The Impunity of Denial: A Discussion of Martial Law and the Importance of History.
Author’s Note: I know endnotes are not necessarily in vogue or popular online, but I hope the reader will spend the time needed to go through them. There are additional insights, discussions, and supporting points that inform and, I hope, enhance the primary text of the essay. Thank you.
A rich historical sense[1] is critical in the formation and maintenance of a national self-identity. Within the multiplicity of historical inquiry, understanding the past in all of its complexities and contextual elements impacts our view of the present and the world in which we inhabit. The obverse of that, the concerted attempt to suppress and flatten the rich depth and complexity of our history, is denialism. In our search for a strong, encompassing self-identity, it will be an enlightening historical sense that illuminates the path[2].
Historical denialism is insidious, it worms its way into our national consciousness. Denial and suppression attempts to separate us from our past, our history. Denial creates doubt. In those seeds of doubt, denial offers opportunity for demagogues and provocateurs to exert control. A people, or a nation, are informed and formed by their past. Their histories tell the story of who they are, how they came into being, and the narrative of their formation. Historical denialism, or purposefully excising and suppressing moments, events, or even eras of monumental importance, tries to rearrange and take command of that narrative. History is powerful and power. He who holds the keys to our past, who can define who we are, holds sway over who we are in the present, and can guide what we become in the future[3]. Convincing a people to accept those denials as fact cleaves them from their past. It is an undertaking being done today by elements in the Philippine political and social sphere.
Ferdinand Marcos grasped the power of history. He understood, perhaps instinctively, the power of a compelling, mythologizing historical narrative[4]. One of his key efforts was to re-craft Philippine history, not in his image, but in support of his authoritarian rule[5]. History became a tool of internally focused statecraft and myth-making propaganda: A coordinated effort to inculcate the idea that Marcos’s rule was pre-ordained, that the wheels of Philippine history had been inexorably turning towards his reign. The insidious of his efforts to subvert Philippine history to support his rule are still being felt today. There was entire generation inculcated in the propaganda of the strongman, of the need for a guiding hand to ensure our prosperity[6]. The ultimate redemption of this Marcosian historical worldview and narrative is what underpins the return of Imelda Marcos and the Marcos family to the center of political and social life in the Philippines. By their reckoning, as they ascend the political ladder in the Philippines, they get closer to redemption, to redeeming the legacy of Ferdinand Marcos and reclaiming the historical glory of their family[7].
This is not to say history is singular or only valid from one perspective, far from it. Historical inquiry embraces the multiplicity of perspectives and views[8]. There is a rightful tension between national narrative histories, or really any narrative history, and those of interrogative cultural and social histories. In truth, they inform and enhance each other. A rich and active historical space is a necessity, a requirement, for the formation of national identity. Those who have a well-developed and enriched sense of historical self are not easily subverted, nor easily controlled. The same holds true for nations and imagined communities.
Even more damaging than historical denialism is forgetting. Denialism can be counter-acted. Events of the past can be resurrected, the sacrifices and suffering of our forbearers consecrated. Forgetting is something else entirely – it is the absence of history. It eats away at our national self. It undermines our social fabric. When we forget what has happened and where we came from: We do not exist as a people in that state. We are unmoored and unanchored in the modern world, rudderless and adrift. Without the centering strength of knowledge of self, a person, much less a people, can be subverted by honeyed words and silken promises of shining tomorrows, or even a glorious return to a false Golden Age of the past promised by would-be tyrants. Our rejection of that unmooring, the repudiation of denialism and forgetting, is embodied in two simple words: Never Again. However, to give body, depth, and heft to those words requires a full, complex, and even balanced understanding of the Marcos regime, how it came into being, and the deleterious effects of Martial Law. Never Again needs to be imbued with a rich historical sense and consciousness to truly be what we need it to be: A talisman against impunity and a warning against willingly surrendering control democratic spaces to a dictator. To truly be resonant, Never Again has to embody a historical sense of what occurred and transcend the limitations of being just what was in the past[9][10].
