Please pass the butter

“Name me one person that was arrested because of political or religious belief during that period. None. Name me one person that was arrested simply because he criticized President Marcos. None,” former Senate President Juan “Johnny” Ponce Enrile told former Senator Bongbong Marcos, the only son of ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos (philstar.com Sept. 21, 2018)
It was on the eve of the 46^th anniversary of Ferdinand Marcos’s declaration of his martial law that Enrile said that, in a YouTube video with the dictator’s son. The two men sat half-buried in huge white wing chairs that faced each other, on a stark stage. In their dark suits they could have been an elder Mafioso reviewing the younger Mafioso on the tricks of the trade, as the Devil’s glee danced in the intense fire glow of the red footlights. How more sinister could Bongbong’s red socks and Johnny’s red tie be, than to stand for the blood spilled in those 14 years of Marcos’s dictatorship, with Ponce-Enrile, his Defense Chief, as his chief implementor of martial law with its wave of killings, tortures and arrests?
“They claimed that we killed a lot of people. That’s why when I was interviewed by someone some time ago, I challenged her: Name me one that we executed other than Lim Seng,” said Enrile (YouTube video: JPE: A Witness to History”). Lim Seng, whom Enrile mentioned in the interview, was executed through firing squad in 1973 because he was a Chinese drug lord. “Enrile was selective about his recollections. He excluded reference to the extrajudicial killings under Martial Law” (Rappler, Sept. 22, 2018). Amnesty International reported at least 3,240 people were killed from 1972 to 1981, while around 70,000 people were imprisoned, and 34,000 were tortured (Ibid.).
Bongbong lacked subtlety, perhaps forgivable in a younger “gangsta,” as he kept letting on as to the motivation for the video, and their target audience. His opening question to elicit Ponce-Enrile’s denials of wrongdoing in martial law was, “What is the biggest fallacy now that young people are being fed about the reasons and actual events of martial law?” Ponce-Enrile says the biggest fallacy or wrong view is that of killings and injustice — there were no killings, Enrile kept repeating, no human rights violations. “All of that seems to be lost in the accounts we are hearing now,” Bongbong provokes, as if even he was misled. (Note that there was no discussion of plunder and unexplained wealth, or of corruption during martial law, in the video.) And Ponce-Enrile promptly replies, “I cannot blame the so-called millennials, they were born in 1980. What they know is what they read or hear about,” Ponce-Enrile says to Bongbong.
It’s really the youth for whom the tug of war is played for — the older generations who experienced martial law should know how history is to be written so that “Never again” will the atrocities sure to come under one-man rule maim and mangle the country and its people. But so pernicious is the attack on Truth that one wonders how reckless consciences can be with their own belief in themselves. Not only the millennials are vulnerable, in their innocence, to distortions of history. How can those in their age and experience blind themselves to what they have seen, or turn deaf to real-life experiences of the unfortunate victims of torture and rape?
Can rape be consensual, the lawyer in the group was asked, as they analyzed, among themselves at some merienda, the forced submission of some victims of martial law, as a compromise to survival? When force is used, that would be the definition of a rape. No is No. But when there is intimidation, as it would come not merely as physical force, but as ascendancy and control, then there is still rape. And someone brought up the painful question: By analogy, are we allowing ourselves to be raped, in this political governance that shows chilling tendencies towards autocracy and dictatorship? Even fate seems to smile on the Marcoses and mock us as we continue to be raped.
Also on the anniversary of Marcos’s martial law, it was announced that the Supreme Court (SC) upheld the acquittal of former First Lady Imelda Marcos in a case of stashing ill-gotten wealth in a Swiss account, saying there was not enough evidence beyond reasonable doubt to show the judge handling it was biased (philstar.com, Sept. 21, 2018). According to an estimate by SC, Marcos had accumulated up to $10 billion while in office (The Guardian, May 7, 2016). So many things the Filipino people allowed to happen.
In the wake of the People Power Revolution that ousted Ferdinand Marcos, his remains waited 23 years in an air-conditioned crypt in his hometown Laoag to be buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, the Heroes cemetery. It was a tug of war between those who believed him to be a hero and those who did not. On Nov. 18, 2016, newly installed President Rodrigo Duterte authoritatively allowed the clandestinely planned burial of Marcos at the Libingan, with organized theatrical full military honors, 21-gun salute and the honorific taps for a Commander-in-Chief and hero. How can we now even say “Never again” to martial law and dictatorship?
And indeed, martial law has been proclaimed by President Rodrigo Duterte over the entire Mindanao in May 2017, suspending the writ of habeas corpus to allow the military to wipe out the Maute rebels — and raze Marawi City to the ground by an overkill of air and ground attacks. With the original declaration good for 60 days under the Constitution, martial law was extended until December 2017 and before expiry, Pres. Duterte asked, and was granted extension until end of 2018. After the recent (Aug. 28) bombing in Sultan Kudarat, feelers were sent out for another extension of martial law (The Philippine Star, Aug. 30, 2018).
The brazen display of dictatorial power by the democratically elected leadership seems to have hypnotized the people into accepting what is so shockingly divergent from the normal, and the questionably legal or illegal. Did we not allow Senator Leila de Lima to be detained, as she still is — for yet-unproven drug trafficking; Comelec Chair Andres Bautista to be effectively removed (he ultimately resigned) for alleged unexplained wealth; and Chief Justice Lourdes Sereno to be ousted by her peers on the strange and hitherto-unused legal trick called “quo warranto”? And then there is the “alias warrant” served on Sen. Antonio Trillanes, as Pres. Duterte suddenly revoked the amnesty given by predecessor Pres. Benigno Aquino III to him. Trillanes’s co-plotter in the Oakwood mutiny against then-Pres. Gloria Arroyo, 1Lt. Francisco “Ashley” Acedillo, noted how even the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos issued 12 amnesty proclamations during his term and none of these were withdrawn (philstar.com, Sept. 16, 2018).
And amidst persistent high numbers (3,000+) of alleged extrajudicial killings since early in the Duterte drug war (Rappler, Sept 19, 2016), it staggers the mind why the popularity and trust ratings of the President and his Cabinet, and those close to him had stayed up in the Very Good to near-Excellent and only recently dropped to Good — they say because of the economic realities of high food inflation and the weakening peso. The Filipino people — millennials, young, and the old — must like being raped.
It is so grotesquely, graphically violent, this “consensual rape,” or agreeing to be molested and used, that it calls up Marlon Brando’s infamous lines in the iconic 1972 near-porn movie Last Tango in Paris by the daring Bernardo Bertolucci: “Please pass the butter…”
 
Amelia H. C. Ylagan is a Doctor of Business Administration from the University of the Philippines.
ahcylagan@yahoo.com