He is as sick and tired of the toxic sociopolitical culture in the Philippines as many of us. John Leo Algo is a climate advocate, environment researcher, and citizen journalist. Wait, is that why the Marcoses and Dutertes are still popular? – Many people secretly prefer to watch the villains anyway. Moving on is not an option, not until justice is served. If Marcos is a hero, we would gladly be the villains. This means that we all are stakeholders, and we have the right to resolve this for good. Whether you believe it or not, truth is, the fallout from Martial Law is an issue of national significance. It will not be an easy fight and it might last beyond our lifetimes, but we must try rather than simply live and suffer. We must fight to ensure that greedy, corrupt people get punished for the injustices they have caused. Let this be a lesson to all of us to be the living examples of “Never forget, never again.” We must fight this misinformation and historical revisionism about Martial Law or Duterte’s cheap copy of it, be they in textbooks or social media. Supporting an obviously corrupt, incompetent leader is like not wearing a mask in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic they are irresponsible uses of your freedom. The conversation then is no longer about, “I’m just exercising my rights ” it becomes about, “You abused your freedom and hurt others.” We have our rights, but with them are responsibilities and limits. When what we do harms others, that is where our freedom ends. We all know that too much of anything is bad for us.
Just because you see the word “free” does not mean you can just do whatever you want without consequences.įreedom is universal, but not absolute. The same freedom that thousands died for during the Martial Law era is now being used by DDS and Marcos loyalists to try to rewrite history. It is clear that many of us do not understand the true meaning of freedom. It seems everyone else worldwide already knows that the Marcoses should be punished…except for many Filipinos. Two wrongs do not cancel each other out this is not a telenovela.Įven the Guinness World Records recognizes Marcos as responsible for the greatest robbery of a government. That also does not redeem the Marcoses and friends from their damage to this nation. Obviously, not all wrongs have been corrected and the post-Martial Law leaders are to blame for that.
The restoration of democracy in 1986 gave hope for Filipinos to reverse the wrongs of Marcos, his family, and his cronies, and finally place our country on the right path. Nevertheless, arguably the most important fallout from the Martial Law era is our newfound appreciation of freedom. And now, the dynasty’s newest politician who does not understand why the votes for President and Vice President are not the same is likely to win in 2022 just because he is a Marcos and capitalizes on unhealthy loyalty.
Remember that Imelda Marcos was found guilty of graft in 2018 and sentenced to prison, yet she is still not behind bars. Why would they? They are still in power, shamelessly portraying themselves as leaders for change. Their human rights were undoubtedly violated, their families suffered…and the dictator’s family does not even have the decency to apologize and admit to the crimes. No matter how hard the Marcoses try to make us forget, we remember that thousands were killed or tortured during this time. Truth be told, all of us are still paying for the trillions worth of debt today. Poverty rates drastically increased, the value of the peso went down, and the country’s reputation crashed. By the time Marcos was kicked out of Malacañang, the Philippine economy was in bad shape from the corruption and heavy borrowing from other countries. The impacts of Martial Law are so devastating that we are still feeling the consequences today. Nearly five decades have passed since then-President Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law in the Philippines. While he claimed this was done to suppress civil unrest and communist threats, it became glaringly obvious that he simply took advantage of the chaos to create a dictatorship that plundered this nation for the next 14 years. The sad part is we have seen this before. We are obviously seeing it during the Duterte administration, whether out of fear, apathy, ignorance, or ego. And they tend to follow their parent, no matter how abusive he is.
They only understand who is in front of them.
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