MARTIAL Law was such a complex and emotional period in our country’s history. Last September 21, the country marked the 47th year of its declaration. And once again, our discursive landscape was littered by “never again” posts by those who harbor a deep-seated hatred of Martial Law, and associate it with a dark period of dictatorship, cronyism and corruption. What is interesting about this, however, is that there is also now an equally noisy call from those who would like to celebrate Martial Law as a period of progress. No less than presidential spokesman Salvador Panelo alluded to Martial Law as a period that favored the preservation of democracy in the country.
Martial Law has become a rallying point of the post-Marcos elites, including those in academia. They used it as the evil that needs to be propagated to provide a unifying and legitimizing logic to the post-Marcos state. Indeed, the horrors of torture and human rights abuses, of enforced disappearances, were powerful images that conveniently provided the post-Marcos elites the narrative around which they could consolidate their power and legitimacy. In the immediate aftermath of the downfall and departure of the Marcoses in 1986, the anti-Marcos elites became the dominant cohort that was able to dictate upon the nature and direction of the story-telling. As they say, history is written from the perspective of those who won, and definitely the anti-Marcos section of Philippine society effectively claimed such position and the reward of near-monopoly over how Marcos and Martial Law should be interpreted.
But after 33 years since the EDSA uprising, it appears that this near-monopoly failed to totally erase the Marcoses from the memory of the nation. For 33 years, the demonization of the Marcoses became constant fare and even appeared to be state-sponsored during the years that the two Aquinos, mother Corazon and son Benigno Simeon, were president. Many students of premier schools in the country, from Ateneo and De La Salle to the University of the Philippines and the Polytechnic University of the Philippines, were educated by professors who inserted the demonization of the Marcoses and Martial Law into the curriculum. The Marcoses were vilified, made into caricatures and banned from public spaces.
Yet this was not enough to make people forget the Marcoses, and failed to make them disappear from the political landscape. The Marcoses are still a political force to reckon with in Ilocos Norte, while Imelda Marcos’ relatives, the Romualdezes, remain significant in Leyte politics. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. became a senator, and made a strong showing in the 2016 vice presidential elections. Maria Imelda Josefa “Imee” Marcos was elected senator in the 2019 elections.
It is interesting to note that today, as we commemorate the 47th year of Martial Law, and 33 years after the downfall of Marcos, and after years of near-monopoly in the retelling of the narratives associated with this period in our history, that those who have controlled the way we should interpret Martial Law appear to feel insecure about their hold on people’s consciousness. Anyone who attempts to offer a counter-reading, or an alternative analysis, is immediately branded as a historical revisionist. One can safely assume that the reason for such insecurity is perhaps because they have not told the people the entire story.
It is reasonable to believe that only those who want to spin Martial Law to suit their political agenda would violently oppose a call to look at it in a balanced way and label those who would make such a call historical revisionists. After all, if they are confident that their interpretation of Martial Law is fair, accurate and objective, and truth is on their side, they would not fear a balanced examination.
At present, the issue has become deeply polarizing. The anti-Marcos forces must be concerned about the political price they already paid for their insistence on the superiority of their own analysis. They are losing. This is because this juxtaposes with an elitist, exclusionary form of politics that marred the post-Marcos period in the Philippines. The failure of government to provide a better alternative to what has been demonized as the darkest period in our history only provided a clear and powerful backdrop for the resurgence of the Marcosian brand of doing politics. This is the same driver that made Rodrigo Duterte president.
If the anti-Marcos section of Philippine society continue to oppose objective readings of Martial Law, they will remain stuck in the “never again to Martial Law” sloganeering. And here, they would even beg the question of harboring a slogan that is clueless as to the fact that martial law is a constitutional remedy available to the State to protect itself during times of rebellion and invasion. They forget the fact that the 1987 Constitution drafted by a commission, whose members were all appointed by Corazon Aquino, just like any other Constitution, reserves for the State, through the president, the power to declare martial law.
For 33 years, we have been witnessing the appropriation by those who won in EDSA the privilege to tell the story of Marcos and Martial Law. They appear to be losing because they are only telling us their side. Meanwhile, the Marcos loyalists continue to believe in their own narratives. Either side is incomplete for they emanate from emotional partisanship that can only see the events from their own lenses, blinded by their own biases. It’s about time that we go beyond partisanship. What is interesting is that even in academic circles, there is now a call to once and for all inquire into Martial Law from an objective, scholarly lens. History professor Filomeno Aguilar, in his keynote speech at the conference of the Philippine Historical Association, urged historians to “do the painstaking work of research, sifting through the evidence, and forwarding a scholarly analysis and interpretation and explanation beyond partisanship.”
https://www.manilatimes.net/2019/09/26/opinion/columnists/beyond-partisan-lenses/621946/
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