AN OFFICIAL has asked the Supreme Court to reverse its decision allowing the burial of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos at the Heroes’ Cemetery for the sake of the people who disappeared or whose rights were violated during the martial law years.
Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman said Marcos’ burial at the Libingan ng mga Bayani on November 18 was a “gross distortion, a malevolent revision and a wanton derogation of Philippine history.”
He said Marcos’ burial would not lead to closure and national healing contrary to the high court’s ruling and President Rodrigo Duterte’s claim.
‘‘The burial of a condemned dictator, confirmed plunderer and censured violator of human rights in the Cemetery of Heroes will not lead to closure because it sanctifies evil and installs a despot and oppressor in the venerable memorial for good men,’’ Lagman said.
But Malacañang on Monday simply downplayed the last appeals by the critics of Marcos’ burial at the Libingan.
“The 9-5 decision of the Supreme Court is a clear margin; however, any party is entitled to available legal remedies including a motion for reconsideration,” Communications Secretary Martin Andanar said.
“©“We respect their constitutional right to procedural due process but we must all abide by the ruling of the Supreme Court.”
Lagman says the speed and stealth by which Marcos’ burial was carried out by the Marcos family shows their incorrigible addiction to deception, underhandedness and abuse that the Supreme Court must not have condoned.
He reiterated his plea to exhume “whatever was interred as Marcos’ mortal remains” at the Libingan on November 8 and to determine what actually was buried there.
He says when the totality of Marcos as a man is weighed in the balance, whatever achievements he has done for the country are completely nullified by his sins against the nation, thus making him ineligible to be buried at the Heroes’ Cemetery.
Lagman aside, former Bayan Muna Party-list Rep. Satur Ocampo and several other human rights victims during the Marcos regime also filed a motion for reconsideration before the high court.
