Hontiveros rebukes DepEd for martial law rebranding: ‘Lies are not education’
FILE PHOTO: Senator Risa Hontiveros. INQUIRER FILES
MANILA, Philippines — “Lies are not education,” but propaganda, opposition Senator Risa Hontiveros said Monday after the Department of Education (DepEd) rebranded martial law as a “new society.”
Hontiveros urged the DepEd not to act as an “enabler of martial law rebranding.”
“Let’s take it straight from the horse’s mouth. In issuing Presidential Decree 1081, then-President Ferdinand E. Marcos, Sr. placed ‘the country under a state of Martial Law.’ Not a New Society. Not anything else. Martial law,” she said in a statement.
“The continued existence of school material that one-sidedly frames the martial Law period as a ‘New Society’ is a blatant failure of our education authority to ensure the truthful, factual and complete historical narration of the Marcos dictatorship, and instead enables its propaganda,” she added.
READ: Teachers question Deped module for ‘sugarcoating’ martial law
Regardless of the topic, she said DepEd and the Commission on Higher Education must teach the truth. “Lies are not education; they are propaganda. Lies are already undoing our society.”
Hontiveros further said the public must be observant of attempts to revise history.
“Obligasyon nating maging mapagmatyag laban sa dahan dahan at paunti-unting pagbaluktot sa ating kasaysayan sa alaala ng mga nanguna sa pagtutol sa diktadurya, gaya ng lola ng ating DepEd Secretary sa Davao, at lalo’t higit sa mga nagbuwis ng buhay para ibalik ang demokrasya sa bansa,” she said.
(We must be observant of the slow and gradual revision of our history for those who first fought against dictatorship, like the grandmother of our DepEd Secretary in Davao, and especially those who offered their lives to restore our country’s democracy.)
Soledad Duterte, the mother of former President Rodrigo Duterte and grandmother of Vice President and DepEd Secretary Sara Duterte, was a martial law critic.
READ: Sara Duterte fires back: My father understood spirit of Edsa
Under martial law, the Philippines endured a dark period in its history with massive corruption and human rights violations. Through Republic Act No. 10368, the country recognized the damage and abuses committed under martial law which was declared on September 21, 1972 by then President Ferdinand Marcos Sr., father of incumbent President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
RELATED STORIES
Remembering martial law: Hope, then despair
‘Move on’: The shallowness of calls to bury martial law memories
