Educating millennials on Marcos came too late, P-Noy admits
SAN JOSE, Tarlac—President Aquino yesterday acknowledged his administration may have realized “too late” that many young people had gotten “lost” and believed in the revised narrative being peddled by Sen. Ferdinand Marcos Jr. about his father’s martial law rule over three decades ago.
Marcos, son of the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos and his equally profligate wife Imelda, ran for vice president and garnered almost as many votes as administration candidate Leni Robredo.
“Perhaps, on the flip side, we might have recognized too late that many had gotten lost. But I think what is more important is, in the final analysis, our candidate who never even planned to run, who started with 1 percent [in the surveys] and had 70-something percent awareness, won,” Mr. Aquino told reporters.
Robredo received 14.08 million votes while Marcos got 13.8 million in the last Commission on Elections count. The official canvassing of the presidential and vice presidential votes is currently being conducted by the Congress.
Not just theory
To President Aquino, Marcos’ votes—won in the year the country celebrated the 30th anniversary of the Edsa People Power revolt that kicked the Marcos family out of Malacañang and out of the country—
showed that those who lived under martial law “failed to take into account that for the millennials, it was difficult to imagine that a period like martial law actually happened.”
He said that those born after the country won back democracy in 1986 wouldn’t be able to imagine that there was a time when information was hard to come by, especially in this day when one has access to the Internet 24/7.
“There are many things that they find hard to understand… I would presume that those born after Edsa looked at it (martial law) as a theory,” Mr. Aquino said.
In an interview with Inquirer editors and reporters on Tuesday, Mr. Aquino gave an unequivocal “yes” when asked if he believed Robredo had won the vice presidency.
Show proof
He challenged Marcos to produce evidence of cheating if he had it.
“In our system, you have the right to fight for your interests but it is also your obligation to show proof if you are making an accusation,” Mr. Aquino said.
Yesterday, he told the Malacañang press corps that with Robredo catching up and eventually winning the vice presidential race, “at the very end, the truth prevailed.”
During the heated election campaign, Robredo was the only vice presidential candidate to take Marcos to task for the human rights abuses and massive corruption committed during the martial law years.
The younger Marcos has refused to apologize for the brutal rule of his father. He has also refused to address demands his family return the billions of pesos it stole from the government during the two decades they were in Malacañang.
