THE BOOGEYMAN IS FINALLY BURIED

 

I woke up this morning and I felt strangely refreshed.  It felt as though a huge weight had been lifted off of my shoulders.  As you know, the family of Former President Ferdinand E. Marcos buried him yesterday morning in a discreet and intimate burial in the Libingan ng mga Bayani (LNMB).  For the past 30 or so years after his death, Marcos had been kept in a refrigerated casket for all the world to see, his corpse was gawked at or venerated and defiled.  His mortal remains were used as a symbol by loyalists and pro-Aquino alike, sowing division.  It is because of this that President Duterte once and for all decided to put the issue and his mortal remains to rest.  Make no mistake about it, this was a political decision calculated to end division between the loyalists and the pro-Aquino—this does not change the past, but sets a course for our future unburdened by Boogeymen and infighting.

 

I am glad he is buried now and out of sight.  Like Mark Anthony speaking at Caesar’s funeral in Shakespeare’s play, I would simply like to say that “I have come to bury Marcos, not to praise him.  The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones…”  And so it is with Marcos.  I hope you do not think that simply because he has been buried, his sins are buried with him.

 

“The evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their bones”

Now that he has been buried, I believe that this country can now really and truly move forward.  While his corpse was above ground, he was the Boogeyman—a legendary monster, a story to spook children from misbehaving.  During the second Aquino administration, it seemed like a running joke to talk about the ills of Martial Law all the while abuses and mismanagement continued.  Our history should never be used to cover up or justify present abuse.  Neither does it justify partisanship when all camps are guilty of mismanagement and abuse.  I sincerely hope that supporters of both sides open their eyes and see things who what it is, both the loyalist camp and the pro-Aquino camp used your hatreds for political ends and took you all for a ride. 

 

For the victims, nothing can replace what you have lost and what you have endured.  The government has recognized this as a turbulent time in our history.  Evil heathen forces carrying Mao Zedong’s ideas and Lenin’s hammer and sickle banner were at our gates.  Marcos chose to fight fire with fire.  The jury is still out on this.  History far removed from partisanship will judge him, as God surely has already.  Today Marcos is buried and worms tear at his flesh, yet the very architects of the Martial Law regime, Juan Ponce Enrile and Former President Fidel Ramos live and enjoy a pride of place in our government.  Victims, you will get more answers and closure from the living than with the dead.

 

Nor do I feel like we have “violated” our history in having him buried there.  As  I said, the jury is still out on this one.  Some groups insist that we as a people are suffering collective amnesia for allowing this, but I say that we are  suffering collective amnesia about those days when Martial Law was declared.  Why was Martial Law declared?  Was it the sensible thing to do at the time?  Was it really the ultimate evil that some groups would have us  believe?  Did we benefit from Martial Law?  The jury is still out on all of these questions.  Hopefully, history will decide with impartiality. 

 

Let us be clear here.  This was not a “hero’s burial.”  This was a plain and simple burial.  Some groups insist that what was done was a hero’s burial.  Well, if they insist.  As earlier mentioned, when a man is buried, the evil he has done lives after him, and the good is often interred with his bones, but this is not strictly correct, Marcos’s legacy spans the full spectrum of very good to the very bad.  We knew he was after the common good, and legislation in the 1970s-80s demonstrated very forward and enlightened thinking.  Contemporary Congresses are hard pressed to match his legal corpus with laws on Muslim family relations, laws on child and youth welfare, laws on labor, laws on overseas workers, laws on land reform, laws on criminal law spanning crimes, penology and procedure, commercial laws on corporations, insurance, still in active use today! Government agencies and corporations were also created to match his vision for the country.  His legacy is not only in the realm of ideas, but also infrastructure, especially in far flung areas, and the modern demography of Mindanao owes it to Marcos’ decision to promote Mindanao as an area for lowland Filipinos to settle in.  Though, I have to admit, this has had grave consequences for the Muslims and indigenous peoples living there, leading to continuous war and strife in the region.  He has made decisions good and bad, he has made contributions both good and bad—these are a given because of his office and title, as even the most enlightened of statesmen would be forced to make difficult decisions.  Marcos was a President of this country, the hard decisions were his to make and only history can judge him now.  

President, Pure Evil or “Boogeyman,” history removed from partisanship

will decide in its own good time

 

If there is anything I want justice for, it would be for the ill-gotten wealth.  With this burial, I hope the Presidential Commission on Good Governance (PCGG) will find renewed drive and vigor to recover the ill-gotten wealth.  Please take heart, all is not lost, as Imee Marcos has admitted, the cases for this ill-gotten wealth remain pending with the courts, so please see these cases through. 

 

In the meantime, the country must move on, and move on we will, less one Boogeyman and less one corpse defiled and used by supporters and detractors alike.

