Category: marcos

fretting over marcos burial

while fretting (and getting a headache) over news of preparations to bury marcos sa libingan ng mga bayani this coming september, i checked out my blog archives and found this post of june 2011, burying marcos, when president aquino reportedly sent vp binay to ilocos to settle once and for all the matter of the former dictator’s burial.  and this, escudero, marcos, libingan ng mga bayani, of september 2015, when vp-wannabe chiz proved very much the son of a marcos man.  ito muna.

The Bong is Wrong

Marian Pastor Roces

The Marcos spawn was germinated between despots and suckled on the teats of tyranny.

Hyperbole?

Impossible to overstate Martial Law and the cruelties it has visited on the country. Not the least, 30 years after the lupusman’s fall, his son the Bong can still deploy stolen wealth to hoodwink the gullible.

The fat purses for hacks and sycophants, the expensive operations of spin on the body politic, the studied pooh-poohing of outrage, the rewards for opportunists, the sustainability of corruption, the social acceptance of thieves, the subversion of democratic debate by incendiaries deliberately lobbed onto the platforms, the wholesale revision of history (the liberties taken with facts), the pillage of all sense of decency — this is still the aftermath of Martial Law; its continuing radioactivity.

So, too, is it MartialLawAfterlife, for the Bong to think we are all fools. It is a tenacious culture produced by Martial Law that will consign all Filipinos to the hell of Marcosian recuperation via the sheer power of money and a vast reservoir of callousness.

But the Bong is wrong to imagine he can have his way with us. He is wrong to think that 5-some years of paying for and cranking up sleek revisionist history targeting the youth will hand him an entire generation of zombies. He is wrong to think that my children, who are bright and passionate about the Philippines, are his to stand on en route to Malacanang. While true, the capital invested in his comms juggernaut has paid off in enough kids mouthing fairy tales about some weird 1972 – 1986 Camelot, I am certain that the computations of the Bong’s magicians are off. And my certitude is not based on wishful thinking.

The Bong is wrong, too, to think that Martial Law torture victims, grassroots orgs with 4 or 5 decade long histories, advocates of democratic process, and just-citizens, like myself, who have cultivated a refined sense of indignation, wield no political clout; can be taken out of the election math. The Bong’s campaign appears to be built entirely of cynical calculation, which cannot possibly account for the power of the right side of history.

It is also miscalculation to equate the failures of the Philippine presidents since 1986 to the horrors of Martial Law. This is disingenuousness on a monster scale: to foist on the citizenry a bizarre moral vacuum, where all error and success have similar therefore non-value. And he spices up this hogwash with the similarly spurious assertion that things have remained the same; have gotten worse; have made Martial Law, in hindsight, a bit of heaven on earth

The Bong miscalculates our capacity, as a people, to endure the indignity of spin. He thinks he can slather us in shit ideas like political and economic degeneration in the past 30 years; and slide on our carcasses onto Marcosian resurrection, He misjudges our minds, sharpened by 30 years of struggling to correct the damage wrought by Martial Law on our political, economic and cultural systems; and our hearts, made robust by 30 years of exercising people-powered democracy.

People power, I agree, has been diminished by its branding as a middle class conceit. People power, however, is a cultural and political truth bigger than the middle class abilities to articulate and grasp; and bigger than any presidency, Aquino’s included, can “harness.” The majority of Filipinos, no matter how poor, have a real taste and capacity for democratic action, and this proclivity has so developed in the last decades that authoritarianism is not an option. Merely catching a whiff of Martial Law odium around the dictator’s namesake is enough to trigger a recoil.

Neither is it viable, his snake-oll salesmanship of prosperity under the shadow of centralized governance. The vision will not move Filipinos, at this point in time, who have tasted the sweet success of their self-empowerment. Indeed the culture of self-empowerment that was born under the fatal threats imposed by Martial Law is now in the cusp of full maturity.

The Bong spits on our democratic achievements to try to restore shine to his name and slick-slide his clamber to the top. He has become the smooth operator he was honed to be within the incubator that was Martial Law. He is as much a Frankensteinian creature of that unlamented regime, as are all recent exercises of impunity, whomever were the perpetrators. They are all Marcosian children. But the Bong, in particular, in his inability to recognize the Philippines of today — a nation now built on the mantra of self-empowerment, a nation so comfortable with its decentralizing systems that it will be hard put to revert to autocracy — he exhibits his own lack of credentials for the job he seeks.

