The Marcos legacy
Duterte can call the US president a “son of a bitch,” the United Nations “stupid and useless,” but he can’t say no to the son of an ousted and corrupt dictator.
Thirty years after we physically ousted him from Malacañang after marching in the streets for years, thirty-three years after Ninoy Aquino was brutally assassinated as he stepped off his plane and returned from exile, and longer than that after thousands of others were deprived of life and liberty, we still have the shadow of Ferdinand Marcos looming over our national life, with his son threatening to take over the vice- presidency to be a heartbeat away from his father’s old job. Much of this, of course, is helped along by our current President, Rodrigo Duterte, who is almost obsequious in his loyalty to the Marcos family.
President Duterte does not even try to be subtle in manifesting this loyalty. He actually explained in public early in his presidency why he could not appoint Vice- President Leni Robredo to his Cabinet. He owed it to his “friend,” Bong Bong Marcos. Fortunately, he eventually relented, it seems upon advice of one of his key campaign supporters, former President Fidel V. Ramos who must have advised him of his duty to ensure that his duly elected constitutional successor would be adequately prepared to take over his job, in case of a contingency. After all, at least three of his predecessors have died in office. And he is, moreover, past the average life expectancy of Filipino males. And he has himself admitted that he is not in the pink of health.
But now, because of a series of publicly expressed objections to some of his policy directions, e. g., alleged extrajudicial killings, restoration of the death penalty, reduction of age for criminal liability from 15 years old to nine years old, the President has retrieved his decision to appoint his official successor to the Cabinet. The last straw, it seems, was her public statement objecting to the Marcos burial in the Libingan ng mga Bayani. The crude delivery of the message via cellphone text by the Cabinet Secretary to Vice- President Leni Robredo featured instructions “to desist from attending Cabinet meetings starting on December 5.”
It has become more and more obvious that the Marcoses have our president by the xyz. He can call Barack Obama, the president of the most powerful nation on earth a “son of a bitch,” and the United Nations “stupid and useless.” But no, he cannot say No to the son of Ferdinand Marcos, whose family still has to return at least half of their estimated $ 10 billion worth of unexplained wealth.
Recent news items from New York City remind us of the billions of pesos worth of European impressionist paintings discovered in an apartment owned by the former secretary of former First Lady Imelda Marcos, Vilma Bautista, who has been accused of theft for selling one of the paintings for the equivalent of almost a billion pesos.
Today, the Marcos family has been back in political power in the Ilocos region and beyond, with their son almost getting elected vice-president, and still trying through an election protest, to get the post. Our president actually took Marcos junior with him on his official trip to China, and it seems, introduced him as his vice-president!
There are only two reasons I can think of for this incredible obsequiousness: delivery of the Ilocano and Waray blocs of votes to his presidential victory and, rumor has it, huge funding contributions to the Duterte presidential campaign.
Did Rodrigo Duterte not consider where all that money could have come from? Did he not consider that we have a Presidential Commission on Good Government ( PCGG) whose task is to recover unexplained wealth of Marcos and his cronies? And that enough evidence of the unexplained wealth has been collected, and an estimated half of it has been retrieved by the government? And we make such a big deal out of the alleged narco politics? What do we call the rumored and believable Marcos funding contributions? The late Haydee Yorac and her successor at PCGG, Ruben Carranza, were able to track down some of the Marcos wealth hidden away in Swiss banks under pseudonyms like “William Saunders.” There is still much to be recovered, but our PCGG has to be persistent. Can we now expect that PCGG will continue to pursue its mission? We might as well abolish the agency.
Rodrigo Duterte seems to attach higher moral value to “utang na loob ( debt of gratitude)” vs. the common good, the law, or a choice between right and wrong. He does not even hide it. This only means that he really has little sense of right or wrong. His mother was an activist versus the Marcos Martial Law. But Duterte justifies his loyalty to the Marcoses to the fact (still to be checked) that his late father was once in the Marcos cabinet. It seems he was governor of the then undivided Davao province, but Cabinet, I really don’t know what position the senior Duterte occupied.
It is a good thing that Vice President Leni Robredo has now freed herself from the constraints she held herself to as a member of Duterte’s Cabinet. Now she can speak her mind out loud or louder, when she does not agree with the administration’s policy decisions and actions. It is time to mobilize the splintered opposition. For the sake of our country and our people, we need a strong opposition; and Vicepresident Leni Robredo is willing to be its leader.
The Vice-President has also committed to support positive initiatives of the administration that she agrees with, such as those to reduce poverty and the peace initiatives. We agree with this position.
But for the sake of our country and our people, we need a strong opposition because the leadership does not always know right from wrong. And if we are not vigilant, we could one day wake up to find to our horror another Marcos sitting in Malacañang.