I am not Filipino, but Ferdinand Marcos was nevertheless one of the first historic politicians whose name I learned because my father was stationed on the archipelago during the later stages of Marcos’s reign as President of the Philippines. He ruled from 1965 to 1986, and the picture my father painted was of an iron-fisted kleptocrat whose wife, Imelda, had too many pairs of shoes.
I thought he was exaggerating, so my father told me to actually look up Imelda Marcos’s shoe collection (she indeed has over 3,000 shoes), which shows the first family’s excessive habits (related side note: they supposedly embezzled at least one billion dollars) and the death of Benigno Aquino Jr. to show his cruelty. Once I saw that jarring, hellish footage of the opposition senator being gunned down at an airport, I was aghast, although one silver lining is that Corazon Aquino was elected President in the revolution that marked the end of Marcos’ reign of terror over the citizens he was supposed to lead (instead of rob and murder).
So when I heard that President Rodrigo Duterte plans to have Marcos, who died in 1989, reburied in the National Heroes Cemetery I was shocked. After my selfish reaction, I wondered allowed to myself how Filipino citizens felt about the decision because this is their history and I can only understand it so well as an outsider. The reaction of the citizens is predictably one of anger as thousands have taken to the streets of Manila saying that the Armed Forces of the Philippines rules about conducting oneself in an ethical manner disqualifies the man who robbed so much and had so many people tortured and killed during a stretch of martial law that lasted most of his rule. Some of the protesters see this as an effort by Duterte to censor the cruelties of Philippine history and find his recent comments about martial law given his tough stance on crime, disturbing. Hopefully, Duterte is not like Marcos and he respects the will of his constituents and cancels the planned reburial which is scheduled for September 18th.