The Tallies of Martial Law
When contemplating Martial Law we almost always begin with the numbers. They are a good place to begin, but also perhaps not the best place to begin. They are staggering, almost unfathomably so. Looking at them, evaluating them in a vacuum or without contextualizing narratives, almost leaves a person cold to what they represent. The economic costs, on a very high-level, represent almost overwhelming personal loss and ground-level tragedies. The Marcos regime, by the numbers, by the stories and historical context, stands apart in the variety of its depredations: From extra-judicial killings, to corruption, to government sanctioned policies that turned Filipinos into commodities, to the sheer breadth of institutional and social deconstruction, to the tallies of impunity. An entire social, political, historical, cultural[11], and political order was up-ended, deconstructed, and re-established with one overriding consideration in mind: The aggrandizement of a family. This was not some simplistic dichotomy of bayan o sarili. No. The Marcos Era was nation subverted to support the whims and wishes of one family. It was the Marcos family appropriating Philippine nationhood. All others, outside of a select coterie of hangers-on, were viewed as vassals. Those who disagreed were treated as refuse; discarded by the sides of roads as grisly warnings against countervailing opinion and perceived ‘disorder.’
The basic tally of human rights violations usually covers the following[12]:
During Martial Law, there were 3,275 extra-judicial killings, a number higher than the 2,115 under Pinochet in Chile;
The military (and PNP) tortured 35,000 and jailed, for any minor ‘infraction’ they deemed, over 70,000;
77% of the victims, 2,520, were purposefully ‘salvaged’; left by roadsides, bloodied, beaten, dismembered, mutilated. They were savage reminders from a repressive regime to anyone who dared speak up or step out of line: This will be you. Fear was Marcos’s currency. The bodies were the tallies.
Behind these numbers were state-sanctioned and created ‘task forces’ led by men such as General Fabian Ver or General Fidel Ramos[13] who carried out the policies of terror and state terrorism embraced by Ferdinand Marcos. These roving sanctioned squads (death, torture, and kidnap squads if you will) eventually degenerated from discipline and order maintaining police and military groups into terror wielding mechanisms for oppression and control. The centralization of power was a critical feature during Martial Law. Undergirding that centralization were carefully cultivated tools wielded by men loyal to Marcos. These weapons were utilized to ensure power was retained by Marcos and his loyalists: Power and control at the expense of civil society and its attendant rights, under the guise of ‘discipline’ and order[14].
What those numbers also represent was an initial willingness on the part of civil society to surrender their hard-won democratic rights for the nominal appearance of ‘order’ and a suspect assertion of broader social ‘discipline.’ We should not overlook that, on the whole, civil society, for a variety of reasons, was relieved when Martial Law was declared. We were complicit, at least initially, in the establishment of Martial Law and willingly allowed Marcos to begin rapidly consolidating and centralizing power. A Faustian bargain if there ever was one, as Alfred McCoy called the early collaboration of civil society with Marcos’s Martial Law. Perhaps that complicity somehow still weighs on our collective conscience. Perhaps that guilt still, subconsciously, informs our collective denialism and forgetfulness.
Many of those victims, the 35,000 tortured, the 70,000 imprisoned, have only recently been awarded financial compensation; despite a more than one legal case being awarded in their favor[15]. This dereliction of duty on the part of the Philippine government in the intervening years is another collective stain on our conscience. While they have received compensation, they, and we, are still awaiting closure[16]. We will not find closure and reconciliation without acceptance and understanding, without a reckoning. For years, at the behest of men like Ramos, we were denied that reckoning, that truth. Denying Martial Law is a denial of the pain and suffering of victims and their families. Blood money will not assuage that, though it will help the victims. It is a recognition of their suffering, of all they went through, small though it may be. Each check given, each peso dispensed, is a repudiation of Martial Law. It is an acknowledgement of Never Again. There was a darkness that overshadowed Martial Law under the Marcos regime. It is a darkness that continues to haunt us today[17].
