Ramos, MBC join outrage over Marcos hero’s burial

THE Makati Business Club (MBC) and former President Fidel V. Ramos have joined the expressed outrage following the surprise burial last Friday, Nov. 18, of the remains of Ferdinand E. Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani (Heroes’ Cemetery).

But President Rodrigo R. Duterte, in an interview with the press following his participation at the just-concluded APEC Summit, said “I stand by my decision,” even while maintaining he had no knowledge about that Friday’s shock funeral ceremony for the late dictator.

‘DECEPTIVE MANNER’

“Burying a deposed dictator within one of the most sacred final resting places does not make him a hero,” the MBC said in its statement on Monday.

“This event will make it difficult to impart the right lessons to future generations regarding a dark period in our history. We are shocked that the burial was undertaken in a deceptive manner, with undue haste and without respect for the process of allowing time for respondents to file their petitions to the Supreme Court ruling,” said the business group which counted among the anti- Marcos opposition following the 1983 assassination of Mr. Marcos’s rival, Senator Benigno S. C. Aquino, Jr., until the People Power Revolution in which Mr. Marcos was toppled by his own Armed Forces three years later.

“This unnecessary distraction to benefit one family draws our focus away from the critical and enduring need to unite and work with government on a common effort to build our economy, to increase our trade and to put poverty reduction and inclusive growth on top of our agenda to achieve a better life for all Filipinos,” the MBC said in a statement that marks the first by a business group to voice its opposition to the Marcos hero’s burial.

‘PROTEST CONFERENCE’

For his part, Mr. Ramos gathered the press at his Ramos Peace and Development Foundation, Inc. (RPDEV) office on Monday afternoon to announce that “[t]his press conference is the biggest protest you can think of,” in response to the Libingan ceremony for Mr. Marcos.

Mr. Ramos, a cousin of the late dictator, said it is Imelda R. Marcos, the dictator’s widow, who should apologize for the human rights violations during Martial Law.

Mr. Ramos headed the Philippine Constabulary during the dictatorship, at the time the armed unit blamed for the rampant human rights violations in that era.

Explaining his role then, Mr. Ramos said he had atoned for his part by his participation in the People Power Revolution, which he co-led in its early stage with then Defense Minister Juan F. Ponce Enrile. — Roy Stephen C. Canivel, Lucia Edna P. de Guzman, Ian Nicolas P. Cigaral, and Raynan F. Javil