Last Sunday’s anti-Bongbong concert at the Plaza Independencia that had Manila and Cebu-based artists campaigning through their music against the vice-presidential candidacy of Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. coincided with the senator’s no-show at a vice-presidential debate sponsored by ABS-CBN.
To be fair, the senator was not the only absentee as so was Sen. Gregorio Honasan, who had been surprisingly non-critical of the Marcos family’s scion in contrast to the rest of his rivals during the previous vice-presidential debate despite being one of the major figures in the first Edsa Revolution that ousted the Marcoses from power.
Both the concert and the debate didn’t suffer due to Marcos’ absence; while the senator will actively avoid the former, he may cite conflicts in campaign schedule as the reason for avoiding the latter.
Still, the debate and concert also highlighted to some extent the senator’s shared family legacy of corruption and abuse of power during the martial law years despite his constant denials.
Though the debate focused on other issues and challenges the vice president must face in tandem with the elected president, the concert focused solely on why another Marcos, one who is not far removed from the regime as he has constantly tried to impress on the current generation of voters, should not be elected to office.
To those still undecided, especially those who were not even born when martial law was first declared or when the first Edsa Revolution occurred, the best advice given by those who performed in the concert came from Edsa Revolution veteran Jim Paredes of the Apo Hiking Society.
“I believe in compassion but not in idiot compassion. To really forgive a person, you have to acknowledge everything that had been done and then forgive. But how can you acknowledge when they are denying it? When people argue that we should move on since it has been years since martial law, it’s just that you cannot move on unless justice is done. If you move on now, you surrender your morals and you surrender everything and repeat the whole thing again,” he said.
The best that can be said of Sen. Marcos in relation to his family’s legacy is that he’s in denial about it. But only the most naïve would believe that he was unaware of what his family did or how he got his estimated personal net worth of P440 million without any noticeable lucrative source of income outside of politics.
These artists say they will continue to campaign against the Marcos candidacy and how this will impact in the next few days remains uncertain. But the message is clear: Sen. Marcos cannot whitewash decades of martial law by his late father and expect everyone, especially those who lost loved ones and suffered in those years, to vote for him, let alone forgive him.
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