To the count above, we must also include the scope of loss in Mindanao. We often remember the sheer savagery, the betrayal, of the Jabidah Massacre. However, we do not remember the overwhelming cost that came after Jabidah, when Marcos began to prosecute a campaign of suppression in Mindanao reminiscent of the United State massacres a half century earlier. The count includes 60,000-80,000 Filipinos dead within a seven year period (1965-1976), hundreds of thousands displaced, and billions of dollars in estimated economic loss[18]. Those are staggering numbers by any measure. When they are combined with the traditionally counted tally of human rights violations it speaks to an almost overwhelmingly destructive period in our history. Much like the aftermath of the Spanish-American War or the Japanese Occupation, the end of the Marcos era saw the loss of a generation of leaders and activists. We are still paying for those losses today.
The most pointed public criticism of the Marcos regime, even more than the voluminous human rights violations, is usually reserved for the sheer breadth of plundering that took place during Martial Law. Corporations where confiscated under the guise of nationalization and entrusted in the hands of cronies and hangers on. More than one of those cronies, who acted as guardians of Marcos wealth, are among the wealthiest in the Philippines. Imelda Marcos has admitted, nay bragged, about how they owned and controlled all corporations in the Philippines[19]. This did not occur by happenstance, nor did their wealth and control of these companies exist prior to 1972. But, because of our relatively benighted historical sense, many actually believe these obfuscations and verbal chicanery. More stunningly, new ‘fruits’ of corruption continue to be found today. For example, Imelda’s former secretary was recently indicted in the United States for holding missing artwork, ostensibly part of the fabled Marcos loot[20]. Estimates are the Marcoses alone plundered around ten billion dollars, this does not include assets or companies confiscated and entrusted to others. Of that, the Philippine government has identified and reclaimed approximately four billion dollars worth of assets and bank accounts. But, again, more is still being discovered. Just two years ago, Imee Marcos was linked to hidden offshore trust accounts, which likely hold more of the lost wealth[21].
The common riposte to discussing Marcos plunder and wealth is either to deny it ever occurred or imply the plunder is excusable because of the accomplishments of Marcos as president[22]. With regards to the accumulation of vast quantities of wealth, it is illuminating to contextualize what was happening in the Philippine economy on a macro-level during his reign. Far from a Golden Age, a number of economists have aptly demonstrated that the Marcos regime witnessed the dissolution of the Philippines as an economic power in the region. Growth was very shallow, in fact any growth was marked by further impoverishment during the Marcos Era. For example, in 1962 the GDP per capita was $495, by 1986 it was $540; a minimal uptick, almost statistically insignificant. Our neighbors witnessed far more explosive and consistent growth across the board; as a matter of fact, we were the only major Asian economy to experience such limited growth, in reality decline in real terms.
Thailand’s GDP per capita grew from $345 (1962) to $760 (1986)[23]. Taiwan’s expanded from $505 to $3,790 over the same period, while South Korea saw phenomenal growth from $330 to $2,345. Marcos squandered our economic dynamism and turned us into a cesspool of inequality and a country undone by poverty. From the same source, as above, our debt by 1986 was $27.2 billion. Compared to the countries above, Thailand’s was $18.7 billion, Taiwan’s $12.7 billion, and South Korea was $54.5 billion. However, debt-to-GDP was: 0.90 for the Philippines, 0.47 for Thailand, 0.17 for Taiwan, and 0.56 for South Korea. Finally, it is worthwhile discussing poverty briefly. In 1965, national poverty incidence was rated at 41%, by 1971 it was 43.8%, and in 1975 it was 51.5%. 1985 estimates were 58.9%. In 1983, Mangahas estimated poverty incidence at around 55%[24]. If that is the Golden Age to which the Marcoses and their loyalists wish to return us, then the historical denialism runs deeper than originally thought.
