‘21-gun salute won’t make Marcos a hero’

Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO/LYN RILLON

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY—Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana on Sunday defended the provision of a 21-gun salute or full military honors for the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos when his remains are finally transferred to Libingan ng mga Bayani.

According to Lorenzana, the Marcos burial would be similar to other funerals for dead soldiers and he would not be treated as a hero.

“It will be a normal funeral,” he said, adding that the 21-gun salute prepared by the Armed Forces of the Philippines was also given to other slain soldiers.

In the Philippines, the AFP uses the 21-gun salute in events such as the inauguration of a president, death of a top military official, death of a former president or courtesy calls of foreign leaders during their state visits.

According to military manuals, the volley honors—in sets of three—represent duty, honor and country. It symbolizes the cessation of hostilities to honor those felled in the line of duty.

Lorenzana said the 21-gun salute would be executed by a seven-man team, with each member firing three shots.

Parrying criticisms the late dictator did not deserve a hero’s burial, President Duterte said Marcos was also a soldier and Libingan guidelines said soldiers and presidents could be buried there.

“The law is the law. It has no emotions at all. It says that if you are a President (you can be buried there). It does not say you have a record of a dictatorship or what not, or being a gentle despot. It does not say anything like that,” Mr. Duterte said on Friday in Davao City, where he spoke at an event recognizing the humanitarian deeds of his late mother, Soledad Duterte.

Lorenzana, who attended a gathering of veterans here on Friday, said the government’s only involvement in the Marcos burial was to provide the rifle party and to secure Libingan’s premises from protesters.

“Even if Marcos will not be buried there, we will still secure it,” he added.

CPP against burial
Lorenzana said all the necessary arrangements had already been done for Marcos’ burial at Libingan, including the excavation of the grave. Only the date was being finalized.

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP), one of the allies of Mr. Duterte, has advised the President against Marcos’ burial at Libingan.

“President Duterte must be advised against proceeding with such a plan. Such payment of political debt to the Marcoses will undoubtedly be regarded as an act of contempt against the Filipino people’s historic judgment against the Marcos dictatorship,” the CPP said in a statement.

“In giving Marcos a hero’s burial, (the President) would virtually be spitting on the graves of the tens of thousands of martyrs who laid down their lives in the struggle to end the puppet, brutal and rotten Marcos dictatorship,” the CPP said.

The CPP added that Duterte would “bring to question his own assertion of being a leftist considering that the Marcos dictatorship was the epitome of the anti-Left.”