Lawyer Rene Saguisag. INQUIRER FILE PHOTO
Reconciliation between the Marcos family and the Filipino people may be desirable but the right thing must be done first at the right time, which is submitted to be not now, former Senator Rene Saguisag has said.
“Now is not the time. Not while the Human Rights Victims Compensation Board is processing 75,000 claims and payment may be made next year or 2018. An admiring world in 1986 should not look askance at us now as a sorry comic people honoring our own Hitler,” Saguisag said in a Constancia and Supplemental Constancia (on feelings/ common sense) submitted to the Supreme Court.
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The former senator who was a Martial Law victim himself, his son, a human rights lawyer and his grandchild were among the human rights groups and victims who sought to stop burial of ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani (LNMB) before the Supreme Court.
The high court, however, by a vote of 9-5 dismissed the petitions including Saguisag’s intervention petition.
It said in its ruling said Marcos “was not pure evil. Certainly just a human who erred like us.”
Saguisag said if Marcos was not a “pure evil” “what then, an ‘impure’ one, with all due respect?”
READ: Why SC decision on Marcos burial is wrong
While there is no law banning Marcos’ burial at the LNMB, Saguisag said there is such a thing as “great silences and resort to the interstices of the law.”
“No law was needed to put the US Air Force under the command of the President after aircraft was invented. Common sense. A law shaming any individual is not desirable in a predominantly Christian nation. The law has letter and spirit, which is not to divide, and not to shame anyone needlessly,” Saguisag said. IDL