Never Again and the Redemption of the Filipino Historical Self
We have a discourse problem. Issues become trivialized by a reduction to personality. We see this clearly in how the struggle of civil society against oppression during Martial Law has become distilled into a rather simplistic opposition of Marcos versus Aquino. Forgotten are the later period deep and wide rejection of and resistance to the rule of Marcos by vast swathes of civil society. The deeper issues surrounding Martial Law, only briefly touched on here, are ignored in positing the Marcos versus Aquino. That is a critical failure on our part, one that emboldens and empowers Marcos loyalists. While, perhaps superficially, Marcos and Aquino have become the totems of opposing views on Philippine history, present, and future, we need to consider the deeper consequences of Martial Law and authoritarianism versus an open and multifaceted democratic space.
What we cannot, should not, forget is revolution is civil war. Revolutions upend existing social and political order, however it is folly to think that everyone is in agreement with that upending, or even what the ‘new’ social order should be. If we look at 1986 and the intervening years through the prism of civil war, we can easily deduce the arraying of forces: Loyalists who still adhere to the strong-man, Marcos informed dictatorial government, pro-democratic space advocates and all the multiplicity of views that entails. There were counter-coups and attempts at redeeming a fallen idol during the administration of Corazon Aquino, abetted by ‘former’ and extant Marcos loyalists. In part, we can view the resurrection of Fidel Ramos and some of the policies he enacted as another battle in an on-going civil war. There was the ascension of another loyalist and Marcos adherent in Erap Estrada, and post-GMA, the return of a scion of the Aquino family as the most recent riposte in this continuing civil war. The fact remains that we are still gripped in the midst of the after-effects (perhaps even on-going throes) of a convulsive civil war rooted in the 1986 EDSA Revolution and the toppling of the Marcos regime. 2016 looms as yet another battlefield, one perhaps that is the most important since 1986. As we have discussed, the very return of the Marcoses to politics was designed to push the continuation and redemption of the historical narrative crafted by Ferdinand Marcos. The ascension of a Marcos to Malacañang will bring them one step closer to historical absolution. However, wedged between opposing forces are those two little words: Never Again.
We have struggled to find a sense of national reconciliation with the Marcos Era. Some sectors, most recently Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago[25], have argued that an apology is not necessary[26]. This has been proven false time and again in other countries wracked by similarly violent upheavals such as ours. Apologies matter and they help bring us closer to finding a common national redemption, not the absolution of the oppressors. Without an apology, “Never Again” has taken on a sort of totemic mantra for those who would deny the insidiousness of historical denialism and revisionism, who would deny the much sought after conclusion of the Marcos false historical narrative and the absolution of the Marcos family through their ascension to the pinnacle of Philippine political and social spheres. For adherents (loyalists as we have referred to them in this essay) of the Marcos regime, or at the very least the forms that entailed (dictatorial centralized strongman governance) the phrase “Never Again” is seen repudiation of their personality of choice. And it is, in a way. Yet, “Never Again” also speaks to something far deeper than just a clash of personalities. It is a rejection of that form of authoritarian governance, of the willingness for Filipinos to give up their liberty, to sacrifice the lives of neighbors and family members, for nothing more than the ephemeral sense of ‘security’ brought on by increasingly oppressive squads of police and military acting with impunity. “Never Again” is imbued with a historical sense of responsibility for safe-guarding the future of our country, for ensuring that democratic spaces remain such that they are. It is also a warning, one that we should continue to heed, against rampant pillaging and corrupt practices that bring a nation to its knees. Jose Rizal warned against this[27]. Rizal specifically said that unless Filipinos learn to stand up, heads held high, and ready to proclaim themselves as Filipinos, they will just be fodder for further tyranny; the slaves of the past become the tyrants of today. Rizal was right. In his way, Rizal was demanding, calling, for the creation of a deep and abiding sense of historical self for the Filipino. Without that, we as a nation are ripe and ready for the next imperial master to come along, the next tyrant and dictator. When he wrote that warning the Philippines was under Spanish rule. We would suffer the indignities of the reign of three imperial masters after: the United States, Japan, and finally Ferdinand Marcos.
