Who with a sense of history didn’t squirm at the sweeping statement of Dumanjug Mayor Nelson Garcia that Cebu is no longer anti-Marcos country?
His comment came after a satisfying sight-seeing tour of Marcos bailiwick Ilocos Norte, where the Province of Cebu signed a sisterhood agreement, and town and province officials were guests of the 82nd birthday party of Imelda Marcos herself.
Twenty five years or less than a generation after 1986 People Power is too short to develop political amnesia.
We find Garcia’s statement disserving of Cebu’s record of courage during the dark years of Martial Law.
Cebu’s role as the bastion of the opposition to the Marcos dictatorship is a source of proud heritage of the island province and distinctly more valuable than any cosmetic friendship with a province still ruled by a family, whose legacy is one of profligacy, patronage politics, and larceny of the national coffers.
Would Cebu change any of this noble past for a promise of windmill power?
Even an evening of song, drinks and celebration with the Imeldific one isn’t enough to cloud one’s senses to see that an alliance with the Ilocos kingdom is just an exercise of empire building.
Whose?
Look ahead to 2013 and ask who fits the shoe.
Mayor Garcia said “The anti-Marcos stance is already in the history books. People have changed, people changed their views. People changed their attitudes, especially the new ones right now.”
He was asked by a CDN reporter if the visit en masse to Ilocos Norte for the sisterhood signing signals that Cebuanos now support the Marcoses.
If Garcia was correct, and all is forgiven and forgotten, Sen. Bongbong Marcos would have won heartily in Cebu, endorsed as he was by Gov. Gwen Garcia in the May 2010 election.
Marcos ranked no. 16 in Cebu with 2.64 percent of the votes in the senate race.
What Cebu did was deliver victory to Benigno Aquino III, who topped every town and city of the province, even though he had little time to barnstorm the island.
The legacy of corruption in the Marcos chapter is too sharp a lesson for the country to push aside.
The debate over — and public resistance to — the proposal to bury Ferdinand Marcos in the Libingan ng mga Bayani shows the distaste for making a mockery of heroes and history.
The argument should be even simpler for President Noynoy Aquino: Marcos agents killed his father.
Memory is a powerful tool for change.
In deciding to get cozy with the Marcoses, we should ask who stands to benefit by dancing again with the dictator’s family.