The sins of the father should not visit upon the son, so they say. But when the son enters politics, everything is fair game. And with a father that ruled for 21 years, 14 of which were wielded absolutely, everything is fair game.
This is the dilemma of Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. as he prepares to seek higher office. Rumors have it that he is interested in seeking the vice presidency most probably under one of the lawyers that fought his father’s long reign, Vice President Jejomar Binay, who is definitely gunning for the presidency.
In the Ilocos region, Bongbong does not need to explain his father’s dictatorial regime. They love his dad there, nay; they revere the him. Maybe even some of the Warays in Leyte and Samar, bailiwick of his mother, Imelda Romualdez-Marcos, also do not need explaining.
But to the rest of the country, Bongbong faces a potential deep scrutiny of his father’s reign, especially the imposition of martial law exactly forty-three years and three days ago today.
Blame it on the failures of the People Power Revolution in 1986, we now have a generation that has no idea what happened during those dark years of the Marcos dictatorship. In fact, the youth are fed with a revisionist view of martial law and the Marcos dictatorship: that it was the best time ever in the post-war history of this country.
True, Marcos imposed martial law on September 21, 1972 on the pretext that this was the only way to build a new society, one that would end the monopoly of the extremely rich and politically powerful families of the country, the so-called oligarchy. By the time he was booted out of office that fateful February 25, 1986, the economy was in shambles for being under the clutches of another oligarchy, this time identified closely with Marcos himself: a handful of his classmates at the UP Law School, his golfing buddies and people who helped him in his meteoric rise to power in just a span of a decade, from a provincial politician of Ilocos to Malacañang’s longest-staying tenant.
Now comes Bongbong, very popular not only for his looks but more for his actuations of late, especially vis-à-vis the Bangsamoro Basic Law, where he single-handedly provided major arguments why it should not just be passed willy-nilly.
If Bongbong indeed decides to run for the vice presidency, now is the best time if any to confront the demons of his past and not to deny them, the way some netizens are posting on Facebook and Twitter and other social media sites that provide an utterly fantastic view of the 14 years of dictatorial rule: that there was discipline; that the economy was at its most robust and that our foreign debt was at its lowest; that human rights were never violated.
The opposite is true insofar as the hundreds of thousands who suffered under martial law and the businesses that were seized and transferred to friends of Marcos.
Bongbong should start by admitting that his father’s reig n was a dismal failure and that, if given the chance to rule, he would be the opposite; that he would redeem the bad name left by his own father. Only then perhaps will the Filipino people give him the mandate he now covets.
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