We must imbue the phrase “Never Again” with a variety of meanings: From the need for a deeper richer historical sense, the repudiation of historical denialism and forgetfulness, to a more political sense as a mantra against impunity and authoritarianism. All are needed in charting the future of the country. What we cannot allow is “Never Again” to be reduced solely to repudiating the Marcos family; that opens up the reduction of discourse to simple discussions of personalities, it strips away the context of what the Marcos family stands for and how destructive the Marcos regime was for this country. That is what they want. Today, the Marcos family has re-imagined Martial Law as a sort of Golden Age of benevolent authoritarianism – this sort of historical chicanery is enticing precisely because we lack a deep and enriching historical sense. Their historical denialism is winning. That is a loss for us all. “Never Again” speaks, not only of the Marcoses, but of a return to their way of thinking, to the abrogating of human rights for nebulous “peace and order,” for a return to state institutionalized plunder as a way of life, and the impunity of a nation subsumed and consumed by a Conjugal Dictatorship, lashed by the whims of a family.
Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos well understood the power of history and compelling historical narrative. They used history to their advantage, crafting a state-sponsored mythologizing historical story supporting their regime and embedding in social consciousness the sheer ‘rightness’ of their rule. In their telling, they were the power from whence all else flowed in the Philippines – Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos were the fountainhead of Philippine nationalism. This is historical revisionism on a grand scale, abusive in ways we cannot fathom. We are still coping with the insidiousness of their story. History informs identity. It cannot be left solely in the hands of those with nefarious agendas geared towards self-aggrandizement and ultimately the redemption of one of the darkest periods in our history. Historical denialism and grand revisionism attempts to remake us in the image of someone else. Denial and forgetting consumes the historical self and leaves nothing in its wake. By any other name, this is impunity.
“Never Again” is a call to many things, for many different people. But at its heart, “Never Again” is a mantra, a talisman, against the insidiousness of historical denialism, a rejection of the debilitation of forgetting. It is a reminder and a call to historical action and remembrance; to remember who we are, from where we came, and what we may yet become. We are not slaves, nor are we tyrants. Our history tells us this. Our past has the ability embolden and ennoble us, even as we reconcile with its dark notes. Even then, those dark periods are spaces from which we can draw strength and warnings for future actions and decisions. Those dark notes are who we are as well. History tells us who we are, in all of its facets. Our collective history is why we can proudly call ourselves Filipinos. We should never forget that.
[1] I will use the Gordon S. Wood’s concluding definition of ‘historical sense’ for this essay: “What we need more than anything is a deeper and fuller sense of the historical process, a sense of where we have come from and how we have become what we are. This kind of historical sense will give us the best guide we’ll ever have for groping our way into an unpredictable future.” pg. 16, “The Purpose of the Past” by Gordon S. Wood.
[2] The point, rather labored here, is that a firm understanding of history in all of its complexities offers a widening of our intellectual horizons. “History adds another dimension to our view of the world and enriches our experience. Someone with a historical sense sees reality differently: in four dimensions. If it is self-identity that we want, then history deepens and complicates that identity by showing us how it has developed through time. It tells us how we got to be the way we are. And that historically developed being is not something easily manipulated or transformed.” pg. 11-12, “The Purpose of the Past” by Gordon S. Wood.
[3] “Political and other leaders too often get away with misusing or abusing history for their own ends because the rest of us do not know enough to challenge them.” – Margaret MacMillan, The Uses and Abuses of History
[4] This sense is not unique to Marcos, but reminiscent of every dictatorial government, most ‘comically’ seen today in North Korea. As Margaret MacMillan noted: “Dictators, perhaps because they know their own lies so well, have usually realized the power of history. Consequently, they have tried to rewrite, deny, or destroy the past.” pg. 22 “The Uses and Abused of History” by Margaret MacMillan.
