The millennials still know what you did back then, Manang.
A youth leader in the House of Representatives on Thursday hurled back at Ilocos Norte Gov. Imee Marcos for claiming that the younger generation of Filipinos have “moved on” from her father’s two decades of tyrannical rule, a dark period in Philippine history marked by massive human rights violations and corruption.
In a scathing reply, Kabataan party-list Rep. Sarah Elago reminded Marcos that thousands of Filipino youth joined the indignation rallies in protest of the clandestine burial of her father, the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, at Libingan ng mga Bayani in November 2016.
She said the governor’s remarks were just part of the Marcos family’s efforts to “revise history to cover up their huge crimes against the people and to make way for their (return to) Malacañang.”
“Imee Marcos blabbers plain lies. Thieves and liars really go together, right?” Elago said in a statement.
“The millennials, the youth in general, have not moved on and we will never move on from the Marcoses’ crimes against the Filipino people,” she added. “Not until justice has been served to the thousands of Filipinos who were killed, abducted and tortured under their reign, we will not move on.”
As the country marked the 35th year of the assassination of her father’s fiercest political rival – former Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. on August 21 – the governor told the media in Cebu City: “The millennials have moved on, and I think people at my age should also move on as well.”
She also claimed the criticisms against her family were just an off-shoot of a long-standing feud between the Marcoses and the Aquinos.
Martial law survivors and netizens quickly threw brickbats at Marcos, who had signified her plan to run in the 2019 senatorial elections.
Her claim stirred up a hornet’s nest as Elago called on Filipino students and the youth sector to join a walkout protest on September 6 to also condemn President Rodrigo Duterte’s political alliance with the Marcoses.
“We call on every youth and student to join us in actively exposing and opposing the Marcoses’ attempts to revise history and deodorize martial law,” said the Kabataan party-list lawmaker.
“Let us mount our biggest mobilization on September 26 to commemorate the declaration of martial law in 1972 and together, we will shout ‘Never Again’ to fascist dictatorships,” she also said. /kga