Providentially, in spite of the campaign promise to Bongbong Marcos, President Duterte has not been shackled by the traditional value of friendship but instead invited free debate, allowing protests and deferring to the decision of the Supreme Court. We commend this display of statesmanship by the president and deeply appreciate the Supreme Court’s intervention with a status quo Ante order that prevented a scheduled Libingan event on Sept. 18 for Ferdinand Marcos.
This is not about a personality or a political battle between the families of Ferdinand Marcos and Ninoy Aquino. It is about a citizen’s sacred duty to stop the unwitting path toward the infliction of amnesia; a tragedy that must not be wished upon any nation.
The Filipino people’s peaceful overthrow of homegrown tyranny and repression was a shining moment applauded by the international community of nations serving as an inspiration in the breakdown of the Berlin Wall.
Please try to remember: Marcos, the president who swore to defend the constitution assaulted our fundamental law. He declared martial law so the elected delegates were hostage to vote as Marcos willed with the absence of the right to free expression and free assembly.
Deceptively, Marcos continuing as president after two terms was verboten in the 1935 Constitution. Thus, the ConCon was conveniently used to remain in power under the label of constitutional authoritarianism. I was fully aware of the goings on at the convention.
My fiancé, Heherson Alvarez, a ConCon delegate witnessed the manipulation of the ConCon with bribery and violence which he rejected.
What happened to the handful who dared to defy the Marcos Constitution? I was secretly married to Sonny in a matrimonia conciencia ceremony presided by Fr James B. Reuter, S.J., because he was hounded by a shoot-to-kill order by the regime.
With God’s grace, he eluded arrest and escaped to join Raul Manglapus in exile to mobilize a propaganda and democratic resistance movement overseas. However, his brother Marsman was tortured, the corpse thrown in a churchyard, leaving Sonny’s mother in a catatonic state for more than a year and his father dead from a heart attack. There are many more equally heart-breaking stories of violation of human rights.
Will all these be covered up with cleverly designed propaganda using the convenient but noble mantra of moving on and healing? No one has ever denied the right of the Marcos family to bury their patriarch in his hometown as crafted in an agreement with President Fidel V. Ramos. But glorifying a dictator as a hero is nonnegotiable.
Marcos lawyers claim he has never been convicted. The people’s verdict at Edsa is clear wherein the dictatorship was physically driven out of the country visibly as citizens had cast away the martial rule mantle that was the effective tool for the persecution and repression of our people.
I am a septuagenarian, a cancer survivor, legally blind and miraculously rehabilitated to walk again after a broken knee operation. With a renewed lease on life, I fathom a mission to share this truthful chronicle to my children Hexilon and Herxilia with the word exile carved in their names. I thank the Lord that I am able to pass on this story to my grandchildren so that they can appreciate their birth right and sacred duty to face risks in defending a legacy of freedom, truth, justice and democracy. —CONTRIBUTED
The author is a Ramon Magsaysay Laureate for Public Service for founding the Philippine Educational Theater Association. In exile, she was awarded the UN Human Rights Day Award by the Fund for Free Expression.