The Wikipedia entry on Proclamation No. 1081 issued by the late president Ferdinand Marcos 39 years ago does not quite capture the terror that held sway over the Philippines throughout the martial law and Marcos era.
Martial law was declared “under the pretext of a staged assassination of Marcos’ former defense minister Juan Ponce Enrile (now Senate President) and an ensuing communist insurgency,” says the online encyclopedia. It says Marcos—ruled by military power—altered the Constitution, made himself president and prime minister, manipulated elections and the political arena and had his political party, the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan, control the Batasang Pambansa so he could stay in power and plunder. May we add: Marcos shackled the Philippine press.
Filipinos with a sense of history cannot simply say, “The rest is history.”
Martial law resulted in 3,257 extra-judicial killings (at least 32 of media practitioners); 737 incidents of enforced disappearance; 35,000 cases of torture and the mostly warrantless arrest and jailing of 70,000 people.
“If the Philippines is to recover its full fund of social capital after the trauma of dictatorship, it needs to adopt some means for remembering, recording and ultimately, reconciliation,” history professor Alfred McCoy of the University of Wisconsin wrote in a 1999 paper.
When Marcos was toppled more than 25 years ago during the Edsa People Power Revolution of 1986, Filipinos said, “Never again,” to tyranny.
In 2008, however, the democracy icon Corazon Aquino, who became president after Marcos, said the Philippines—under Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo—remained in “a state of disrepair: an executive branch wielding tremendous power and patronage, unchecked by a largely subservient legislature; an electoral process so prone to manipulation; a military and a bureaucracy that are highly politicized; a system of governance utterly lacking in transparency and accountability.”
Martial law is over but Filipinos still have to surmount its legacy of corruption and impunity.
Remembering and compensating martial law’s human rights victims as we aim for economic prosperity will steer us clear of the vain replay of a dark chapter of history.
So, too, will a close watch of political alliances as the one brewing between the Garcias of Cebu and the living Marcoses in government, lest this waylay the processing of more than 500 graft and human rights cases that the Marcoses still face.
This has been a year of setbacks with the return of coconut levy funds to Danding Cojuangco, President Benigno Aquino III’s uncle and a Marcos crony, and the relative pittance of US$1,000 that a United States court directed be paid to 10,000 human rights victims.
The Marcoses have regained much ground, dividing the country by insisting on a hero’s burial for Ferdinand.
But people shouldn’t forget the horrors of martial law.
The function of remembering is a moral obligation not only of academics, journalists and church people but also of every Filipino with the capacity to retell the truth.