The Marcos spectre

... OR WOULD you rather that I declare martial law?

So President Duterte posited in response to the letter of Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno which raised apprehension over the "premature public announcement" of the names of judges allegedly linked to the drug trade.

Rhetorical. The President’s minions knee-jerked at their bossman’s reference of  martial law, trying to allay deep-seated terror always stirred even at its most casual mentioning.

Call me paranoid, but Duterte’s diktat for the burial of Ferdinand Edralin Marcos at the Libingan ng mga Bayani gives me the chills over the dictator’s imminent second coming, in him.

No, Duterte cannot make good on his martial law rhetoric, constitutionalists argue. What with the 1987 Constitution mandating: The Supreme Court may review, in an appropriate proceeding filed by any citizen, the sufficiency of the factual basis of the proclamation of martial law or the suspension of the privilege of the writ or the extension thereof, and must promulgate its decision thereon within thirty days from its filing. (Article VIII, Section 18).

So, guess what’s all this frenzy to tinker with the Constitution all about? Only a change to federalism? Your guess may not be as malicious as mine. Aye, what with the appropriately named con-ass – stress on the second syllable – as the preferred means to do it. 

And then, if fading memory still serves right, didn’t Marcos call his martial law a “constitutional coup”? The then Supreme Court, led by the Imeldific’s umbrella bearer, not only acquiescing a collective nod but according its deepest bow to the “benevolent” dictatorship?

Maybe, we should ask the brilliant Estelito P. Mendoza, then-as-now victorious in all his pleadings with the High Court, the hows, the whys and the wherefores of doing it. And be convinced.

Oligarchs

Call me neurotic, but Duterte’s belligerence to “monster” oligarchs gives me the Marcosian creeps.    

I am fighting a monster. I am just two months old (into the presidency) but believe me, I will destroy their clutches sa ating bayan (in our country)…Yung mga mina, napupunta ‘yan sa mga oligarchs. Walang iba ‘yang ginawa kung hindi mag-influence peddling (Oligarchs benefit from mining. All they do is influence peddling). So the papers reported him as saying.

Duterte further sayeth: Ang plano talaga is, destroy the oligarchs that are embedded in government. 'Yan sila, I'll give you an example, publicly – Ongpin, Roberto.

(From the papers: One of the 50 richest Filipinos in 2015 according to Forbes Magazine, Ongpin supposedly had a net worth of $900 million. Last August 1, the Court of Appeals stopped the Securities and Exchange Commission from enforcing its en banc decision on Ongpin's insider trading case involving Philex Mining Corp. shares in 2009. The SEC had barred the businessman from joining the board of any publicly listed company, and fined him P174 million for insider trading. Ongpin sits as chairman of two listed firms – PhilWeb Corp. and Atok Big Wedge Inc. Last Aug 4, Ongpin resigned as chairman and director of the listed online gaming firm PhilWeb Corp.)

Eloquence

From the pugnacious Duterte, to the supremely eloquent Marcos now: In the Philippines, the real power lay back of the shifting factions, in the hands of a few rich families strong enough to bend Government to their will. This oligarchy intervened in government to preserve the political privileges of its wealth, and to protect its right of property.

This intervention of wealth in politics unavoidably produced corruption. And when this practice seeped through the whole of society itself, the result was moral degeneration. So the Philippine political culture equated freedom with self-aggrandizement, and the politics of participation, so essential in a democracy, with the pursuit of privilege.

Oligarchic “values” permeated society all the more easily because the rich controlled the press and radio-TV. The press particularly became the weapon of a special class rather than a public forum. The newspapers would noisily and endlessly comment on the side issues of our society, but not on the basic ones: for example, the question of private property.

The oligarchic propaganda was that somehow, with the election of “good men” – good men who please the oligarchs – mass poverty would come to an end. The search for “better men in politics” and not institutional change; a “higher political morality,” and not the restructuring of society – this was the oligarch’s ready answer to the question of change.

Marcos’ “monster oligarch”: the Lopez family that owned the power that was – and still is – Meralco, and the glory that was – and still is – ABS-CBN. Which “the state” confiscated after the declaration of martial law in September 1972.

Dismantling the oligarchy was as good a casus belli for Marcos’ declaration of martial law as suppressing the communist rebellion.

The dictatorship though falling flat on its face on both counts: 1) the communist insurgency grew, the New People’s Army armed cadres swelling to 25,000, opening multiple fronts in all major islands of the country; 2) a new set of oligarchs – Cojuangco, Benedicto, Disini, Cuenco, et al – rising from the old.

Some lessons from history there. Santayana, may we feel you.

So, in dismissing Ongpin and some others of his ilk yet to be publicly named and shamed, should we brace ourselves to welcome Villar, Floreindo, Dizon, Uy, Zamora as this administration’s own oligarchy?     

No, there shall be no final closure in burying the long-dead dictator at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. He will continue to haunt us – the living, as well as the dead, victims as we all are of his martial law.

His very spectre now ruling and reigning over, indeed, reining in, the nation.

What change has come.