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As the nation celebrates or does not celebrate the
EDSA Revolution for the 22nd time and at the same time provokes or
impedes the coming of another tipping point that will topple another
government, it is about time that it looks at the event from a
different perspective, one that is only whispered, much less
repeated and hardly ever communicated to the reading public.
There is much to learn from that
perspective, which will prove disturbing, even disconcerting, to
most. But it needs saying. The nation will never break
out from the present morass of its moral decay and socio-economic
retardation unless it comes to grips with how it has behaved during
and since that event.
Most have argued that the cause
of the morass is that the nation has forgotten and betrayed the
ideals of EDSA, such as that of morality, justice and good
government. They have not pursued the logic of that argument
rigorously enough. The ideals were betrayed from inception.
Oh Justice, oh Morality, how many injustices and immoralities were
committed in thy name!
The unwillingness to consider a
different view stems, among others, from a basic human flaw: the
propensity to see and to blame only the mistakes of one’s enemies
and not to look at one’s own. This was magnified in EDSA,
for the new regime suffered from the myopia due to the arrogance of
victory and newly-attained power.
This article discusses only the
betrayal of the ideal of procedural fairness enshrined in the due
process clause of the Constitution. There is a consequential
connection between the ideal’s betrayal and the present politics
of terror, where once again a divided military will determine the
fate of an elected President.
Due process violations began with
the assumption of power by Mrs. Corazon C. Aquino who swore to abide
by the Constitution when she ran for the presidency. It
continued with the kidnapping and exile of then President Ferdinand
E. Marcos; the exile, a penalty not provided by Philippine law, was
certainly against his will. The joke goes that he informed
U.S. military authorities that he intended to go to Paoay, Ilocos
Norte, which they misheard as “Hawaii.”
Her representatives then
ransacked the Marcos’ private bedrooms at the Malacañang Palace
without a warrant, allegedly in search of evidence. At
Imelda’s New York trial, one of them admitted that thirty-five
suitcases and boxes of documents, diamonds and jewelry, were all
surrendered to authorities. This was contradicted by Jovito R.
Salonga (Presidential Plunder: The Quest for the Ill-Gotten Marcos
Wealth, p. 351) insisting that he received only twenty-four boxes.
No inventory of the items was made. Neither was an
investigation conducted, despite reports that some of the jewelry
and diamonds ended up with Mrs. Aquino’s close friends or
relatives.
Her very first executive order,
issued on the fourth day of her presidency, created the Presidential
Commission on Good Government (PCGG), a misnomer if ever there was
one, with Salonga as chairman. Tasked to retrieve the alleged
ill-gotten Marcos wealth, it behaved in its first years as a
superhuman body impregnable and accountable to no one, sequestering
or taking under its control property on the mere suspicion of being
ill-gotten.
The violation of the Marcos
rights persists to this day but that, although relevant, must await
another article. What is of more relevance is that with the
executive order the stage was set for her revolutionary government
to commit horrendous crimes directly against the rest of the
Filipino people with impunity.
This was achieved by conjuring
the image of a totally evil tyrant in the person of President
Marcos. With this excuse, the government rationalized its illegal
assumption of power, glorified the revolution and served to divert
the people’s attention from the new government’s own
inadequacies, crimes and misdeeds.
Among these misdeeds was to
indiscriminately release all the political prisoners of Marcos,
which included Communist rebels and Light-A-Fire Movement members.
It demonstrated to the public not only that she was kind and
forgiving but also that Marcos was so despicable as to jail people
whimsically.
Some have argued that the release
was intended for the benefit of the movement, some members of which
were her close friends and relatives. Sen. Antonio Trillanes
recently described it as “the anti-Marcos group (in the Seventies)
responsible for several bombings in Metro Manila, which resulted in
the deaths of dozens of (innocent) Filipinos.”
It is no secret that ownership to
official government property and to private Marcos property were
surreptitiously transferred, without benefit of a legal process, to
Aquino’s friends and relatives, including Light-A-Fire members.
It may be unlikely that Aquino, herself, masterminded such a
transfer but she certainly tolerated it and the public ignored it or
forgave her.
Predictably, it impressed upon
the public, detractors and supporters alike, that her brand of
justice was a victor’s justice and that terrorism was justified
and paid dividends so long as victory was attained. Other
crimes ensued.
(To be continued)
eqfernando@hotmail.com
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