‘SC failed the Filipino people’
By allowing the burial of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, the Supreme Court (SC) has “failed the Filipino people” and dredged up “a bad moment of history,” torture victim and former Commission on Human Rights ( CHR) chair Loretta Ann Rosales said yesterday.
In a telephone interview with The STAR, Rosales said the ruling was heartbreaking
because the SC “is looked at as one of the instruments for the Filipino people to seek redress for grievances.” She stressed a heroes’ funeral might “erase institutionally” his and his family’s sins against the people.
“The SC failed the Filipino people, not just the victims, but generations of Filipinos,” she pointed out. “I am very disappointed... The justices refused to look into the relevance of the whole point of the petition.”
Rosales, one of the petitioners against the move to have Marcos buried at the Libingan, suffered torture and other abuses at the hands of the military.
“It’s about the right to the truth, the right of the people to the integrity of history,” she added.
Rosales said she would discuss with her co-petitioners their next move – possibly file an appeal – upon her return to the country from Singapore.
CHR chair Chito Gascon said the decision will not erase the “uncontroverted fact of impunity for human rights violations committed during Martial Law.”
He said it is the CHR’s position that a Libingan burial for Marcos runs counter to human rights considerations in both the Constitution and in international law, particularly with regard to guarantees for reparation and non-repetition of human rights violations.
National Union of People’s Lawyers president Edre Olalia, who represented Bagong Alyansang Makabayan in a similar petition with the SC, said they would definitely appeal the decision.
“This is a big letdown at a time people are desperately seeking for some sense of decency, proportion, sanity and reason,” he said.
“We will fight back,” he added. “The scales of justice seem to have tilted. The court has spoken but will the public hear the message correctly?”
‘Horrible day’
Senators allied with the Liberal Party of former president Benigno Aquino III also voiced outrage at the ruling, with Sen. Francis Pangilinan calling its release “a horrible day for democracy.”
“Thanks to the Supreme Court the Philippines will be a laughing stock of the world,” he said.
“We kicked out a reviled dictator and now we are honoring him by burying him in our national heroes cemetery. No less than our Supreme Court wants our citizens, our children to honor a plunderer and tyrant. This is shameful and deplorable,” he said.
He pointed out the SC in the past called Marcos a “dictator … who caused 20 years of political, economic and social havoc in the country.”
Sen. Risa Hontiveros delivered a privilege speech condemning the ruling.
“I call on the President to respond to the challenge of history and reject with finality all plans to give Marcos a hero’s burial. I ask him to rise above his indebtedness and loyalty to the Marcos family. If at all that he received money from the Marcoses for his presidential bid, President Duterte has no right to return such favors with the history and the dignity of the Filipino people,” she said.
Senate President Aquilino “Koko” Pimentel III said he would seek a meeting with President Duterte to convince him to take back his order to bury Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
“Maybe the SC decision has established the right of somebody to be buried in a place called Libingan ng mga Bayani. But no court case will make somebody a hero in the hearts and minds of the people,” Pimentel said.
He said Duterte has the power to decide to push through or abandon the plan.
Sen. Paolo Benigno Aquino IV said the ruling was gravely disappointing. “Though we must respect the outcome, my heart goes out to the thousands of victims during the darkest years in Philippine history,” Aquino said.
Sen. Leila de Lima said the decision will result in “a gross distortion of a critical part of the history and evolution of Philippine democracy as we know it.”
Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV said the justices who voted for the burial effectively rewrote history and “in their purely legalistic eyes, the 1986 Edsa People Power Revolution, which was emulated globally and which we celebrate yearly, never happened.”
Sen. Grace Poe acknowledged that her parents – the late movie icon Fernando Poe Jr. and actress Susan Roces – knew the Marcoses but stressed she continues to oppose the burial of the late strongman at the Libingan.
Sens. Panfilo Lacson, Manny Pacquiao and Gregorio Honasan, however, voiced no objection to the SC ruling. Sen. Ralph Recto, for his part, urged his colleagues to study the ruling first before acting on a resolution filed by Hontiveros expressing the Senate’s opposition to the SC decision.
Wounds unhealed
Vice President Leni Robredo said she was saddened by the SC decision.
Robredo, a lawyer, said Marcos’ burial at the heroes’ cemetery “might pass the bar of legal technicality, but can never be consistent with morality and the spirit of the Filipino people power revolu- tion.”
She said the Marcos family’s refusal to take responsibility for atrocities of the regime is an insult to the Filipino people.
Robredo faces an election protest filed by Marcos’ son and namesake whom she defeated by a slim margin of more than 200,000 votes in the vice presidential race last May.
“Our nation’s healing begins with the acknowledgement of the truth and resolution of the past,” the Vice President said.
“To bury Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani would keep the wounds of the past unhealed,” she said.
Despite its decision, the SC should not allow the Marcoses to bury the remains of their patriarch right away as petitioners against his burial at the Libingan are expected to file a motion for reconsideration.
This was according to Rep. Edcel Lagman, who urged the high tribunal to extend its status quo ante order to give petitioners the chance to appeal the court’s decision.
Pending the resolution of a motion for reconsideration, the SC “needs to reissue or extend the status quo ante order against the Marcos burial to prevent the case from being rendered academic by a precipitate Marcos interment and to accord due respect to the final decision of the Supreme Court,” he said.
“A high sense of patriotism and the common standards of reason and logic bar the interment of Marcos in the cemetery of heroes. We cannot elevate a villain and a dictator to the status of a hero,” he pointed out.
He said it is ironic that those who disappeared during martial law and who were never found were not afforded the opportunity of a burial, while the man ultimately responsible for their disappearance would be buried in a cemetery for heroes.
Bayan Muna Rep. Carlos Zarate said he was dismayed by the SC ruling.
“Marcos remains no hero: history cannot be distorted by this SC ruling. Marcos remains to be on one the world’s worst dictators, tyrant, plunderer and human rights violator. We will continue our fight for justice,” he said.
For her part, Rep. Kaka Bag-ao of Dinagat Islands said the SC decision allowing Marcos’ burial at Libingan “is an affront to the democracy we have rebuilt after he, his family and his cronies destroyed it during one of the darkest times of our history.”
Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez, for his part, said that with the SC decision, “the rule of law prevailed over partisan emotions.” Rep. Lito Atienza of Buhay said everyone should respect the tribunal’s ruling. “It’s about time Marcos is buried wherever the family wants,” he said.
Myopic
Militant group Akbayan called the SC decision a tragic, myopic, disrespectful reading of the Constitution.
“This decision was never just about two families, or the thousands of victims of human rights violations. This was about each and every citizen from whom Marcos stole,” said Akbayan in a statement.
“This was about our country, and the damage that Marcos wrought upon us when he centralized power unto his own hands and lined his pocket with our money, our taxes, to enrich himself, his family and his cronies,” the statement read. “We are all victims of Marcos.”
For an official of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP), the SC decision was a “slap in the face” of the human rights victims during martial law.
“The decision certainly does not help in the healing of emotional wounds infl by the Marcoses’ arrogant denial of the atrocities committed against hapless Filipinos during Martial Law,” CBCP Public Affairs Committee (PAC) executive secretary Fr. Jerome Secillano said.
Renato Magtubo, Partido ng Manggagawa (PM) chair, said the SC – in its decision – has in effect revised history.
“There was once a dictator named Ferdinand Marcos, a human rights violator and a plunderer of the country’s wealth that was ousted by the people in an uprising in 1986. This revision of history will not unite the people,” Magtubo noted.
Migrante International has also expressed dismay at the SC decision. –