Most op-ed columnists have discussed the probability of a Marcos return to Malacanan on June 30, 2022. The prospect titilliates Loyalists who have long waited for their vindication and redemption. Those who were part of the force which ousted them in 1986 are horrified with disbelief. How the hell can this happen?
Heydarian’s premise is Duterte paved the way for the Marcos restoration. How? Just by the praise he gave Apo Lakay when he ran for office? Because he allowed the burial of Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani? Heydarian tries to tie in the socio-political constructs but again isn’t successful because he uses quotes from the books he’s read to package his narrative.
The Iron Butterfly returned even before Cory’s term was up. She ran for President in 1992. She was acquitted of charges filed by the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Rudolph Giuliani in 1990. It’s ironic that she was tried in the US by a “jury of her peers.” The US was able to oust the Marcos’ but couldn’t put them behind bars.
The truth is the Filipinos have had enough of the Yellows not being able to deliver on their promises and thwarting their political will. This was evident in Erap’s ouster in 2001 and FPJ’s “loss” in the 2004 election. Erap should’ve held the distinction of being the only candidate who won the Presidency twice. Do you honestly believe that there was enough “clamor” for a return to an Aquino Presidency in 2010? I like to think the narrative suited the Yellows because of Cory’s death. Think “it doesn’t have to be true. It just needs to look like it.”
Manolo Quezon has written about the end of EDSA, the EDSA of the Yellows and not the Filipino people. The Yellows are obsessed with magical realism. They only exist in their own world. Proof? Just look at how the image of Ninoy and Cory were packaged. The same is true with Noynoy. Who can believe them when they claim that mother and son were the best Presidents we ever had?
The other irony is it was also Ramos who let the genie out of the bottle when he asked Duterte to run. Duterte was the symbol of the Filipino’s pent-up discontentment about the society the Yellows fashioned in all their years in power. It amounted to nothing.
National Artist for Literature, F. Sionil Jose, had a portent of what would happen after Marcos’s ouster, even if he is virulently anti-Marcos. He wrote the following in his requiem for Onofre D. Corpuz.
OD knew I did not like Marcos. I told him the reasons. At one time, OD visited me; he said, Marcos, like us, was Ilokano which meant he worked hard, persevered, and most important of all, he had a sense of history. I also wished him luck. We continued to talk about government, culture, modernization. I always argued that the ultimate modernizer was the revolutionary. I understood fully why OD joined Marcos — it is seldom that academics, particularly intellectuals are given a chance to move the mountain. Now, he could do just that. Slowly, I kept away; I was worried that with my speaking freely, my friendship with him would end.
I was not wrong about my estimate of Marcos. On that Sunday that EDSA I was blooming, another compadre, Serafin Quiason who was then director of the National Library, joined OD who had already quit government and I for lunch at a restaurant in Angono. There, we post mortemed the Marcos regime, what the Philippines would be like without him. The anarchy and chaos that may come. And worse — the moral decay.”
“What the Philippines would be without him. The anarchy and chaos that may come. And worse – the moral decay.” This is exactly what happened from 1986 – 2016. The best evidence is the Filipino’s lack of discipline and the mediocrity which is the norm now rather than the exception.
Unfortunately, Heydarian doesn’t seem to realize that the Marcos’ are dependent on the Filipino people for their vindication and redemption and not on Rodrigo Duterte. This is why you wonder if the opposition stalwarts, such as Heydarian, are aware of the basic concept of democracy that power emanates from the people.
Bongbong and Imee have been elected to the Senate. That office doesn’t require a majority or a plurality. Isn’t this vindication and redemption, albeit partial? How does one define political redemption and vindication? By being elected President by a plurality? We must not forget that in the 1986 Snap election, both sides exchange allegations of fraud but the end was a fait accompli. There was nothing definitive about who actually won and lost. Danding Cojuangco would’ve won the election if Imelda didn’t run at the same time.
Marcos hasn’t even won yet. And it doesn’t look like he will get Duterte’s endorsement either. It’s four months to May 2022. A lot can still happen. Until the votes are in, it cannot be said that Marcos has the Presidency in the bag based on surveys alone. It is the sovereign will of the people which makes him the President.
Democracy isn’t democracy per se because the exigencies of politics make it impossible for any Juan or Kulasa to run for the Presidency. Behind every leader is a story of how he or she came to power. Heydarian forgets that it is the 1987 Constitution, which allows the election of plurality instead of a majority President. Those in the opposition have often used “The Silent Majority” to refer to themselve in the aftermath of Duterte’s win in 2016. Obviously, this is also false since Duterte has consolidated his support base as early as 2019 when the opposition was shutout in the Senate race. But it is the people who validates the candidate by their votes. This is the essence of democracy.
Common sense tells you it is hard to cheat the people out of their political will. This was evident with GMA, who remains unpopular to this day, and Noynoy, whose agonizing Presidency had Filipinos biting their nails in frustration because they couldn’t wait for his term to end. The same is true with Robredo who claimed “victory” over Marcos but couldn’t find her voter base to stake her claim through her Presidential candidacy. Even before she declared she was running, Marcos was ahead in all of the surveys.
It is not a Marcos counter-revolution precipitated by Duterte, as Heydarian claims, but more of the people exercising their political will, if the Marcos’ are redeemed and vindicated come May 2022.
But it doesn’t matter who is elected the next President. The Edsa 1986 “Revolution” is bound for obilivion. Even Manolo Lopez acknowledges this. The Filipino people have come to their senses. They will not allow a return of the Yellows to power.
It is insulting that Robredo and her ilk would think that a shift to pink is enough to get the people to vote for them. They should all be in a mental institution because they are so out of touch with reality.
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