kakaiba ang timpla ng pro-marcos discourse, mas maanghang, mas palaban, mas mayabang. para kaya maipaabot sa, and impress upon the, supremes where (they think) public sentiments lie, in aid of bongbong winning his PET case and taking over as veep? next stop, the presidency?
sa social media, kaabang-abang ang tete-a-tete nina juan ponce enrile at ferdinand “bongbong” marcos. on sept 20 tungkol sa martial law, on sept 22 tungkol sa EDSA.
i expect that the exercise is meant to glorify martial law and to villify EDSA. it would be nice though if the two could be a little more candid and and even-handed. just as we, who are all set to scream revisionism!!! need to get a better handle on martial law and EDSA. martial law was not all bad just as EDSA was not all good.
a question i hope is addressed in da tete-a-tete: so, anong nangyari? bakit pabagsak na ang ekonomiya by 1982, even before ninoy’s assassination?
sabihin pa natin, for the sake of argument, that marcos did all the right things re infrastructure (except for a lemon or two) and he was able to electrify almost half the archipelago (not all of it, not even close) and he got uncle sam to pay rent for the US bases (kahit binarat tayo nang katakut-takot) atbp, not to speak of how culture and the arts kinda blossomed because of (and despite) imelda: bakit hindi na-sustain ang “progress”? bakit biglang ayaw nang magpautang ng mga bangko? bakit di tayo nakabayad ng mga utang? bakit ba talaga hindi naging isang singapore ang pinas?
it would be great to hear nationalists in the academe — the historians, the political scientists, the economists — having tv tete-a-tetes with the populace and sharing their findings on questions like these. we need answers based on facts, figures, records, documents. so we all — the elected and the electorate alike — can learn the lessons we need to learn, so we can correct our mistakes, so we can move forward.
the last thing we need is a conference of historians perorating on a notion of “public history” (now ongoing 20-22 sept) that i fear would legitimize, validate fictional (partisan, and/or “creative”) accounts of historical events, among other historical and cultural horrors.
bakit wala silang criteria of any kind? ano ito, let’s just be glad that we’re talking history, even if reeking of fiction and propaganda? i would sit in judgment: is the opinion sound and balanced? is it based on facts? the slightest whiff of fiction should be red-flagged and merit automatic rejection from the annals of public history.
it’s not as if our historians have nothing else to do. every september and february we hear it repeated that marcos did not give shoot orders that would have harmed civilians in EDSA. credible eyewitness and first-person accounts say he did. so who’s revising history? our historians, academic or “public”, should be weighing in. otherwise, anong silbi nila?