High court blocks Marcos burial at heroes’ cemetery
THE Supreme Court, sitting en banc, handed down an order keeping the remains of the late strongman Ferdinand E. Marcos in a mausoleum in his hometown in Batac, Ilocos Norte.
The status quo order, in effect for 20 days, meant the government can’t move to implement a plan to bury the former president with full military honors at the Heroes’ Cemetery ( Libingan Ng Mga Bayani) in Taguig City on Sept. 18.
The court also postponed to Aug. 31 at 10 a.m. the oral arguments on the legal challenges against the honorary burial, which total to five as of Monday. It initially set Aug. 24, 9 a.m., the date for the hearings.
The oral arguments will be livestreamed online by the Supreme Court Public Information Office, a request granted by the court en banc.
The development comes after the government as well as Mr. Marcos’s heirs had already responded — through pleadings submitted to the high court — to the first three petitions against the burial, arguing that the order for Marcos’s interment is within executive powers.
All five petitions were ordered consolidated on Tuesday.
The court has yet to issue an order for the adverse parties to file their comments on the new consolidated petitions, as the fourth and fifth petitions raised additional arguments against the planned burial.
A campaign promise of Mr. Duterte, the plan was articulated in an Aug. 7 memorandum where Defense Secretary Delfin N. Lorenzana directed Armed Forces Chief General Ricardo R. Visaya to prepare for the interment of Mr. Marcos’s remains at the state cemetery.
Opposition against it had been mounting, with critics arguing it is an attempt at revising history, associating heroism and national pride with Mr. Marcos whose two-decade dictatorship was characterized by military abuse and the torture of thousands.
Marcos’s despotic rule also established an oligarchy, with his allies named executives of state-controlled firms. Mr. Duterte, who presents himself as anti-oligarch, had dismissed the economic gains of the previous administration as merely benefitting the elite.
NOT A TRIER OF FACTS
In their comments filed yesterday, Mr. Marcos’s heirs argued the irrelevance of the human rights violations alleged by the petitioners and said such allegations require factual determination by the court.
“Allegations of the human rights personally experienced by petitioners and of others, in general, after the declaration of Martial Law on September 21, 1972, and for three ( 3) years thereafter are denied,” read the 32-page comment of Mr. Marcos’s heirs.
The government through the Solicitor General argued that burying Mr. Marcos’s remains at the Heroes Cemetery does not confer him the title “hero,” essentially saying the burial grounds’ name is a misnomer.
State lawyers also argued that the 1948 law cited by the petitioners does not refer to the Heroes’ Cemetery when it limits the people to be interred there as “worthy of emulation” but to burial grounds yet to be constructed in East Avenue, Quezon City.
The Taguig burial grounds — where the remains of Filipino war heroes and revered personalities are laid to rest — was previously called the Republic Memorial Cemetery until a proclamation by former President Ramon dF. Magsaysay renaming it to Heroes’ Cemetery.
Mr. Duterte is not bound by a 1992 agreement signed by then President Fidel V. Ramos allowing the return of Mr. Marcos’s body to the Philippines but only for burial in his home province, the government also said.
Mr. Ramos had earlier said Congress, as representatives of the Filipino people, should decide on the matter.
The government also said the petitioners failed to cite a specific provision of the Constitution in assailing the ordered burial, responding to the third batch petitioners who argued that the 1987 Charter is anti-dictatorship in spirit.
The first two petitions as well as the fourth one had cited the 1948 law, while the third and fifth petitions had cited the Philippine Charter.
The third batch of petitioners argued that the Constitution itself seeks to prevent another dictatorship, making the honorary burial of the despot Marcos against the essence of the Charter.
The fifth petition, which the government has yet to respond to, cites specifically the Constitution’s equal protection clause by placing the deposed dictator alongside the remains of people qualified to be in the historical burial grounds.
The first batch of petitioners was led by former congressman and martial law-era political detainee Satur C. Ocampo, the second batch by former congressman Edcel C. Lagman, and the third batch by former Commission on Human Rights Chairperson Loretta Ann P. Rosales, a victim of torture like Mr. Ocampo.
The fourth batch of petitioners includes members of the Ninoy Aquino Movement (NAM) led by former senator Heherson T. Alvarez, while the fifth batch of petitioners consists of students from the University of the Philippines represented by Jesus N. Falcis III.