[5] Vicente Rafael, in his essay Patronage and Pornography: Ideology and Spectatorship in the Early Marcos Years, touched precisely on this: “As Malakas and Maganda, Ferdinand and Imelda imaged themselves not only as the “Father and Mother” of an extended Filipino family; they could also conceive of their privileged position as allowing them to cross and redraw all boundaries, social, political, and cultural. As such, they likewise thought of themselves as being at the origin of all that was ‘new’ in the Philippines – for example, the ‘New Society’ (1972-1981) and the ‘New Republic’ (1981-1986). To the extent that they were able to mythologize the progress of history, the First Couple could posit themselves not simply as an instance, albeit privileged one, in the circulation of political and economic power; they could also conceive of themselves as the origin of circulation itself in the country.”
[6] While I may quibble with Reynaldo Ileto a bit concerning his structuring of ilustrado, within the context of Marcos and the rewriting of history, his observation in his work “Outlines of a nonlinear emplotment of Philippine History” rings true, and pointed: “The sacred character of the state is evidenced in Marcos’ self-consciously Hegelian argument that the state was the ‘self realization of the Absolute’ and that the form of constitutional authoritarianism his regime practiced – in which through him as ‘world historical’ Leader the guiding hand of History/Progress operated – was the only way that the ilustrado dream could be realized.” If we link Ileto’s observation to what the Marcos family and their loyalists are undertaking today, the pointed denial and obfuscation of Martial Law, through their ‘redemptive’ or ‘triumphant’ return to Philippine politics and Malacañang, we can see how steeped they are in the grand and mythologizing historical narrative Marcos constructed for himself. In other words, they are seeking the redemption of Marcos through their ‘history-making’ return to the forefront of Philippine politics and society. This is the insidiousness of denial and forgetfulness of which we speak.
[7] Imelda Marcos specifically said this was the intent of the family in an interview in 2010: “Marcos made it clear she wanted to achieve redemption for her husband, who is accused of stealing billions of dollars from state coffers during his 20-year rule, which ended with a “people power” revolution in 1986.
“I did this to ensure and uphold political integrity and the truth,” Marcos said when asked why she had decided to run for congress.” She won. As did her children, Imee for governor and Bongbong for Senate. Those wins have only further emboldened them and their followers.
[8] It is critical to note though, that historical inquiry follows very specific standards and processes: the interrogation of primary sources, the utilization of all available evidence at hand, and a defense of why certain pieces of evidence were given precedence over another. Evidence and documents are never discarded out of hand, thus it is the job of the historian to explain why s/he minimized one piece of evidence in favor of another. That is part of the historical process. Purposeful suppression is either denialism or propaganda.
[9] A full contextualization and discussion of the multi-faceted roots and effects of the Marcos regime and Martial Law is well beyond the scope of this essay. However, through various footnotes and brief discussions, I hope to offer a somewhat fuller understanding of what occurred during that period, while helping explain why it should not be forgotten, rejected, or whitewashed. This is not a historical essay, but it is a discussion of the past and the present. Consider it more a cultural and social critique, than a traditional historical work resting on a survey and interpretation of primary and secondary sources.
[10] At the same time, this is not a call for us to be held hostage by our past, far from it. There is something about the “pastness of the past” that always must be remembered; however, our past informs who we are today. There is a critical difference between wallowing in the depredations of the past, purposefully denying the scope of those depredations, and utilizing the past to help broaden and deepen our understanding of the present, and discovering the course of our collective future.
[11] “Socio-economic failure, national fragmentation, civic inaction and indifference can be traced to the Filipinos’ lack of consciousness for Philippine history and culture, the core of national identity. While the Aquino government may not have bequeathed substantial subsidy for culture, it has provided five years of freedom. Artists and cultural managers no longer need fear imprisonment for criticizing or differing with the government. People Power and Aquino’s government have assured the right to have an opinion and make it known.” – Felice Sta. Maria, November 17, 1991.
[12] All numbers drawn from Alfred McCoy’s article, Dark Legacy: Human Rights Under the Marcos Regime.
