Santiago in the land of forgetfulness

By LUIS V. TEODORO
Vantage Point | BusinessWorld

It wasn’t exactly an auspicious start for the campaign of a partnership that even presidential candidate Miriam Defensor-Santiago herself has described as “strange.”

After delivering a three-minute speech in Batac, Ilocos Norte, Santiago left it to her running mate, Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr., to wave at the crowds during the motorcade that followed their proclamation last Feb. 9 as candidates for president and vice-president. She also canceled her participation in a scheduled press conference so she could fly back to Manila, leaving Marcos, Jr. to parry such obvious questions from the media as why she had left in such a hurry.

Santiago, said Marcos, Jr. by way of explanation, had “a previous engagement.”

But at least two broadcast media anchors later pointed out that Santiago has been battling stage-four lung cancer, thereby implying that her ailment, of which she claims to have been cured, had something to do with her early departure from the most solid of the Marcos family’s “solid North” political strongholds.

When Santiago announced her choice of Marcos, Jr. for her running mate last October, 2015, the response among those familiar with how the Marcos regime, among other offenses to decency, the Filipino people and humanity, savaged the bill of rights and ruined the country was outrage and condemnation.

But the many who knew no better — who, in this land of forgetfulness and gross ignorance thought the martial law period a time of peace, affluence, and order — haled the partnership as the greatest thing in Philippine politics since elections were invented.

Over Facebook and Twitter — the domains of those born after the martial law period — the paeans for both, and especially for Marcos, Jr., have been unabating.

But while she said it was not her job to defend Marcos, Santiago did find it necessary to explain her decision, implying, if not declaring outright, that, among others —

• Marcos, Jr. is qualified for the post of vice-president by virtue of his family and educational background;

• The Marcoses do not owe the country an apology; and

• The sins of the father (Marcos, Sr.) should not be visited upon the son (Marcos, Jr.)

All three of Santiago’s rationalizations were as bizarre as the partnership itself.

A former University of the Philippines law professor, rather than contributing to anyone’s understanding of the past, by making these claims she was enhancing mass forgetfulness.

Santiago, who has made it a point to require all the members of her staff to be UP graduates, was glossing over Marcos, Jr.’s educational infirmities, which include his claim that he’s a graduate of Oxford University despite proof to the contrary.

Defending her choice by citing family background on the other hand makes a virtue out of being a member of a dynasty, which the Constitution, on which Santiago claims to be an expert, expressly frowns upon by banning political dynasties.

The second argument completely denies the violence, human rights violations and the country’s descent into penury that the 21 years of Marcos rule not only made possible; his crushing the nation-wide demand for political and economic emancipation from the late 1960s to the early years of 1970s also guaranteed it. Not only do the Marcoses owe the country an apology; they also owe it thousands of lives and billions in ill-gotten dollars.

The third turns on its head the Biblical injunction in Exodus, which declares that God would visit the “iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generations.”

The implication is that the father, as head of the family, has it within his power to rear his children and grandchildren as upright individuals. Failing this, or even raising his offspring to be the opposite, blame for the father’s “iniquity” would also fall upon his children and grandchildren quite simply because they would have become his carbon copies. Folk wisdom, encapsulated in such sayings as that “the fruit does not fall far from the tree,” similarly assumes that fathers are likely to fashion their sons in their own image.

Marcos, Jr.’s refusal not only to apologize for the abuses of the martial law regime, but even to claim that his father’s dictatorship not only built thousands of kilometers of roads but was also responsible for the country’s rice self-sufficiency and high literacy rate suggests that he’s been so programmed — indoctrinated in his family’s version of martial law as Marcos, Sr. concocted it and as his family and its satellite clans have internalized it.

Marcos, Sr. did build roads — mostly in the North — but building roads in this country hardly requires the extraordinary powers of dictatorship. Marcos, Jr.’s second claim is pure folklore.

The country was far from self-sufficient in rice during the entire period of Marcos, Sr.’s rule. There was in fact a crisis in the supply of the staple. The Philippines’ high literacy rate is true enough — but that had been the case since the Second World War. The truth is that it actually declined during martial rule, resurging only after 1986 when the dictatorship was overthrown by the EDSA uprising.

Like many Filipinos, either Santiago never knew, or has completely forgotten, any or all of these.

But Santiago’s most recent disservice to the Filipino people is her helping make Marcos, Jr.’s election to the vice-presidency a distinct possibility.

Without a presidential running mate, Marcos, Jr.’s candidacy would have put him in the same straits as Antonio Trillanes IV. But by teaming up with him — not even Rodrigo R. Duterte wanted anything to do with Marcos, Jr. — Santiago legitimized his candidacy.

Santiago is only fifth in voter preference in a field of five candidates for president, while Marcos, Jr. is a close second to Francis Joseph “Chiz” G. Escudero, but she’s hardly shown any interest in campaigning while the latter moves heaven and earth in behalf of his candidacy. Between now and May 8, a combination of money, backroom deals, and voter cluelessness could clinch the second highest post in the country for Marcos, Jr., whoever wins the presidency.

Stranger things have happened in this never-never land: Santiago, with Marcos, Jr.’s help, could pull off a miracle by somehow winning the presidency. Because, as the cliché puts it, only a heartbeat separates the vice-president from the presidency, that remote possibility would again be to no one else’s benefit but Marcos, Jr.’s. The entire country knows whose failed heartbeat would then place another Marcos — his father’s veritable reincarnation — in Malacañang if that happens.

But whoever gains the presidency, should he win the vice-presidency, Marcos, Jr. would emerge as the real winner anyway, because that post would smooth his path to the presidency in 2022. As remote as it may be, a Santiago win would be twice to his advantage. Santiago and Marcos might not have been so devious and so cynical as to plan this dismal scenario for the Philippine land of forgetfulness. But they might as well have done so.

Luis V. Teodoro is on Facebook and Twitter (@luisteodoro). The views expressed in Vantage Point are his own and do not represent the views of the Center for Media Freedom and Responsibility.

www.luisteodoro.com

Published in Business World
February 11, 2016