PRESIDENT DOES NOT NEED TO DEFEND DAP

Last July 14, 2014, President Aquino, reacting to the declaration of his Disbursement Acceleration Program as unconstitutional by the Supreme Court gave a national address basically saying that:

1.  The Supreme Court justices were being unreasonable
2.  DAP is legal.
3.  DAP benefits the people.
4.  DAP is necessary

I'm sure that by now everyone has an opinion regarding this issue.

Now these arguments have been discussed in other blogs and newspaper opinions and I don't think its worth discussing here because I have a different argument as to why the President should never have defended the DAP in the first place:

The DAP has already been discontinued it is a moot and academic issue

One of the procedural issues raised by the Government in Araullo vs. Abad is that the DAP case should no longer be decided because it is moot and academic.  Being moot and academic is an argument often brought to the court, invoking judicial conservatism and hesitation to decide a case because a controversy no longer exists.  It is the first of four requisites that needs to be complied with in order that the Supreme Court can exercise its power of judicial review.

On page 21 of the Decision, the Solicitor General claims that:

DAP as a program, no longer exists, thereby mooting these present cases brought to challenge its constitutionality. Any constitutional challenge should no longer be at the level of the program, which is now extinct, but at the level of its prior applications or the specific disbursements under the now defunct policy. We challenge the petitioners to pick and choose which among the 116 DAP projects they wish to nullify, the full details we will have provided by February 5. We urge this Court to be cautious in limiting the constitutional authority of the President and the Legislature to respond to the dynamic needs of the country and the evolving demands of governance, lest we end up straightjacketing our elected representatives in ways not consistent with our constitutional structure and democratic principles. (footnotes omitted)

Of course, the Supreme Court did not believe this claiming that the case should be decided since the DAP is capable of being repeated and yet evading review.

Basically what I am saying now is that the President at first wanted the court not to decide on the case because it was now moot and academic.  Now that the court ruled on its constitutionality, the previously alleged moot and academic issue is now being forced down people's throats--probably for no other reason than that the President merely wants to cover his a$$ and that of his erring subordinates.

At the supreme court he says:  "Please don't decide on the DAP anymore, we've discontinued it already.  It has done its job."

Before the people he says:  "the Supreme Court is wrong!  DAP is not unconstitutional, we need DAP."

The President, through his alter ego Butch Abad and the Office of the Solicitor General is not being candid to the Supreme Court:  He cannot claim before the Court that he discontinued the program and won't pursue it any longer and now declare to the people that he wants the decision reconsidered because he thinks DAP is constitutional and that the people need it (as was implied in the July 14, 2014 speech).

So basically, what I am saying is that the President wasted our time and ruined his credibility by giving that palengkero speech of his defending a program that he had discontinued months before and even going through the trouble of hiring Atty. Raissa Robles to find a loophole for it, and he continues to waste our time claiming that he needs DAP to continue implementing his projects and his "reforms."  What a guy!

Update 7/18/14
Now, the government is appealing to the people about how the government needs to continue the DAP program with news items like, DPWH stops P5B flood-control work.  The news report in part reads:

Public Works Secretary Rogelio Singson: No choice. FILE PHOTO

MANILA, Philippines–The Department of Public Works and Highways (DPWH) has 

put on hold some P5 billion worth of high-impact, flood-control projects funded by the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), which the Supreme Court has declared unconstitutional.

Public Works Secretary Rogelio Singson on Thursday said that “with the Supreme Court ruling, I have no choice [but to temporarily shelve the projects] until a supplemental budget is passed to implement them, particularly those that have yet to be started.”

He stressed the need to resume work on the flood-control projects, which he said were among the agency’s priority infrastructure programs.

Read more: http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/620983/dpwh-stops-p5b-flood-control-work#ixzz37o3NfdgM
Follow us: @inquirerdotnet on Twitter | inquirerdotnet on Facebook

Obviously then, the DPWH cannot just now cancel these projects because by Abad's and the OSG's own admission, the DAP was cancelled way back in 2013. Articles such as these are deliberately misleading, if not in fact blatant lies.

End of update

Also, noted blogger Ilda, tweeted this a couple of hours ago:

PNoy contradicted himself in his speech. He insisted before that they already stopped using #DAP but on Monday blamed SC for ending program.
— ilda (@ilda_talk) July 17, 2014

The President should have just stuck to his guns:  claim good faith; say that the program was discontinued in good faith; and not to repeat the same in good faith.  Just as it had declared in the supreme court that the program is discontinued and that they will not repeat the same.  Perhaps the Supreme Court did not sense "good faith" when Abad and the Solicitor General brought the argument of mootness before it.

To Conclude 
If the President claimed the DAP moot and academic before the Supreme Court, it should likewise be moot and academic before his bosses.  He should stop shoving it down our throats.  He discontinued the program on his own and he did not need the Supreme Court to do it for him.  He is obviously just looking for a scapegoat and throwing a tantrum because his popularity ratings declined.

Thank you for your patience.

Don't be stupid be a smarty, come and join the lib'ral party

(photo courtesy of www.journal.com.ph)