SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA — The Supreme Court has ruled that former President Ferdinand E. Marcos be buried in the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
Voting 9-5, the SC declares that President Rodrigo R. Duterte commits no grave abuse of discretion in fulfilling an election promise to the Marcos family.
The decision calls attention to the definitions of a hero and a dictator.
Google defines a hero as a person who is admired for his courage, outstanding achievement, or noble quality. While a dictator is a ruler with total power over a country and controlling by force.
A hero sacrifices the self for the other, a dictator sacrifices others for the self. A hero liberates his people from bondage, a dictator condemns his people into living death.
By example, heroes are the likes of Bonifacio, Rizal, and Ninoy; dictators the likes of Hitler, Polpot, and Macoy.
There is no intent here to hero-worship or denigrate a name. They serve only as placeholders in the intertwining roles of heroes and dictators in mankind’s history.
To rewind in time, Marcos declared Martial Law in 1971. Thus, he started to reign supreme all over the Philippines. The check and balance among the three independent branches of government receded into memory.
The Supreme Court became a deodorizer of naked power. Nothing is as vivid and graphic in this total surrender as the picture of a Chief Justice becoming an umbrella-bearer of the First Lady.
Congress, if not worse, became a rubber stamp of presidential decrees. Marcos decreed and it was written to forego the bill of rights in the name of state security, and to give up freedom for the promise of food security.
Media was muzzled. The rambunctious press prior to Martial Rule became state-run, and singing hosannas to the New Society.
Provincial and municipal governments were beholden to provincial PNP commanders.
Such was Marcos and the military’s stranglehold on the Filipinos until the 1986 People Power Revolution when the dictator was driven out of Malacanang. People Power became a byword resonating throughout the world as a peaceful means of overthrowing or seeking reforms from repressive governments, peaceful uprisings after EDSA such as the Velvet Revolution and the Arab Spring.
These are undeniable historical facts which the Supreme Court wants to revise by allowing the burial of a dictator on hallowed grounds.
Let us be clear about it. Let us call spade a spade, or a spade a shovel. Let our heroes only be buried in our national pantheon. Not a dog, nor a commie rebel.
Above all, not a dictator who in his incumbency saw the external debt balloon from US$360 million to US$26 billion, and left behind battered and badly-weakened democratic institutions.
The 1987 Constitution is written to avoid such political nightmare again.
Let Filipino heroes rest in peace. Let them rest among the real McCoy.
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Author’s email: [email protected]
