In the calculus of Philippine necropolitics, where the dead never really die, the unburied cadaver of Ferdinand Marcos is a powerful talisman. Keeping Marcos from being interred in a public cemetery for presidents, soldiers and other persons of varying degrees of heroism is not merely a political statement; it is also a warning to those who would challenge an entire philosophy that has installed two presidents in the past 30 years.
To the Yellows, who wrote the book on the public worship of the dead for political gain, leaving Marcos in an air-conditioned glass coffin in his Ilocos Norte home province is a cornerstone of an entire belief system that is based on his being inherently evil. An unburied Marcos is proof (in the Yellow liturgy, anyway) that those who are not pure and blameless by their standards are doomed to reside in some above-ground political limbo, forever denied a suitable burial ground.
On the other hand, the good get interred side by side with their spouses, like the “democracy icons” Ninoy and Cory Aquino. Their death anniversaries are celebrated almost like national holidays—never mind if the part of the population that does not accept their supposed martyrdom can’t even remember why they died or what for.
(Ninoy, of course, was assassinated, even if his wife and son, when they became president, showed an incredible lack of interest in discovering the identity of the mastermind. But Cory was no martyr, except in the minds of the partisans of her son, who converted her death of cancer into some sort of sacrifice for the nation, just so Noynoy could win the 2010 election.)
This is the inherent falsehood in the claim made by Noynoy last Sunday, when he found time to get out of his Times Street man-cave to join a protest concert against the planned burial of Marcos. Noynoy posited that the controversy is not really a dispute between the Aquinos and the Marcoses, as some believe, but one between the people and the Marcoses.
The truth is somewhat close to Noynoy’s claim. It is the Aquinos and their dwindling sympathizers who have made such a big deal about the Marcos burial, even if the people themselves don’t consider the issue that big a problem anymore.
It’s really simple: The controversy surrounding the burial of Marcos’ remains is one that pits the Aquinos, who are violently opposed to the plan, against the people, who really couldn’t care less about what the Aquinos consider of utmost importance.
Again, Noynoy is making the mistake that he committed regularly during his unremarkable, underperforming six-year term: He believes that things that matter to him, his family and their Yellow camp followers matter to the rest of the country, as well.
As always, Noynoy’s priorities are so different from the people’s own that he fails to realize the unimportance of the Marcos burial to the rest of the country. And because he cannot understand how a “truth” as plain as his nose cannot be appreciated by the Supreme Court, I am sure that he is now involved in plotting throwback anti-Marcos protests.
As the designated keeper of the dying Yellow flame, he can do no less, of course. His family, cronies and all the other beneficiaries of the Aquino presidencies, because of their proximity to Noynoy, have no choice but to pretend that the court’s decision is a big deal, too.
But this is 2016, not 1983, when Ninoy was killed. And there’s also the small matter of having a wildly popular president who finally decided to lay the issue—and the Marcos body—to rest.
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The truth of the matter is, President Rodrigo Duterte has single-handedly demolished the myth, carefully planted and cultivated by the Yellows over the years, that Marcos is so bad that he doesn’t deserve to be buried where other presidents lie. Never mind if the other presidents interred in the Libingan were not saints themselves; according to the Yellows, Marcos was just so far beyond the pale that he cannot be buried outside of Ilocos.
Prior to Duterte’s election, the myth had become so entrenched that all the presidents not named Aquino who ascended into Malacañang Palace after Cory avoided the issue like the plague. It did not matter what these presidents believed; they were convinced that “the people” would rise if Marcos was buried at the Libingan.
Duterte, of course, can be relied upon to challenge political belief systems that he has not tested on the ground when he was mayor of Davao City. And so he decided to find out if the myth of unpopularity of the Marcos burial had any real basis by calling for the deed to be done.
True enough, six petitions were filed before the Supreme Court to prevent Duterte from burying his dead idol. And the tribunal itself had to postpone ruling on the matter twice, perhaps because it, too, was still under the influence of this most important of Yellow myths.
The last time Duterte spoke in public about the matter was when he called on the Supreme Court to decide the issue of the Marcos burial on the basis of law and not emotions. Whichever way the court decided, he said, he would accept the ruling.
The court has spoken. I hope the Yellows can accept its decision—for their own sake, really, because I don’t believe that the people will look kindly upon them if they don’t.