Editorial
The Bohol Standard
It is rather shocking that a survey of the Social Weather Station (SWS) disclosed that more than half of the Filipinos want former dictator Ferdinand Marcos receive a hero’s burial in a country he had so forsaken for two decades.
In that controversial survey, 50 percent of the 1,200 respondents said Marcos is worthy to be buried in Libingan Ng Mga Bayani. Another 49 percent opposed the idea.
We beg to disagree that the foolish opinion of the 1,200 Filipinos who were surveyed represents the sentiment of the majority of Filipinos who were not asked nor have they even heard of such self-serving (whoever paid for it) survey to have been conducted in which place in the Philippines we don’t know where.
Well, if SWS conducted the survey in Ilocos Norte, the homeprovince of the chief architect of the Martial Law in 1972, there’s no doubt that 99.9 percent of the population of that province would clamor for Marco’s burial to be held in Libingan Ng Mga Bayani. Ilocos, during the reign of Marcos, was the apple of the eye of Marcos and it was a solo beneficiary of many development projects which other provinces in the Philippines could only dream of at that time.
We rather propose that if it is true that indeed 50 percent of the SWS survey respondents want Marcos to be remembered as a hero that they come forward and stand in a firing squad – and their dead bodies be buried alongside a stinging coffin of a dictator.
For what honor do they have of being called pure bloodied Filipinos that they could not even identify with the victims of human rights crimes perpetrated during the Marcos regime. Each Martial Law victim had just received a consolation aid of $1,000 from the estate of Marcos after a long protracted legal battle. We feel for the victims of Martial Law abuses and we condemn those who want Marcos to be given a hero’s honor.
How distorted is the sense of history of many Filipinos. After they elected three Marcoses into important positions in government (Imee Marcos as governor of Ilocos Norte, Imelda Marcos as congresswoman in Leyte, and Bongbong Marcos as senator), they desecrated the legacy and blood of our martyrs who fought for our freedom. Marcos stole that freedom from us when Martial Law was declared in 1972.
It was not too long ago that the nation was struggling to come out of light and be free from the shackles of darkness brought by the Martial Law era, but it seemed that many of us are plain ignorant of the facts of history. Or maybe they are just plain stupid to forget the pain of the past.
Libingan Ng Mga Bayani in Manila, as the name suggests, is for heroes, not for oppressors and robbers.
If this government would allow the infidels of the motherland to get a hero’s burial in Libingan Ng Mga Bayani, perhaps it may be just fitting to rename that place as Libingan Ng Mga Buwaya.
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