A Question of Dignity

During one of our monthly PMA Class reunion sessions early this year, the issue of the burial of ousted president Marcos in the Libingan ng mga Bayani came out. This was before the news about Vice President Binay’s recommendation giving full military honors to Marcos, but not for burying him in the Libingan came out in the papers. There were twelve of us present – all retired military officers, although only a few non-generals. Only two of us voted not to have Marcos buried in the Libingan. Most of those who voted to have him interred there gave “legal” reasons for doing so: he was a soldier, a war hero, a president and a commander-in-chief of the AFP, as well as, he was not convicted of any crime. His sins against the people are conveniently ignored as irrelevant to the issue.

I can understand the position of my classmates. As military men, we ought to honor other military men, and former commander-in-chiefs. Especially, Marcos, for his action in declaring Martial Law in 1972, he gave a new role and power to the military. He has a vision for the Philippines – a New Society (almost parallel to Hitler’s Neuordnung or New Order for Germany). However, I have my own perspective in going beyond the parameters for being allowed interment with honors in the Libingan, that of being an unconvicted soldier, a war hero, and a commander-in-chief. (These must have been the criteria for having General Angelo Reyes buried with honors in the Libingan. He was not convicted of any crime by any court, although everybody believed that he convicted and executed himself.)

For me, the totality of character should be the basis of judgment. Even if he was a soldier and war hero (when he was still young) and has done a lot to improve his country when he was president and a commander-in-chief, these do not erase the sorry quality of his reign. It is the totality of life and personality, not only a portion of his life that determines a man's character and dignity. Perhaps, Shakespeare’s “the evil that men do lives after them, the good if oft interred with their bones” do apply in the case of Marcos’s burial. He may not have been convicted in our courts, but an international community accepted the fact of his guilt.

Regarding the totality of a lifestyle that determines how history distinguishes a prominent figure,let me cite a few examples, some of which I culled from Wikipedia.

Even if he was a trusted disciple of Jesus Christ who handled the funds of the Twelve, Judas Iscariot was consigned to be the arch-villain of history. We do not credit him for making the Crucifixion/Resurrection possible. His betrayal was enough to consign him to damnation.(There were some writers who hypothesized that even the betrayal was approved by Jesus himself in order to catalyze the situation. John 13:27-28.)

The corrupt Pope Alexander VI had been a patron of the arts (Michelangelo and Raphael worked for him) and of science, and was even benevolent towards the persecuted Jews during the Renaissance. His successor, Pope Pius III, forbade the saying of a Mass for his soul as “it is blasphemous to pray for the damned.” His body was removed from the crypts of St Peter’s.

Slobodan Milosevic, a three term president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and first president of Serbia, resigned due to public clamor (people power?) over presidential election dispute in 2000 (echoes of EDSA?). He was arrested by Yugoslav federal authorities for corruption, abuse of power and embezzlement. Due to difficulties in coming up with witnesses and proofs of his misdeeds because of those who still believed in him, he was turned over to The Hague to be tried for war crimes. He died after six years in prison while under trial.

In France, Pierre Laval, four times President of the council of ministers of the Third Republic and twice as head of Vichy Regime, was found guilty of high treason after World War II and executed by firing squad.

Marshal Philippe Petain, a national hero of France for outstanding military leadership in the World War I Battle of Verdun and Premier of Vichy France, was convicted and sentenced to death for treason after World War II although commuted to life imprisonment by protégé Charles de Gaulle.

Josef Stalin, formerly a seminarian in the Georgian Orthodox seminary, transformed Russia from a largely agrarian society into a great industrial power. Soviet Russia emerged as the world's second largest economy after World War II. His successor, Nikita Khruschchev, however, eradicated Stalin's influence from the public sphere. Stalin's name was expunged from cities, landmarks, and facilities which had been named or renamed after him. Stalin's body was moved from Lenin's Mausoleum in Red Square to a location near the Kremlin wall.

Benito Mussolini, the Il Duce of Italy, was executed by partisans during World War II. Among the domestic achievements of Mussolini from the years 1924–1939 were: his public works programs such as cultivating the Pontine Marshes, the improvement of job opportunities, and public transport. He is also credited with securing economic success in Italy's colonies and commercial dependencies.

Adolf Hitler was twice decorated for bravery, Iron Cross, Second Class, in 1914 and Iron Cross, First Class, in 1918, an honor rarely given to a Gefreiter or Private. As Chancellor of Germany he oversaw one of the greatest expansions of industrial production and civil improvement Germany had ever seen, He also oversaw one of the largest infrastructure-improvement campaigns in German history, with the construction of dozens of dams, autobahns, railroads, and other civil works. In his first four years of government the number of unemployed dropped from 6 million to 900 thousand people, the gross national product grew 102%, he doubled the per capita income, augmented companies' profits from 175 million to 5 billion Reich marks and reduced hyperinflation to a maximum of 25% a year. I doubt if the Germans will eventually hail him as a hero. According to my daughter married to a German, Hitler is an embarrassment to his people.

Alberto Kenya Fujimori, President of Peru from 28 July 1990 to 17 November 2000, has been credited with uprooting terrorism in Peru and restoring its macroeconomic stability. In December 2007, Fujimori was convicted of ordering an illegal search and seizure, and was sentenced to six years in prison. In April 2009, Fujimori was convicted of human rights violations and sentenced to 25 years in prison for his role in killings and kidnappings by the Grupo Colina death squad during his government's battle against leftist guerrillas in the 1990s. In July 2009 Fujimori was sentenced to 7½ years in prison for embezzlement, after he admitted to giving $15 million out of the Peruvian treasury to the former intelligence service chief, Vladimiro Montesinos. Two months later in a fourth trial, he pled guilty to bribery and was given an additional six-year term. Under Peruvian law all the sentences must run concurrently, with a maximum length of imprisonment of 25 years.

There may be others who may be grouped with those I have mentioned above.

In the matter of burying Marcos we need to consider the historical background why he remains unburied. In 1986 the Filipinos gained the respect of the world when they ousted Marcos. Internationally, judgment was against him for his faulty governance. Several nations followed suit in dealing with their own leaders, one of which was Serbian president Milosevic I have mentioned above. Dying while in exile in the US, the body of Marcos was allowed to be brought back to the Philippines, but his wife, to pressure the government to give him funeral honors as a former head of state, decided not to inter his cadaver. However, now the strong move from the House of Representatives to give military honors and a presidential burial to Marcos puts into question the symbolic quality and value of the 1986 “People’s Revolution”. We, Filipinos will appear to have changed our own evaluation of our People Power, making it a monumental act of injustice and a wrong exercise of power.

And if EDSA was a monumental injustice, we must redress it by putting the main characters who initiated and launched that travesty under trial – Senate President Enrile, ex-President Ramos, and Senator Honasan. (Include myself as one of those who committed injustice to hero Marcos.) Cardinal Sin should be included but since he has already gone beyond mortality, he can only be dealt with by smashing his statues and monuments.

Nonetheless, I still cling to my conviction not to bury and give full military honors to Marcos. Deposed rulers do not deserve state honors. Instead, they may be guillotined like King Louis XVI. Giving honors to Marcos insults gravely those who staked their lives in EDSA to depose him. I shall not be party to the indignity of reversing and in rewriting Philippine history. Let his family do the burying. If Representative Imelda still insists on her decision not to bury but to display the cadaver, let her spend all her wealth (but not her pork barrel) maintaining the refrigerated crypt. On the other hand, the government may declare the exposed cadaver as a health hazard and exert its authority to appropriately dispose of it, perhaps by burial a la Osama bin Laden.

.