The Bong is wrong to think the Filipinos haven’t, in fact, moved on.

bongbong, walden, EDSA

sabi ni bongbong marcos, the people power rovolt was american-inspired.  ibig ba niyang sabihin na kung hindi sa america, hindi nagkaroon ng people power na nagpatalsik sa diktador na si ferdinand nuong pebrero 1986?

Marcos lamented how Philippine history books failed to show how the US “inspired” the bloodless revolt that led to his father’s downfall.

“It was American-inspired,” he said. “Dahil yung pagsimula ay galing sa Amerika eh, galing kay [former US President Jimmy] Carter, kung maaalala niyo. Tapos yung sa IMF, tapos yung lahat ng ginawa ng Amerikano para pahinain yung administrasyon ng aking ama.”

He said the assassination of former Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. in August 1983 was only one of the many factors that triggered the uprising.

“Yung uprising na ganyan, ang Amerika may ginawa. Yun na nga, kagaya ng sabi ko, nag-start dun sa IMF na inipit-ipit ang ating mga pondo… Ako, nasa Palasyo ako nung panay ang message ni Ambassador [Stephen] Bosworth sa father ko na ganito, ganyan dapat gawin. Talagang involved sila. Ang sinasabi ko lang, involved sila.”

“Hindi naman isa lang bagay ang pangyayari. Kaya nangyari ang [1986 EDSA People Power Revolution], palagay ko maraming factors yan, at hindi natin masasabi. So ang sinasabi ko isang bagay diyan yung Amerikano, isang bagay diyan yung pagkapaslang kay Senator Aquino at siguro mga ibang bagay,” Marcos said.

ano daw?  that’s so convoluted and in-credible.  he’s saying that america, from the time of jimmy carter (democrat 1977-1981) to the time of ronald reagan (republican 1981-1989), conspired with the IMF to weaken the economy and bring the marcoses down?  carter was anti-marcos, yes, but it was mostly because of human rights violations.  otherwise, the marcos government had no problem borrowing billions of dollars from foreign banks, for development kuno, until 1983 when the shit hit the fan — not because ninoy was assassinated but because lumobo na ang foreign debt at walang pambayad kahit paiyakan — and the IMF had to step in.

When Marcos assumed presidency in 1966, the foreign debt of the Philippines stood below $1 billion. When he fled Malacañang in February 1986 during the first People Power, the country had a foreign debt of $28 billion…

…it was also Marcos who issued Presidential Decree (PD) 1177 or the Budget Reform Decree of 1977 that automatically appropriates for debt servicing regardless of how much is left of the country’s resources to fund basic social services.

…Between 1973 and 1982, the indebtedness of the Philippines grew by 27 percent per year. From 1976 to 1982, BSP data show that the foreign debt was swelling by an annual average of $2.8 billion. In 1982, due to automatic debt service, payments reached $3.5 billion, almost the same level of total foreign borrowing for that year and larger than the total foreign debt before Martial Law was declared.

The debt level became unmanageable, forcing the Marcos government to declare a moratorium on debt payments in 1983. The Philippines never recovered from its fiscal woes ever since, in spite of painful restructuring under the tutelage of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in exchange for the moratorium and additional funding.

bongbong should google “marcos foreign debt” for pages and pages of links to the details of the story.

and really?  america inspired people power?  how?  enrile is right, reagan troubleshooter philip habib was around the week before EDSA and when he left saturday noon he was certain something was about to break but he didn’t know what; neither he nor ambassador bosworth had the mind to imagine the possibility of a military defection being used by people power in cory’s name to oust marcos.  neither had any contact with the people, only with their so-called leaders — cory, enrile, marcos, maybe even cardinal sin, the generals, and the like — who all had no idea either what was coming, and who were certainly not in command, any of them, over the four days.

the people were.  in command.  it was the height of subversion.

after a week of civil disobedience,  boycotting the goods and services of of marcos- and crony-owned companies, from banks to manila bulletin, san miguel corporation and magnolia food products, rustans and the like, these people were in the throes of revolution.  if enrile and RAM had not defected, cory’s boycott movement would have gained steam as it spread to the visayas and mindanao.  eventually the cronies and other ruling oligarchs would have thrown up their hands in surrender.  marcos would have been compelled to resign to save the economy, and cory would have taken over anyway.  writ large as a nuanced sense of revenge that we pinoys exact sometimes, even on ourselves.

this is the same successful economic boycott that no one, but no one, ever speaks of or writes about — not the left, not the right, not civil society.  as though it never happened, as though no one knows about it, no one wants to remember, i guess.  because, really, it was even more subversive than the people gathering physically in large numbers in the same space to insist that marcos resign.  imagine.  we stopped buying san miguel beer and coke, we gave up manila bulletin, we snobbed places that served crony goods, it was exciting, and fun.  nakaka-high pala pag ang nakararami ay nagkakaisa in a common cause.  the power is awesome.  the whole is more than the sum of its parts.

finally, in the slew of opinion pieces and commentaries on the EDSA revolt in the run-up to the 30th anniv, i must say i take exception to walden bello’s campaign speech in los banos where he puts EDSA in such an ugly light .

