Weepings of history
EDSA Revolution, forgotten weeps from yesterday’s history.
The muffled screams from thirty years ago still linger. The valiant efforts of the people in the bloodless revolution against the Marcos regime were all seem a haze now after the Supreme Court has voted 9-5, allowing the burial of Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
At the defense of the Supreme Court, they stated that Ferdinand Marcos is just like us, “a human who erred like us”. He was seen and evaluated by the Supreme Court "in his totality as a person." If he is indeed judged as a human being who committed faults and errors just like us, then let it be. However, they must not forget that, at the eye of justice, no man has been born with an edge, or with luck. He must be held responsible by his faults, and must bear the crimes that claim he is held liable for. The appeals and petitions against Ferdinand Marcos should be earnestly considered by the court, especially when it comes to human rights violations.
Given those numerous cases needed to be sought out, if proven guilty, the consequences he would face must lie no difference between him and those criminals alike who committed heinous crimes.
In fact, coming from the government themselves, there has been a law that has been ratified on 2013 that compensates for the victims of human rights violations during the Marcos regime. The Republic Act No. 10368 or as known as Human Rights Victims Reparation and Recognition Act of 2013, aims to relieve and make peace with the mistakes of the dictatorial government. However, given the current issue of the burial case, that seems to be an inconsistency on the government’s part. The ratified law that seems to compensate for the Marcos regime’s faults absolutely contradicts the verdict made by the Supreme Court. It is, without question, erratic for the Supreme Court to decide that the person held liable for the atrocities in the Marcos regime to be buried on a place as honorable as the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
Perhaps, the biggest inconsistency of them all is that we allowed a dictator we successfully ousted to have a hero’s burial. It is a shame for many of us to be ignorant of this matter. This should be heeded as a grim reminder not only as victims of misinformation and distortion of the truth, but also, as a reminder of how easy for us to forget when we take history’s efforts of our freedom and democracy for granted.













