“Worse, the media—many of them now manned and managed by Filipinos too young to bear vivid recollections of martial law—have tended to trivialize the current President’s rejection of a hero’s burial for the Marcos corpse as just the offshoot of a long-running family feud.”
President Benigno Aquino 3rd “has wasted a very good opportunity to unify the nation,” Ferdinand Marcos Jr. intoned last week after it was announced that the remains of his dictator-father will get no hero’s burial—for the duration of the current administration, at least.
The younger Marcos obviously still deludes himself with the thought that by merely interring his father’s cadaver at the Libingan ng mga Bayani the people of the Philippines would instantly become united—as if Filipinos were caught in constant conflict over a corpse.
In fact, the majority of Filipinos today have little or no memory of the first Philippine president ever to be run out of office by an outraged populace. Most Filipinos nowadays probably couldn’t care less what happens to the Marcos corpse.
Filipinos born after 1986 never experienced martial law, which is probably why whenever some TV or radio station decides to conduct a “text poll” of their viewers on the issue the results often show popular sentiment to be split down the middle. It’s as if the people were just responding to a question of which type of chicken meat they prefer, dark or white.
Remarkably, however, a sizable segment of Philippine society has steadfastly rejected any suggestion of a hero’s burial for Marcos. It is probably safe to assume that these Filipinos belong to older generations, which had survived the ordeal of tyranny—as well as relished the exhilaration of self-liberation in 1986.
Yet, even the memories of the Marcos years, once made painfully sharp by the excesses of authoritarianism, have begun to fade.
Worse, the media—many of them now manned and managed by Filipinos too young to bear vivid recollections of martial law—have tended to trivialize the current President’s rejection of a hero’s burial for the Marcos corpse as just the offshoot of a long-running family feud.
True, the incumbent President’s father was ordered imprisoned by Marcos and subsequently murdered by soldiers sent by the dictatorship to “fetch” him at the airport. Then, Mr. Aquino’s mother mobilized the nation to boot out the dictator and his family, including the current senator from Ilocos Norte. But if all this were nothing more than an endless struggle between two political dynasties, the senator ought to be counting his lucky stars that he and the rest of his family have not suffered the same fate as Ninoy’s.
Rather than portray the Mar-coses and the Aquinos as the contemporary Hatfields and McCoys, the media would do the nation a real service by re-examining—on the basis of historical fact, not fanciful revisionism—the dictatorship that darkened our land from September 21, 1972 until February 25, 1986. One of the networks perhaps could get the ball rolling by requesting the British Broadcasting Corp. for permission to air a documentary that the BBC produced in 1983.
The 50-minute BBC documentary, titled “To Sing Our Own Song,” features former Sen. Jose W. Diokno as presenter. Readers with Internet access can view it on YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeMoJbN5Ywo, but many, many more Filipinos need to be able to examine this graphic record of their recent history. It was never broadcast in the Philippines while the Marcoses were still in power.
“To Sing Our Own Song” was posted on YouTube on May 8, 2011 by a group identified only as “PinoyHistory” that attached an explanatory note, portions of which read:
“In 1983, Jose W. Diokno, lawyer and two-term Senator, narrated this 50-minute documentary on the Marcos dictatorship. The program was produced and aired by the British Broadcasting Corporation [BBC], and provided a critical look of the regime at a time when media and opposition in the Philippines were violently silenced.
“Here, Sen. Diokno reveals government’s distorted view of development—one that priori-tized patronage over the welfare of its citizens. President Marcos, for example, spent 50% of the national health budget to build a state-of-the-art Heart Center in Manila, while around the country, people were dying of basic illnesses like TB, whooping cough, and dysentery.
“. . . The documentary also exposes the inhuman atrocities being committed by the regime. President Marcos fostered a military that used unbridled might to scare citizens into obedience. Ordinary people were arrested and tortured, and entire villages were massacred in broad daylight.
“Here, we meet an 8-year old girl named Marela. ‘[The military] began shooting us,’ she says in Bisaya. ‘We fell down. My mother put her arm around me. Then, when everything was quiet, I stood up. My mother’s head was wounded. . . My little brother’s body was cut in half. I felt my head, it was all bloody—my mother’s brains were all over my hair.’
“Another boy watched as soldiers murdered his father. He shares, ‘He was held. . . his head was turned sideways. Then it was cut off. They played with my father’s head. They pushed it with a stick and kicked it towards a coconut tree. . . I will avenge my father. Even a small chick can grow up into a fighting cock.’
“. . . Sen. Diokno explains, ‘No government can depend on force alone. If it continuously depends on force, then the day is going to come when that force is not going to be enough. So government tries to transform that force into law, so that it favors those who are in power. But in the same way, law can be used to fight that force. If law can be used to institutionalize social injustice and inequity. . . to marginalize people and throw them into poverty, then people can also use law to get out of that situation.’
“Diokno ends the documentary with a message of hope. ‘It looks impossible for my people to get out of this trap,’ he says. ‘But we will. I know my people. Even if we have to wade through blood and fire, we will be free. We will develop. We will build our own societies. We will sing our own songs.’”
Without memory aids, like the BBC documentary, to remind Filipinos of the un-heroic abuses of the late, unlamented dictator, the Libingan ng mga Bayani may yet accommodate Marcos’s corpse.
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