The anti-Marcos crowd is in high dudgeon these days, demanding that the dead dictator be disinterred because he should somehow be made to answer for his crimes, even in death, by his exhumation. I’m fine with that, really, as long as the removal of the remains of Ferdinand Marcos leads to the digging up of what really happened—and who enabled him and profited from doing so—during the 14 years of Martial Law.
I think even the most rabid of supporters of the Yellow regime and their Communist partners will agree that Marcos, regardless of how powerful he was when he proclaimed military rule, could not have done it all by himself. Marcos needed his generals and soldiers in the Armed Forces and the Constabulary, his bureaucrats, his politicians, his co-opted media and his businessmen-cronies in order to impose martial law and commit the evils that his victims say he committed.
Marcos can’t have possibly personally done all the things he’s been accused of doing, in the same manner that Adolf Hitler could not have physically committed all the atrocities attributed to him. And as far as anyone knows, Hitler never pushed anyone into a gas chamber or flicked a switch to drop a bomb on London from a German aircraft.
No, Marcos had a lot of help. And a lot of those who helped him do what he did are still around and enjoying the fruits of aiding and abetting him.
I get that Marcos was still responsible, ultimately, for what happened during those dark years. But I also believe that some people intend to make him the sole person responsible for everything wrong that happened then, in order to ensure that their own participation is glossed over and forgotten.
Here I must mention the defense of former President Fidel V. Ramos, who recently declared that he has already atoned for whatever sins he committed during the Marcos years by leading the 1986 “people power” revolution. I think Ramos should wait for history to grant him his absolution as Marcos’ chief implementor of martial law as head of the dreaded PC—especially since, by all accounts, he initially joined Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile in revolting because he feared being arrested by the ailing dictator’s chief of staff, Fabian Ver.
But to his credit, Ramos did turn against Marcos before it became fashionable to do so, even risking his own life in the process. What about all the others, including the thousands of soldiers now buried in the Libingan ng Mga Bayani with Marcos and who helped him impose his will—did the Edsa revolt absolve them, as well, and cause all of the blame to rest entirely on the late strongman?
Yes, there are many soldiers lying under the Libingan’s hollowed ground who perpetrated some of the most vicious and inhuman crimes committed during Marcos’ reign, with no direct instruction from the dictator, Enrile or Ramos. And there are still many of Marcos’ enablers who are still around, trying to hide their involvement in martial law, or worse, even joining those calling for his exhumation now.
Exhume them and their crimes, if they are dead—and especially if they are still alive. Only then, I think, can justice truly be served.
* * *
After World War II, the Nuremberg Trials and the Tokyo War Crimes Trials were conducted for the purpose of finding out precisely who participated in the wartime atrocities committed by Germany and Japan. Because Hitler had already killed himself and because there was no way that the Japanese Emperor could be held liable by his lonesome, these trials sought to establish the cooperation the leaders of those two nations received from their subordinates—and how to punish them appropriately, depending on the extent of their participation.
The people who liken Marcos to Hitler keep forgetting this important aspect of Der Fuhrer’s abominable rule: The pursuit of those who implemented Hitler’s crimes did not end with his suicide in a bunker.
Here, those who would exact justice from Marcos’ corpse presumably would be mollified simply be keeping him aboveground or having him buried somewhere else. There has been absolutely no call to go after Marcos’ men, dead or alive (except for some light-fingered members of his household staff), because everything bad that happened during his rule was apparently his fault alone.
But then, why stop at the crimes committed during martial law? Why not go all the way back to the unresolved killing of Andres Bonifacio, for instance, or forward to the looting that was committed by the Yellow forces who ousted Marcos in 1986? If even the wife and son of Ninoy Aquino, when each of them became president, did not express any interest in finding out who ordered his killing, how can we expect people to believe that Marcos was as bad as they paint him to be?
I believe that the people who think Marcos was the best thing that ever happened to this country (and there are many of them) fail to give credit to the good people who also served in his administration and who did good things with or without the dictator’s prodding. In the same manner, I will not accept the argument that Marcos alone did everything that his regime is justly being blamed for, because he certainly had a lot of help in that regard, as well.
That’s why I say: Exhume all. Now.
