THIS question must be asked: Where would President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr. be when the first holiday of the year outside of New Year’s Day is celebrated by a divided country that is now again under a new Marcos rule?
That division has not been so pronounced since 1986 when Corazon Aquino as President of the post-dictatorship Philippines had tried to sell her “reconciliation” pitch to everyone.
It was also a campaign vow by Bongbong who promised to work with anyone to advance the country’s causes and not just those of his family.
It took the Marcoses 36 years to reclaim Malacanang. They hastily left the Palace amid a revolution that would have taken their lives had they decided to stay and cling to power.
The elder Marcos perhaps knew that it was bound to happen. Only that it did not happen sooner.
Three years in exile had weakened the elder Marcos. He was ill already during the last days of his 21-year iron-fisted rule.
Lupus was eating up his body and his hold on power.
It was just a matter of days or months before anyone from his closest circle could have grabbed power from him. Some bets were with Fabian Ver– his chief general, or his own wife Imelda Romualdez Marcos.
It was Juan Ponce Enrile who took the chance of grabbing power from Marcos. Only he and his army could not without wasting their lives.
They scurried for protection from the Catholic Church. Jaime Cardinal Sin had asked the people to protect them in two camps before Enrile and Constabulary Chief Fidel V. Ramos were to merge in just one. Again, for better protection from the people who would make Edsa a revolution, or a party, or a gathering… but no longer just a slow-moving highway it has reverted into after many years of decay that started from the elder Marcos, himself.
Marcos, Sr. died in September 1989, just months before the Romanians executed their own dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu on Christmas of the same year.
That’s how dictators end.
Either they are killed by the angry masses, or they are deposed by the angry masses.
It was the angry masses which kicked the Marcoses out of the country. It was not Enrile, nor his small band of soldiers. The angry masses did.
On February 25, the nation will celebrate that victory in Edsa. The younger Marcos had signed that proclamation of holiday dates. He had no choice.
It will be on a Saturday. The younger Marcos is not expected to attend the activities related to the event that shamed his family.
The history he knows is part of the family history.
There will always be denials of the atrocities committed by his father and his minions against the Filipino people. Big or small. Big and small.
There will never be a reconciliation.
Not the one Cory had dreamed about.
Not the one BBM had promised when he vowed to work with all the political forces that would want to make this country great again.
There’s no healing because no one could heal amid these denials.
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