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Today marks the 50th anniversary of the declaration of martial law which plunged the whole country into a maelstrom of repression, plunder and cronyism. Never in the history of the nation when its citizenry was subjected to organized violence and legalized crime committed by its own government under the meticulous direction of the late strongman, Ferdinand E. Marcos.
The luckiest of critics and dissidents found themselves incarcerated and later on survived to tell the horrors of their persecution. To this day, however, the families of thousands who were forcibly disappeared or assassinated continue to demand justice.
Under Marcos, Government coffers were pillaged to fatten his and his cronies’ bank accounts and fund their lavish lifestyles. When Marcos was toppled in 1986, the Filipino people were left with $26 billion indebtedness. We continue to pay for the debts created by Marcos’s kleptocracy.
Even after the collapse of the dictatorship, we are haunted by the past with the perpetuation of Marcosian laws and policies. Batas Pambansa 880 has been weaponized to quell protests in the guise of a “no permit, no rally” policy. Presidential Decree 1177 makes debt payment an automatic appropriation under our national budget unlike any other in the world. The Labor Code has become the precursor for contractualization. Labor export policy finds its roots in the Marcos regime which is the culprit behind the Filipino diaspora. Neoliberal economics was at its infancy during Marcos which has now come of full age causing the death of local industries, abandonment of essential public services in favor of corporate capture and poverty of millions. More than 60% of the country’s population earn below the poverty threshold set by the government.
The myopic view of faulting the 31 million who voted Ferdinand Marcos, Jr. to MalacaΓ±ang has become a convenient argument to explain the restoration of the Marcoses. This dismisses an important fact: that the failure of post-EDSA regimes to deliver and realize social change has been the singular driving force that propelled another Marcos at the helm.
For when people do not see hope in the present, they look to the past. With years and years of historical distortion, disinformation, alternative facts, and the eventual erosion of the history curriculum in the schools, the Marcosian past has been viewed with exultation by a disempowered citizenry. It is no wonder that in the case of Marcos, Jr., they have voted the past back into power, in total oblivion to the atrocities committed against them.
We refuse to forget. We refuse to be silenced. Fifty years after martial law, the Filipino nation is at a precipice assaulted by a combined deluge of stagflation, obscene social inequality, pandemic and climate crisis.
A Marcos presiding over the country at this critical historical juncture spells doom for the people. Three (3) months into his presidency, Marcos Jr.’s government has only proven itself incompetent and irrelevant not only in the face of the shortages in rice, salt, garlic, chicken and sugar, but a looming food crisis. Covid-19 is on an upsurge, but no solution is in sight. Prices of basic staples and commodities are on the rapid rise pushed by the skyrocketing of fuel prices. Instead, Marcos Jr.’s economic team has gone full throttle with the same economic policies that have spawned the economic crisis now besetting the country.
Sans martial law, Marcos, Jr. professes to carry on with military fixes. Here is another Marcos armed with an anti-terror law and committing to continue Duterte’s bloody war on drugs.
Our very own survival is now at stake.
Fifty years after martial law, we are once again called to act. This time as a matter of life and death with the multi-crises as a backdrop.
#NeverAgain
#NeverForget
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