MALACAÑANG on Monday tagged those opposing the burial of the late strongman Ferdinand Marcos at the Heroes’ Cemetery as “temperamental brats” for refusing to concede to the Supreme Court’s decision.
In a newspaper column, Communications Secretary Martin Andanar drew parallels between the American protesters slamming elected US president Donald Trump and those opposing Marcos’ burial at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
“Both the Americans protesting the outcome of a fair election and the Filipinos objecting to the well-considered ruling of our own Supreme Court are undermining institutions. They are temperamental brats refusing to concede to the outcome of regular processes,” Andanar said.
“If Trump should not be trusted with the nuclear codes, the anti-burial people should not be trusted with administering the rule of law.”
“Brats? I don’t think they are brats,” Senate President Aquilino Pimentel III said in reaction to Andanar’s statement.
“They can never be called beats. Theirs are actually principled positions, principled stand,” said Pimentel whose father, former Senate President Aquilino Pimentel, was a political detainee during the Marcos regime.
Andanar said while many of the burial’s critics were now pushing the President to reverse his decision, their actions were “chronically self-righteous” for not following the rule of law.
“As a last card, the anti-burial people now intend to apply pressure on President Duterte to reverse his position allowing Marcos to be buried in the Libingan,” Andanar said.
“They argue that what is now legal may not be moral. That is a chronically self-righteous thing to say. One might counter-argue that what is moral may not be legal.
“Many young Filipinos, spared the extraordinary passions of a different age, see the struggle over where to bury the corpse might seem silly and inconsequential. There should be better uses for the political energies unleashed by this issue.”