Another Palace hate campaign

Editorial

For the past few days, Malacañang has been leading a campaign that has the supposed aim of reliving the pain of martial law, with some in Noynoy’s circle calling for an end to revisionism.

It appeared to be a well-funded government effort to rekindle public hatred against the Marcoses, martial law and the people who had figured in the Marcos government.

It is odd, however, that while Noynoy has been deliberately rekindling the days of  Marcos’ martial law, he hardly speaks of the elite Edsa II coup d’etat that had installed Gloria Arroyo to the presidency, where his mother, Cory Aquino, was one of the coup plotters.

After all, Noynoy keeps on harping against Gloria and goes to such lengths of persecuting her, when he and his mother certainly supported her regime for years, as they had then been benefiting from the Gloria administration.

The obvious motive in his leading this hate campaign against Marcos, however, is mainly to create political momentum that Noynoy and his allies can use for the elections next year and to satisfy somebody’s thirst for vengeance.

The campaign included tweets, or to the social media uninitiated, messages through the tweeter site, recounting by the hour what supposedly had transpired from Sept. 21 which was the calendar day for martial law and Sept. 23 when Proclamation 1081 was actually issued by former President Ferdinand Marcos.

The Palace move was initiated likely as a result of Filipinos’ increasing comparison of life during the time of Marcos when basic commodities were within the reach of all with little exception of  the high level of poverty and hunger currently.

Martial law as recounted through the Palace also revolved around former Sen. Ninoy Aquino and former President Cory Aquino the motive of which is all too obvious.

The campaign should have been capped by a Noynoy-friendly media’s documentary on the life of Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile who was and is still being demonized as Marcos’ chief architect of military rule. Apparently, none of these yellows — Noynoy included — wants to credit Enrile for triggering the Edsa revolt.

Had there been no Enrile fighting Marcos and fighting for the country, would there have been an Edsa revolt?

The documentary, however, surprisingly came off as an objective assessment of the role of Enrile during the Marcos years despite the obvious slant of the storyline that would have painted Enrile an inveterate trouble maker and likely enemy of democracy.

Enrile telling his own story supported by recounts of his family and different personalities during the 21 years of Marcos all convincingly proved his being independent-minded and his strength of will against all forms of political pressure.

What was striking in the Enrile story was that he was an outsider in most of the years he served under the Marcos regime and in nearly all the time that he was in the Cabinet of Cory Aquino.

He was a perennial coup plot suspect during the Marcos and Cory administrations and was obviously marked dangerous by both former Presidents, all because of his convictions that usually crossed paths with the status quo.

He disproved nevertheless his roles in most of the past political upheavals where he was pilloried as being the mastermind.

There was no political force that bent his will, which is so much reason that makes accusations against him of being influenced by somebody to which he owes a debt of gratitude patently unbelievable.

There could be an effort to inflame public sentiment against the figures during the martial law years which Noynoy, during his speech marking the Marcos declaration, said remained vivid in his mind as his period of suffering due to his father Ninoy’s detention.

The Palace’s anti-martial law campaign might just as well give factual history a good turn.

For one it did prove life was lived better then than now.