Never forget

By Artchil B. Fernandez

 

September is the dictator and plunderer’s month. This is the birth month of the dictator who plundered the nation and stole its life and future. Despite the high crimes they committed against the Filipino people, the Marcoses not only remain unrepentant and remorseless, but they are also brazenly shameless in their attempt to rewrite and falsify history. Under Du30’s brutal and corrupt rule, the Marcoses got bolder in pushing their lies and deception. Du30 himself publicly expressed his admiration of the dictator and he actively aids the notorious family in peddling falsehoods and covering their crimes.

Among Du30’s first act as president was to allow the burial of Ferdinand Marcos in the hallowed grounds of the Libingan ng mga Bayani, a long-cherished dream of the Marcoses for it is one of the ways to conceal the dictator’s crimes against the nation. This year, the present administration is making another move to further erase the transgressions of the dictator.

Early this month, the Lower House passed House Bill (HB) 7137, the Marcos Day Bill declaring September 11 of the year a holiday in Ilocos Norte. This is another step to rehabilitate the dictator and gloss over the evils that he did to the nation.

On the surface, it is of little significance since the holiday is local, confined to the province of the dictator’s birth.  It is only a local bill, its backers claim. This seemingly little act is the beginning of a larger scheme – local today, national later.

Ilocos Norte is not separate from the Philippines. The people there must not be taught of falsehoods while the rest of the country is told of the truth about Marcos’ dictatorial rule. Like the rest of the country, the people of Ilocos Norte must know that the dictator who was born there committed terrible deeds to the Filipino people. This is not to shame the people there but to remind them of the lessons of history, that the crimes of the dictator must not be repeated again.

Honoring Marcos even locally muddles historical facts and will confuse the present and future generations. This is the goal of the Marcoses. Slick videos produced using ill-gotten wealth already proliferates in social media pushing the Marcoses’ lies and falsehoods. HB 7137 pushes the envelop further.

Few days after HB 7137 was approved in the Lower House, a certain Marcos apologist, Ranhilio Aquino tried to smoothen the way for the bill by creating further confusion with a controversial tweet. “The present generation that is loud in its condemnation of Marcos never experienced Marcos. So that rant is directed at their construct of Marcos. Shouldn’t they be studying Derrida and Lyotard more?”

Pseudo-intellectuals like Aquino vainly try to give intellectual cloth to Marcoses’ lies by invoking Derrida. Aquino is making it appear the past about the Marcos dictatorship is only a construct and it is this construct that the present generation is reacting against. People should also listen to other constructs, like the falsehoods of the Marcoses.

What Aquino presented is a gross distortion of Derrida’s position particularly on deconstruction. Derrida was reacting to the linguistic turn in the social sciences and his deconstruction is directed at language, specifically writing.  He never applied his concept to history and historical facts and Derrida could be turning in his grave with Aquino’s blatant twisting of his ideas. Derrida never said historical facts are mere constructs. The atrocities that happened during Martial Law – 70,000 arrests, 34,000 tortures and 3,240 killings – are facts. The Marcoses stole US$10 billion dollars from the Filipino people and $4 billion were already recovered by the Philippine government. These are not constructs, they are facts.

Imelda Marcos, the other half of the conjugal dictatorship was convicted by the special anti-graft Sandiganbayan court of seven counts of graft. She was sentenced to serve 6 to 11 years in prison for each count, a total of 70 years. The conviction of Imelda Marcos is a fact, not a construct. Only the refusal of the Du30 administration to enforce the court’s decision spared Imelda Marcos of being jailed at present.

It is intellectually dishonest for Aquino to disparage the present generation for condemning the Marcos dictatorship since they have not experienced it. In effect, Aquino is saying Filipinos today should not react to the abuses during the Spanish and American colonial rule since they did not live through those harrowing eras. Is history a matter of personal experience?

Ranhilio Aquino, a priest, should be careful with his statements. People can also use his distortion of construction/deconstruction to say that Jesus Christ is just a construct and what Christians believe in is a mere construct made by the Catholic Church. No one today lived in the first century Palestine and walked with the historical Jesus of Nazareth. The relentless attempt of the Marcoses to disfigure history on the dictatorial rule of their patriarch through allies in Congress, the Du30 administration and deployment of pseudo-intellectuals like Ranhilio Aquino is a grim reminder to Filipinos never forget that dark chapter in the history of this country. To counter the lies, the falsehoods and falsification of history, present and future generation must be constantly reminded to always remember and never forget the widespread violations of human rights and massive theft of people’s money during the time the Marcoses brutally ruled the country.

Burying historical facts on the evil deeds of the Marcos dictatorship by honoring the birth date of the dictator and reducing them to mere constructs is a stern warning to Filipinos not to lower their guard and steadfastly hold on to the truth about the Marcos dictatorship. Only by not forgetting the past can Filipinos today counter the brazen and the blatant effort of the Marcoses to re-write history.