by Ram Maxey
WHEN President Benigno Aquino passed the buck to Vice President Jejomar Binay on the issue of whether or not to allow the burial of the late dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani (LNMB)–literally, Heroes’ Cemetery–Binay accepted the challenge without question. It may be recalled that the Social Weather Station (SWS) had come up with a survey purporting to show that 51 percent of respondents are in favor of the idea while 49 percent oppose it.
Binay may have bitten off more than he can chew, however, as shown by the growing opposition to Marcos’ burial at the LNMB. Aware of what looks like a groundswell of opposition, Binay has stopped short of outright endorsing such a burial, opting only to say that he be given up to May to make his decision based on his own survey on what the people think about the whole thing.
Binay was in the forefront of the opposition to the Marcos dictatorship which culminated in the four-day People Power revolution, or Edsa I, which ousted the Marcos regime. Why can’t he simply turn down the request of the Marcos family if he believes that Marcos was no hero and does not deserve burial at the LNMB? If this was the year 1989, when Marcos died in Hawaii and the excesses of the Marcos regime still very fresh in Binay’s and the people’s mind, would Binay be ambivalent on the issue he is now tasked to settle once and for all? But this is 2011, twenty-two years after Marcos’ death and Binay can’t make up his mind one way or the other. He is caught between the horns of a dilemma. Instead, he is throwing the issue to the Filipino people to decide, that way he would be washing his hands off the sticky problem. It will not be HIS decision, but the People’s decision—ergo, he will be off the hook. That’s what he probably thinks. But it’s not hat simple.
Everyone knows that Marcos the son—Sen. “Bongbong” Marcos—is eyeing the vice presidency in the next national elections. He is relying on the Ilocano vote, the so-called Solid North, as his main source of votes. If his father’s body is buried at the LNMB, that would be tantamount to his sins against his people being cleansed and his memory back in the good graces of his people. That would be a big plus. Presidentiables—Binay and Chiz Escudero among them–would not mind being in the good graces of the Ilocano people, either. Will they have the nerve to oppose the dictator’s burial at the LNMB? After all, politics is addition. Yeah, who gives a damn about principles when the stakes are high? As if you didn’t know who.
The problem of Marcos’ burial at the LNMB will loom bigger and bigger as the days pass, just watch. The 204 members of the House of Representatives who voted for the resolution approving such burial tells us a lot about the Filipino psyche. At least about the Filipino as politician. If Marcois finally buried at the LNMB, perhaps it would be a good idea to reserve plots thereat for the burial of the 204 reps, too.
Should Binay rely on his own survey on what the people are thinking about the matter of Marcos’ burial, he might end up with a 50-50 stand-off, then what? Damned either way, that’s what. The younger generation is in no position to judge someone they don’t REMEMBER and might say ‘what’s wrong with burying him there?’. But the older generation, who were THERE when martial law spawned a fourteen-year span of massive repression of human rights, arrests and disappearances, summary executions and plunder by the Marcos kleptocracy, have not forgotten that nightmarish period and won’t be swayed by the votes of the 204 congressmen. They will have their own say and act accordingly when the time comes to call a spade a spade. And that time will soon be upon us.