[13] Side note: Of course, Ramos went on to become President of the Philippines. However, relatively unremarked in evaluating his presidency is Ramos’s complicity in upholding the impunity that occurred during Martial Law, and by his hand. He moved to offer absolute amnesty of torturers, many of them were his men. He raised instruments of impunity to high positions within his government. Ramos even went so far as to stymy the awarding of sequestered Swiss accounts owned by the Marcos family to human rights victims. It was only recently, under the Aquino administration, that finally Marcos human rights victims were awarded any compensation.
[14] “Over the longer term, however, the regime’s reliance on this police power for covert control harbored a fatal contradiction. Along with his imposition of order Marcos created constabulatory antisubversion squads, arming them with both formal decrees and informal impunity to suppress pro-democracy dissidents. After five years of ‘constitutional authoritarianism,’ Marcos’s security squads shifted from formal mass arrests to extrajudicial operations. At his [Marcos] regime’s celebrated ‘discipline’ degenerated into systemic state terror and conspicuous corruption, citizens sense the failure of their Faustian bargain with dictatorship, swapping democracy for stability, and slowly withdrew their support. Marcos’s legitimacy faded, opposition grew, and in the end his massive police and military apparatus retreated before a million outraged citizens massed on Manila’s streets. Law and order were central to the regime’s early acceptance, but this legitimacy was undermined over time by the same police apparatus that had been used to impose order.” pg. 397-398, “Policing America’s Empire” by Alfred W. McCoy.
[15] The World Bank’s Stole Asset Recovery Initiative has an excellent summary of the various cases against Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos and the history of the Swiss Marcos account saga: “The Marcos case began in 1986 when the Federal Council ordered bank accounts to be frozen. In 1990, the Swiss Federal Supreme Court approved the handover to the Phillippines [sic] of bank documents relating to the Marcos family, but ruled that the actual return of assets would be conditional upon a final and absolute judgment by a Phillippine [sic] court. In 1997, the Court established that the majority of the Marcos foundation assets were of criminal origin and permitted their transfer to a escrow account in Manila, even though no Phillippine [sic] court ruling had yet been issued.”
[16] It is worth noting that the decision on the part of the Swiss government to allow the Philippine government to use the Marcos Swiss accounts to compensate human rights victims demonstrates that the funds were ill-gotten. As a matter of fact, they specifically said so in their decision. A recent post by SWI titled “Political Will guides Marcos case in the Philippines” discusses this, and how the Marcos case has become a model for the restitution of stolen fund: “The freezing of Marcos’ Swiss bank deposits in 1986 was the first time the Swiss government set out to return such funds to their rightful owners…The $685 million that the Swiss blocked in Marcos’ accounts is “one of the largest sums ever returned by any government to a country formerly ruled by a kleptocratic regime”, Swiss foreign ministry spokesman Stefan von Below told swissinfo.ch.”
[17] This darkness is not just a shadow, but a purposeful continuing obscuration of what occurred, aided and abetted by the Marcos family. The sole purpose of the Marcos family political ambitions, from the lips of Imelda Marcos and Bongbong Marcos, is to redeem their family and resurrect their version of history. Each vote for a Marcos is seen by them as another step towards redemption. “This is part of the family’s plan to change history and make sure that the public, particularly the new generation of Filipinos, will not know about what transpired in the past,” said political analyst Ramon Casiple of the Institute for Political and Electoral Reform in Manila,” quoted in Al Jazeera’s “Philippines hunts for Marcos’ plundered art”.
[18] Data pulled from Rappler’s infographic: From Marcos to Aquino: The Cost of War in Mindanao.
[19] “We practically own everything in the Philippines—from electricity, telecommunications, airline, banking, beer and tobacco, newspaper publishing, television stations, shipping, oil and mining, hotels and beach resorts, down to coconut milling, small farms, real estate and insurance,” said Imelda Marcos, talking to the Inquirer in 1998 while she disclosed her plan to file an intervention suit against the cronies of her husband,” from “Regime of Marcoses, cronies, and kleptocracy” by Ana Roa, Philippine Inquirer.
