MANILA
Like lookouts at the edge of a valley, concerned Filipinos are rushing to rouse the village: “The Marcoses are rising to power, the Marcoses are rising to power!
To take over again as they did in the 1970s and 80s. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr.’s attempt to rise from senator to vice president is just the start.
Imelda Marcos is seeking reelection as congresswoman from Ilocos Norte. And Imee Marcos wants to keep her gubernatorial seat in the same province. Sundry relatives, not as flamboyant and newsworthy as the aforementioned troika, are also placing themselves strategically.
The alarms should be heeded.
The Marcoses represent a mentality that doesn’t jibe with Filipino culture that is basically humble, simple and down-to-earth. (Filipinos were basically honest in the past but succeeding popular culture and trends somehow have dissipated that virtue. But this is for another discussion.)
The Marcoses had, and probably still do, a mentality that excess, extravagance and glitter were the measure of the advance of man. When they were in Malacanang they lived as the Romans of old. Their habits, possessions, and diversions mimicked those of the profligate in the wealthy countries.
Sadly, many Filipinos of the Marcoses’ time bought into that kind of thinking, that form was preferable to substance. Many Filipinos preferred the showy ways of Ferdinand and Imelda to the simple habits of, say, former Presidents Ramon Magsaysay and Diosdado Macapagal.
Ferdinand Marcos the strongman impressed normally humble people like Cesar Virata and he, plus a cadre of technocrats, helped to prop up the dictator. Naive people like Virata and Company helped to prolong Marcos’ martial rule. Virata was Marcos’ prime minister and finance minister.
Bongbong Marcos refuses to apologize for his father’s ruthless dictatorship and his mother’s insatiable extravagance. The Marcoses have reinserted themselves into mainstream society, as if nothing dark and diabolical had happened in the past.
Actually, today’s collective anxiety over a possible return to power of the Marcoses would have been impossible but for a simple act. The act that emanated from the Malacanang of then President Cory Aquino allowing the Marcoses to return to the country.
Exile should always be permanent so those who had done grievous wrong against their home countries won’t ever have the opportunity to again impose themselves upon the people. Despots like Uganda’s Idi Amin and the Shah of Iran were never allowed back home, the former eventually dying in Saudi Arabia and the latter in Egypt.
Ferdinand and Imelda fled the country under threat of lynching by furious Filipinos fed up with martial rule in 1986. The Grim Reaper took mercy on Marcos and took him away in 1989. In 1991 Imelda was allowed back into the country. The embalmed body of Ferdinand followed in 1993.
Since then the Marcoses have been inching their way back to power. Today the triad of Imelda, Imee and Bongbong hold powerful government positions.
For that reason a group of concerned Filipinos have banded together under the name “Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses to Malacanang,” or CARMMA, to fight primarily Bongbong Marcos’ election to the vice presidency. Will more people join the ranks of CARMMA, either formally or on their own work against Bongbong’s election?
One hopes that critical mass develops to stop Bongbong from being elected vice president. (But would that open the door for Chiz Escudero, another objectionable VP candidate? This, too, is a topic for another day.).
The country wouldn’t be having this Marcos problem had Cory Aquino not unlocked the gate for the Marcoses in 1991. Worse, the Marcos “problem” has for now become a conundrum, an issue without a solution. Until possibly May. Or frighteningly worse, beyond.