuchsia, bougainvillea, white sampaguita and asters,” Inquirer reports. “There are no yellow flowers.”
“The passing years (are) taking a toll,” notes New York Times. “Mold creeps up the edges of the satin sheet, and a sound system is broken… No one seems to have swept or dusted the mausoleum, let alone refurbished it, despite periodic visits of his widow and family members.”
This week, 85-year-old Imelda, in flowing terno, came to kiss the glass coffin for the cameras.
The museum depicts Marcos’ 27 medals for heroism. They’re bogus, a New York Times series, by Seymour Hersh asserted.
Follow-up Times reports by Jeff Gerth and Joel Brminkley revealed US Army records stating: “At no time, did the US Army recognize any unit, designating itself as Maharlika ever existed as guerrilla force.
The immensity of Mr. Marcos claim that Maharlika served entire Luzon was absurd.” It dismissed Marcos’ bid for compensation.
Bongbong and Imelda insist on a Libingan Ng Mga Bayani burial for the embalmed body. In contrast, a state funeral apparently never crossed Corazon Aquino’s mind. She’s buried next to Benigno Jr. in a private cemetery.
Just this March, Marcos Jr funneled P100 million from his pork barrel to bogus Napoles NGOs. As writer Oscar Levant once joshed: “Schizophrenia beats dining alone.”