Burying Ferdinand Marcos

EVER since former President Fidel V. Ramos permitted the Marcos family to repatriate the body of Ferdinand Marcos in 1993, the nation has grappled with the highly political and emotive question of whether the Dictator is entitled to be buried in the country’s first and only national cemetery, the Libingan ng mga Bayani, the Heroes’ Cemetery. Many think that burying Marcos in what is widely regarded as hallowed ground is obnoxious and immoral. The family is determined to ensure it happens. President-elect Rodrigo Duterte, who has never hidden his close-ties with the Marcoses, nor his admiration for the late strongman, promised to grant the family their wish. There is every indication that he will keep his word. For Mr. Duterte the matter seems cut and dried. Marcos, he says, is entitled to his plot because as a former soldier he fulfills the necessary criteria. He is right. It is the rehabilitation of a reviled dictator that is wrong.

A cemetery for heroes strikes me as a peculiarly American concept. The Republic Memorial Cemetery, as the military reserve in west Bicutan was first called, was established in 1947 and given its present name in 1954 by President Ramon Magsaysay. This was a period when American influence on Filipino leaders was still remarkably strong. Since the Civil War, Americans have gone to great lengths to honor soldiers who died on the battlefield. After the Spanish-American War of 1898 and the Philippine-American War of 1899 – 1902, the disinterment and repatriation of American soldiers who died in battle on foreign soil was enshrined in US legislation. It was a landmark ruling and a turning point in how Americans treat their fallen warriors. Today, civilian morticians working under the Quartermaster Burial Corps travel abroad to recover bodies of deceased military personnel for shipment home if the next of kin so wish. Otherwise, the remains can be interred in one of the many permanent American military cemeteries overseas. The United States is the only nation in the world to offer this privilege.