Scrubbed memories

“We have a grand memory for forgetting,” said the best president the US never had. Adlai Stevenson’s crack comes to mind as we mark the 28^th anniversary of People Power.  Without bloodshed, Filipinos shattered the 14-year Marcos dictatorship.

The Edsa model has replayed abroad. Czechoslovakia’s “Velvet Revolution” smothered communist rule. Ecuador’s “noise barrage” sent its president packing. Lebanon’s “Cedar Revolution” forced Syrian troops out.  

Even the “Arab Spring” has not failed, the Economist asserts. Not a Middle East single country became a stable democracy over the last three years. True.  But this ignores “the long winter before.”

Most Arabs do not want to turn the clock back....where the dictator’s brothers and the first lady’s cousins cream the best businesses....”The Arab spring is better described as an awakening from  “old  deadening dictatorships . The journey may take decades. But it is welcome.”

Under the “New Society,” the Philippines became a gulag of safe houses. Citizens were tortured, maimed and salvaged there, Amnesty International noted. The Metropolitan Intelligence Security group ruled as Marcos’ torture chamber. “It was one of the best things that happened,” Imelda declared. Tayo ang nagligtas ng demokrasya.

There are more ironies. The revolt left communists wringing their hands in their safe houses The Ilocos looked the other way—resulting in a bizarre bed fellowship that’s never been adequately explained.

Clad in fatigues, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. harangued KBL partisans from a Malacañang porch as People Power surged. A day later, he’d be bundled into Hawaiian exile with family and cronies.

Today, 57-year old Senator Marcos sneers at Edsa as “the five-percent revolution”. He’s also mired in the pork barrel scam. The Marcoses tried to scrub blank a nation’s memory about executions, torture to, theft. “The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory,” historian Milan Hubl cautions.

Kleptocracy’s beneficiary can speak freely, due to liberties that People Power restored. Bongbong, itches to run for the presidency in 2016—after being slammed by the US Federal Court (9^th circuit) with a US$353.6 thousand fine for trying to smuggle out paintings and artwork held in evidence.

Then Mayor Joseph Estrada hunkered down in San Juan, itching for Marcos’ troops to plaster the rebels. He’s the only Philippine president ever convicted for plunder. As Manila mayor today,. Erap “vouched” for his son Jinggoy enmeshed in the pork scam. Bang in ama kabang, in anak niya mayan tundukan, the Tausug proverb says. “If the father is spotted, the son will be speckled.”

Ousted by People Power 2, Estrada called for crowds to spring him from the clink. Erap assumed People Power could be whistled up. “I can call spirits from the deep,” Shakespeare’s Glendower boasted. To which Hotspur replied: “Or so can any man. But will they come when you do call for them?” None came for Erap.

In response to Jaime Cardinal Sin’s appeal, people massed from 22 to 25 February. They saved Juan Ponce Enrile from Marcos’ fury for plotting to take over. Cory had been cheated massively in his Cagayan bailiwick, Enrile said in Edsa’s afterglow. But in later elections, Enrile “apologized” to Ilocano voters for People Power. Will amnesia save him from today’s plunder charges lodged with the Ombudsman?

To the end, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo shivered at People Power’s capacity to bring her corrupt regime down. In hospital detention today, GMA wonders, like pork cam queen Janet Napoles, what next?

Two hours after the Marcoses and cronies scrambled aboard escape helicopters, Journalist Lin Neumann wandered into hurriedly vacated Malacañang bedrooms. “I still recall the sweet odor rising from flagons of Channel no.5 and Joy perfume left behind in the rush to pack jewels and other valuables... Emerging from the palace, it was impossible not to be moved by people kneeling, praying the rosary... A peaceful four-day revolt toppled a dictatorship that once seemed impregnable.”

In the run-up to the revolt, Neumann recalled bumping into Minister Jose “Jolly” Benitez at, Manila Hotel’s bar “How did you guys lose control?” she asked.  And a tipsy   Benitez spat out: “’Nuns. How could we know those f***ing nuns were going to sit on the ballot boxes?’

Benitez then launched a crude string of epithets, took another swig and added: “There is no way out for Marcos. We don’t know what to do,” then staggered off into the night.” 

People Power restored freedoms. That was four decades ago. Did we cooperate—by forgetting? Eight out of 10 students today barely recall the kangaroo trial of Benigno Aquino Jr. before Military Commission No. 2.  Or why he was gunned down.

Few recall that Juan Ponce Enrile and colonels, mostly from PMA class 72, staged repeated coups to unseat Cory. “God Save the Queen”, staged in November 1986, would have installed Enrile in power, reducing Corazon Aquino, to figurehead.

So, we recall, compulsively perhaps, on the 28^th anniversary of People Power.  Maybe our stories may offer insights, especially for those too young to remember. Forgetting embeds injustice. Falsification of history invites repeated abuse. It prevents healing. Systematic distortion of facts aborts essential reforms.

Indeed, “we forget at the cost of betrayal. Amnesia over past crimes “reflects a weak sense of the nation and of the common good,” Sociologist John Carroll writes in “A Nation in Denial.” “Unless (the country reaffirms) those values, it may be condemned to forever wander in the valueless power plays among the elite.”