Manila Mayor Joseph Ejercito Estrada. EDWIN BACASMAS
“A waste of time.”
This was how Manila Mayor Joseph Estrada described the protest actions being held against the surprise Nov. 18 burial of deposed dictator Ferdinand Marcos at Libingan ng mga Bayani.
Estrada, who like Marcos was ousted as President by a People Power uprising, made the remark a day after anti-Marcos groups, including thousands of millennials, staged Black Friday rallies in Manila and about 40 other sites nationwide.
“They’re just wasting their time,” Estrada said on Saturday when asked for his views on the Marcos burial. “As Christians, we have no authority anymore to judge a dead person.”
“Instead they should look for [ways to] help build our country,” he said, noting that he allowed the groups to stage protest actions in Manila even without rally permits, “only because it was directed by President Duterte.”
Estrada, whose presidency was marred by corruption charges and reduced to two years, said Marcos would have “long been buried” at Libingan had his term ran its full, six-year course.
Estrada, who was impeached, kicked out of Malacañang in 2001 and then found guilty of plunder after a six-year trial, recalled that he had already “finalized” plans with the Marcos family to have the strongman buried at the national cemetery in Taguig City.