Formally launching my campaign for the Senate at UP Los Banos, before an assembly of close to 1000 students, Feb 9, 2016. My message: “We are in the midst of a dual crisis: the crisis of the EDSA system of elite democracy and the crisis of the neoliberal economic paradigm that has brought us nothing but increased poverty and inequality and the plunder of the environment.”

“the EDSA system of elite democracy”?  it started with EDSA?  really?  for the first time, bello disappoints me.  alam naman nating pre-martial law pa ang elite democracy na yan, di ba.  it’s so leftist to ignore, if not snort at, the historic high points that were the six-day boycott and the four-day manifestation of people power in the story of marcos’s ouster.

it’s understandable naman.  after all, this is the same left that snootily boycotted the snap elections, thinking there was no way cory would win.  so it’s no surprise hearing/reading the leftists making EDSA maliit, and glorifying instead only the actions and sufferings of the left during the martial law period.  but i expected more from bello the senatorial candidate.

marcos redux

no surprise that marcos jr. is running not for the presidency but for veep.  testing the waters muna siyempre, kahit pa naniniwala silang the marcos regime 1965 to 1986 were good years, better than cory’s, fvr’s, erap’s, gloria’s, and noynoy’s put together.  in fact, say ni bongbong, kung di nag-EDSA, we would be advanced and first-world like singapore.  LOL.  yeah, those were good years, the best years, even, of THEIR lives, i.e, the marcoses’ and their cronies’, in particular, no doubt about it, but of nation?

please naman, itigil na ang pagbibilog sa ulo ng taongbayan.  the marcos regime was more bad than good for nation, the promised revolution from the center did not materialize, we’re still paying for foreign debts that went into failed (looted) industries and white elephants like the bataan nuclear power plant.  and let me not get started on how oppressive, repressive, suppressive that strong-arm rule was, thanks to how marcos the dictator and brilliant lawyer crafted proclamations, executive orders, decrees, and amendments not only to buttress, solidify his (and his heirs’ and cronies’ heirs’) hold on, and everlasting entitlement to, political power (overt and covert), but to preserve and promote forevermore the interests of the ruling class, from the protection of landholdings to control of the nation’s monetary policies — laws and policies that continue/d to be invoked by, and to serve, post-EDSA administrations, from aquino to aquino, mother and son.  how’s that for irony.

I am very happy that I was born into the Marcos family. I congratulate myself for picking my parents very well. I have never felt it to be a burden. I have only felt it to be an advantage, a blessing and I am very thankful that I am a Marcos,” he said in a press conference in Quezon City.

faced as we are with the prospect of a marcos to marcos, from father to son, the line  “I congratulate myself for picking my parents very well” is worthy of note.  it would seem that bongbong believes in past lives and reincarnation  – only in occult/mystical thought is there a notion of the unborn soul choosing one’s parents and the circumstances to be born to in the present life.  but the concept of reincarnation is all about evolving, growing in wisdom, leveling up, as in a spiral of evolution.  for bongbong, since he chooses to follow in the footsteps, and avail of the attendant advantages of the legacy, of his father, then to evolve,  that is, to level up, to save the country from perdition, to fulfill the promise of a national revolution sa puso, sa isip, at sa gawa  would demand that he acknowledge and learn, first, from the mistakes, the failures, the sins of the conjugal dictatorship.  otherwise he is fated to repeat the patterns of corruption and violence set, established, during the rule of his parents, and we should be very very afraid.

meanwhile, on social media, the question still is, should  we visit the sins of the father on the children?  i’ve always said, yes, in the sense that, if bongbong is sincere about moving the country forward, then he should acknowledge such sins, and do what he can to make amends.  only then can we have a conversation about marcos times not being all bad.  only then can the nation truly move forward.  but, no, i can’t see any of that happening soon, as the imeldific one seems still to be calling the shots, and she could live forever.