Marcos Jr. Elected to RP Senate?

Have We no Shame? Or Are We Just
a Country of Amnesiacs?


There is some very troublesome result emanating from the May 10 elections. It seems now that Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has gained a seat in the Philippine senate and that he was tracking in the middle of the field of 12 winners.

How could this possibly happen? We are only a mere generation or so removed from that very dark period in our history where we saw unlawful arrests and extra judicial executions of innocent Filipinos whose only crime it seems was the articulation of views found displeasing to the conjugal dictators Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos.

Yes, the very same Marcoses who amassed over $10 billion in wealth extracted thru plunder from the treasury of a poverty stricken nation. The very same rulers who for twenty one years aided and abetted their cronies, friends and relatives in the forceful, unlawful usurpation of other people’s businesses and properties that they fancied and wanted for their own.

And now the scion of that world notorious couple is elected to the Philippine senate? And don’t give me that “ the sins of the father should not be visited on the son” dribble of an argument either. All the Marcos offspring were complicit in, and beneficiaries of, their parents shameless theft of the nation’s wealth and dignity. They should never have been allowed back into the country, and if they did come back they should have been thrown into the darkest dungeons that could be found.

So we now ask why? Why did Filipinos vote this man as one of the “leading” 12 candidates for the national senate? It is almost understandable, though not necessarily forgivable, that the “solid north”, that grouping of northern provinces that is predominantly Ilocano, gave him a generous share of their votes. Yet no candidate relying solely of that bloc’s votes can expect to win a national office. Filipinos in other regions, including cities populated by supposedly “educated” and “sophisticated” voters also supported him.

And it seems that the cat is now out of the bag: Marcos Jr.’s election, along with the election of his mother Imelda to the lower house and his sister Imee’s election as governor of Ilocos Norte are all part of a bigger, wider plot to once again wrest control of political power nationwide. (In Imelda's case there is the added "benefit" of being a "legislator" and therefore legal action against her can be perversely dubbed as "political" vendetta.)


And we are now beginning to see clear tell-tale signs of the forthcoming “Marcos Revival ”, and it seems that as with Marcos I, many in the media will be as docile with Marcos II and only too willing to serve as willing tools in the propaganda effort. There is, for example, a two page spread in one of the Northern California newspapers not only touting Marcos Jr.’s “education” and his “accomplishments” but also rehashing the quite discredited claims of the World War II heroism by the older Marcos. It is also hailing Imelda’s past as Metro Manila governor without mentioning the fact that it was a position created by her dictator husband and handed to her gift wrapped as it were, and not one that she earned by virtue of election by the Manila region’s suffering multitudes. The spread reads quite like a well contrived public relations fairy tale and not a journalistic endeavor worthy of even the throw away newsprint that carries it.

The Marcos II p.r. machine is working overtime, it seems. A newly sprung Southern California weekly carried in its May 15- 21 issue an unbylined, unattributed “news” item, complete with photographs, of the Marcoses so called effort to “revive” the KBL or the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan, the party formed by the dictator after he had wrested absolute power in the 1970’s. The report states that the Marcoses had a “reunion” with former colleagues and henchmen of the now dead strongman. These people who should be in jail are now partying to bring the old Marcos order back?
The item reports that Imelda Marcos said “she was confident of winning back much of the wealth seized from her family.” It quotes her as saying, “I am sure the things that are ours will come back”.

I don’t know about other people but reading this quote makes me feel like puking out my guts. The nerve and the chutzpah of this woman and this family is unbelievable. They seem to really believe and act as if the $10 billion or so that they siphoned away “belonged” to them. But what is truly inconceivable is how and why the Filipino people seem to let them get away with their brazen shamelessness. Yes, indeed, that is the message one gets from the results of the May 10 election of Marcos Jr. to the senate.

We have forgotten, it seems, their culpability in the unjust incarceration and torture of so many who protested their regime’s abuses over 21 years in power. We have forgotten perhaps the blood shed by many thru mysterious disappearances and extra judicial killings so benignly and mockingly labeled “salvaging”. We no longer recall the abyss to which our country was driven to by the wanton profligacy of this family and their allies.

The Philippine senate was once an honored and lofty chamber populated by such luminaries as Claro M. Recto, Jovito R. Salonga, Jose P. Roy, Raul S. Manglapus and Emmanuel N. Pelaez to name a few. It has now sadly been defiled and irretrievably soiled by the elevation of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to its membership roster. What is truly tragic is that we as a nation, thru our vote last May 10, are complicit in this foul deed.

Have we no shame? Are we no more than a nation of amnesiacs? Have we not learned our lesson? Shall the Marcos nightmare once again be visited upon our population? Will history repeat itself?