There’s only one question that will remain, if the Supreme Court rules on the Marcos burial case: If the tribunal decides against those who want to prevent the interment, will all the “decent” minions of the Aquino family accept it?
Yes, the Supreme Court has finally been asked to rule on the plan of the Duterte administration to bury the late President Ferdinand Marcos at the Libingan ng Mga Bayani, through a petition for certiorari and the issuance of a temporary restraining order against the military and the Marcos family. This is a good thing, really, whether you believe that the former strongman deserves the burial or not.
As President Rodrigo Duterte himself explained it, this is something that the Yellows should have done a long time ago, if they really wanted to prevent the burial. If there had been a court ruling at any time in the 30 years or so that were bookended by two Aquino presidencies, Duterte is saying, then none of the current hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing would have been necessary; Duterte, for all his admiration for the dead Marcos, would certainly have looked at the ruling and thought nothing more of the matter.
But like the question of who really ordered the killing of the Yellow patriarch, former Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. in 1983, the issue of whether or not Marcos should be buried at the Libingan was never really given a lot of thought by Ninoy’s family. And you’d think that these things would be top-of-mind considerations for anyone who has ever worn the yellow ribbon as a political talisman.
The truth of the matter is, the Aquinos and their supporters have merely assumed that no thoughtful, self-respecting Filipino (or Filipino president, for that matter) would allow the burial. And that no court ruling on the issue was ever going to be necessary, they thought, for the same reason.
But this is the same flawed assumption that has led the Yellows to believe that, in 1986, all of the Philippines was present at Edsa. Simply because enough of them were there, the Aquino fans thought they represented the entire citizenry—and that, furthermore, they were and have since then been unerringly correct, politically, morally and legally.
This, ultimately, explains the outrage of the Yellows: that someone like Duterte would dare to do what to them is unthinkable and bury Marcos in a cemetery nominally for heroes. What’s next, claims that Cory Aquino was less than saintly, thereby disqualifying her from beatification and the conferment of sainthood by the Catholic Church?
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But perhaps the same people who never moved to ban Marcos from being buried forever at the Libingan knew that they never had a legal leg to stand on. And there is no reason to believe that the current petition is going to succeed, either, given the arguments put forth in the document.
Duterte is sitting in the catbird seat on this one, as they used to say. Because there is simply no way to legally contest his authority to have Marcos buried in the military cemetery—something that should be plain even to those who filed the petition before the tribunal.
Even the supposed agreement hammered out between then-President Fidel Ramos and the Marcoses in 1993 which brought home the dictator’s remains from Hawaii, legal experts have told me, cannot be used to stop the burial—assuming it really exists. Briefly, that’s because the pact was an executive agreement that did not have the force of law which can be rescinded by another executive order from the current president, Duterte.
As for the military’s rules and the old law establishing the Libingan (both grounds used by the petitioners), that is certainly an uphill legal battle. The court will have to find that Marcos was dishonorably discharged and/or that he was never even a soldier, the basic requirements for burial in the cemetery.
Even the prefatory portion of the law passed by Congress compensating the victims of human rights abuses committed during martial law, yet another argument raised by the Yellows, cannot be used as a legal ground to stop the burial because it constitutes a prohibited “bill of attainder.” And the Constitution itself prohibits Congress from declaring a person or group of persons guilty of some crime and punishing them without a trial, which is what such a bill does.
And so, by all means, let the Court rule. But perhaps Duterte should demand that all parties, himself and the Yellows, should be legally bound by it.
If the couple of hundred nut cases who were at the Rizal Park last Sunday, co-opting a rally organized by a handful of real former activists and Marcos-era rights victims, can be made to do that, then I will forever hold my peace on the matter. Especially if, as I firmly believe, the court rules against them.
In the event that the court ignores the petition and allows the burial of Marcos’ remains as scheduled in the military cemetery, I expect a lot more people—much, much more than were at the park last Sunday—to attend the rites. And that event, I think, will finally put to rest the belief of the Yellows that the majority of Filipinos are on their side.
Assuming, of course, as the Yellows usually do, that they ever had a majority professing their belief. We shall soon see, won’t we?
