(Editor’s Note: Referring to the Libingan ng mga Bayani, author Alfredo “Ding” Roces explains why the burial site is only for authentic heroes.)
Heroes are persons who embody the highest character traits – patriotism, generosity, self-sacrifice, nobility of spirit – and who can be held up to the present and future generations, and indeed to the whole world, as examples of the best our people can offer,
We do not want to pass the message to the next generation that corruption and repression are acceptable and can be emulated. We want the youth and future generations to learn and absorb the values of honesty, integrity, selflessness, “delicadeza”, and true love of country and fellowmen.
There is a move being initiated to bury the late dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos in the Libingan ng Mga Bayani, thus automatically clothing him in the mantle of heroism.
This is historical revisionism of the worst sort, and we in the Yellow Ribbon Movement strongly oppose the attempt to transform a tyrant into a hero.
What, we ask, is Marcos’ supposed heroism based on? He destroyed democracy in this country, suppressed the media, subverted our political institutions, instituted one-party rule, coddled the military, delivered the economy into the hands of cronies, and amassed untold wealth for himself and his relatives. Most of the medals for his supposed war exploits were exposed by Alfred McCoy, in an investigative New York Times series in 1983, as fakes. Is that heroism?
During his dictatorship, at least 10,000 Filipinos experienced disappearance,
torture, or death, and it is only now that some victims are beginning to get some compensation, thanks to foreign courts.
Under him the economy collapsed in 1983, the only Asian country that succumbed to the international debt crisis. Economist Solita Collas-Monsod has written that “it took 17 years for the country to regain the previous level of real per capita income. Before him the Philippines had been second only to Japan among Asia’s economies.”
Our external debt to GDP ratio rose from 31% in 1971 to 94% in 1986, and debt service ate up one third of the national budget with nothing to show for it but a wrecked economy.
It is under his autocratic rule that Benigno S. “Ninoy” Aquino, Jr. was, first condemned to death by a military kangaroo court on trumped-up charges, and then gunned down in broad daylight on the airport tarmac while supposedly protected by hundreds of Marcos’ troops. To this day the mastermind of the most dastardly political assassination in Philippine history has not been revealed.
Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew, in his autobiography, observes: “…the culture of the Filipino people is a soft, forgiving culture. Only in the Philippines could a leader like Ferdinand Marcos, who pillaged the country for over 20 years, still be considered for a national burial.”
WE CAN FORGIVE ALL WE WANT, BUT WE MUST NEVER, NEVER FORGET! Jorge Santayana said: “Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.” The ENORMITY OF MARCOS’ CRIMES AGAINST THE COUNTRY SHOULD CATEGORICALLY RULE OUT ANY ATTEMPT TO BURY HIM WITH THE COUNTRY’S HEROES.
There should be no anti-heroes among the honoured dead. This transcends politics and is a matter of fundamental morality.