[20] “The issue came to the fore again late last year, when Mrs Marcos’ former aide, Vilma Bautista, appeared in a New York court charged with illegally selling a Monet painting,” quote from “What happened to the Marcos fortune?” by Kate McGeown.
[21] “The hardworking and popular provincial governor — widely known as Imee Marcos — is one of the beneficiaries of the Sintra Trust, which financial records uncovered by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists show to have been formed in June 2002 in the British Virgin Islands. Other beneficiaries are Imee Marcos’ adult sons with estranged husband Tomas Manotoc: Ferdinand Richard Michael Marcos Manotoc, Matthew Joseph Marcos Manotoc, and Fernando Martin Marcos Manotoc.” – PCIJ “Ferdinand Marcos’s daughter tied to offshore trust in the Caribbean”
[22] I will just discuss one example of the wayward misguided priorities of Marcos infrastructure projects in this footnote. One of the key projects noted in defending Marcos are his ‘health’ initiatives, namely the Philippine Heart Center for Asia, the Kidney Foundation of the Philippines, and the Lung Center of the Philippines. Combined these three projects cost the Philippine government $229 million in subsidies. The total Philippine government funding for primary care, at that time was $45 million (Boyce). Imagine how many poor and impoverished Filipinos could have been saved, how far the infant mortality rate could have dropped or malnutrition addressed, if that $229 million was funneled into broader healthcare initiatives. The focus of the Philippine government on providing healthcare for the elite, at the cost of the poor, aptly demonstrates their preferences and loyalties.
[23] Source: “The Political Economy of Growth and Impoverishment in the Marcos Era” by James K. Boyce.
[24] Boyce, in the book cited above, has a long involved discussion of poverty ratings and the various idiosyncratic methods utilized for estimating poverty. The discussion takes place from pages 45 to 50. His conclusion though, is that poverty exploded during the Marcos regime: “But there can be little doubt that many poor families experienced drastic declines in real income,” pg. 53.
[25] Rappler, “Miriam Santiago: ‘Marcoses do not owe us an apology.” Those who have lived off of the fruits of corrupt and debilitating practices, who continue to interject themselves into our daily and political lives, for the sole purpose of rehabilitating their image and redeeming the utterly destructive regime of Ferdinand Marcos do owe us an apology, if only to help the country begin the process of healing. However, it is likely that apology will not be forthcoming. They do not believe there was anything wrong with Martial Law. That, that right there, their inability to see anything wrong with Martial Law should give us all pause. We must learn from the past, we must both transcend it and be informed by our history. That is historical sense and it widens and deepens our understanding of the present and the future. The Marcoses steadfastly refuse to do so. Why should we be lead by people as blind and benighted as that? We should not. Without an apology we must discover a new path towards reconciliation with our past. Perhaps it will be found in fully, deeply, understanding our history, as well as our role in it.
[26] Margaret MacMillan made this point especially clear in discussing the South African Apartheid: “The acceptance of responsibility and the act of repentance can be healthy for societies struggling to deal with past horrors. In South Africa, with the ending of apartheid, public figures, both black and white, began to talk about how to move on without allowing the past to tear society apart.” (25, Uses and Abuses of History) They chose a truth commission as their path to redemption. We have invited the Marcos family back into our political world. Apologies are denied and the wounds of Martial Law continue to haunt us.
[27] “So, while the Filipino has not the sufficient energy to proclaim, with head erect and bosom bared, its rights to social life, and to guarantee it with its sacrifices, with its own blood…while we see them wrap themselves up in their egotism and with a forced smile praise the more iniquitous actions, begging with their eyes a portion of the booty - why grant them liberty? With Spain or without Spain they would always be the same, and perhaps worst! Why independence, if the slaves of today will be the tyrants of tomorrow?” – Jose Rizal. Also, see my essay on Musings on Impunity, Tyranny, and the Slaves of Tomorrow.
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