1M signatures for Marcos burial at Libingan

SUPPORTERS of theMarcos family stage a rally in front of the Supreme Court onWednesday to back the burial of Ferdinand
Marcos at Libingan ng mga Bayani. RICHARD REYES

LAOAG CITY—An online petition and a house-to-house campaign to collect a million signatures to support the move to bury strongman Ferdinand Marcos at Libingan ng mga Bayani have been launched in Ilocos Norte.

The petition carried through www.change.org was initiated by students and young professionals in the province on Sept. 6, on the eve of the second hearing in the Supreme Court on the opposition to the burial from victims of human rights abuses during the Marcos dictatorship.

“We do not ask you to change what you know of him, or how you remember him, or seek praise for his deeds. Good or evil, good and evil, how you judge former President Ferdinand Marcos, is your personal belief,” said the petition.

“One thing we cannot deny is that he was once a president of the Republic of the Philippines, a former secretary of defense, and a soldier, entitling him, by decree, pursuant to AFP Regulation No. G161-137, to be buried at Libingan ng mga Bayani.”

As of Wednesday, the petition had collected 4,735 signatures.

Roma Aguinaldo, 21, said she learned about the alleged abuses as a student.

“Now that I am grown up,” she said, “I became more open to this issue and saw the brighter side of it. Because of martial law, there was discipline and order.”

Aguinaldo recalled pestering her parents with questions why a classmate, Joseph Simon Marcos, a son of former Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., at the Padre Annibale School in Laoag, had security escorts.

“It’s already long overdue. Lay him to rest,” said Aida Borromeo of Quezon City.

“I believe my grandfather and other relatives who witnessed the governance of the late President Marcos. I was deceived by books filled with lies about the Marcoses,” said Almi Cadlum, a Filipino worker in Doha, Qatar.

Gie Jose of Cavite wrote: “He’s not a hero literally but he was a soldier and an excellent leader. History cannot be changed.”

In Hawaii, Noel Calixto, a former Marcos aide, assailed the Supreme Court order delaying the scheduled Sept. 18 burial of Marcos at Libingan.

“Majority of the people want a hero’s burial for President Marcos, compared to the few who oppose it … We really await that time and we are coordinating with Mrs. (Imelda) Marcos. We are getting ready … to be there (in the Philippines) anytime,” said Calixto, who chairs the Bongbong Marcos Global Network, which claims to have 62,000 members.

Festivities

Marcos’ 99th birthday on Sept. 11 would be a big event in light of his scheduled burial 23 years after his body was brought home from Honolulu, Hawaii.

The body is kept in a temperature-controlled crypt at the Marcos ancestral house in Batac City.

A candle-lighting ceremony at 5:30 p.m. at the Imelda Cultural Center in Batac is expected to draw thousands of Marcos loyalists who travel each year to the city to honor their dead leader.

The Ilocos Norte government has asked President Duterte to declare Sept. 11 as a nonworking holiday in Ilocos Norte. But the festivities will start as early as Friday with a “Marcos Fiesta Job Fair” at Robinsons Mall in San Nicolas town, according to Ianree Raquel, head of the Ilocos Norte tourism office.

Also on Friday, students from various Ilocos Norte schools will take part in “Makoy (Marcos’ pet name)” literary and arts contests, a Kalesa painting contest, a quiz show and a debate competition.

The provincial government is also staging a memorabilia contest. The winning photographs and souvenirs will be put on display at the newly expanded San Nicolas mall.

During the event, students will be  asked to join the “Ferdie and Imelda sing-a-like and look-a-like” contests, featuring the couple’s favorite love songs.

On Sunday, Batac is staging a cooking fest featuring Ilocano delicacies, including “dinengdeng (a vegetable soup with fish paste),” which was Marcos’ favorite dish.

The celebration will culminate with a 4 p.m. Mass at Our Lady of Immaculate Concepcion Church in Batac.