Robredo: Textbooks should highlight injustices of Marcos era
MANILA, Philippines — Vice President Leni Robredo agreed with Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr.'s notion that textbooks should be revised—but only to further highlight the atrocities committed by the latter's family.
“Medyo nakakatawa kasi [na] iyon [ang pinopropose niya] kasi kung may kailangang baguhin, kailangan siguraduhin na ma-inculcate sa bawat mamamayang Pilipino kung ano iyong kasamaan na dinala sa atin ng diktaturya,” Robredo told reporters Monday in Quezon City.
(It's kind of funny that this is what he proposed because if there's anything that needs to be changed, maybe there's a need to inculcate in each Filipino what kind of evil was brought to us in their dictatorship.)
This was in response to claims by Bongbong that the Marcos family was treated unfairly by the history books, which, he said, were full of propaganda forwarded by their political rivals to besmirch their reputation.
“Who is doing revisionism? Nilagay nila sa libro, sa textbook ng mga bata na ang mga Marcos ganito ang ninakaw, ganito ang ginawa,” he said in a press briefing hosted by the National Press Club, whose own members were jailed during the Martial Law era.
(They put it in textbooks of students that the Marcoses stole so and so and that they did this and that.)
Political ambitions
The defeated vice presidential candidate is in the middle of his appeal to the Presidential Electoral Tribunal to review his poll fraud case against the sitting vice president.
"[Ngayon kasi] pinapayagan ulit natin iyong mga Marcos na mamayagpag... gustong sabihin, hindi tayo natuto. Kaya kung mayroong kailangang baguhin [sa textbooks], iyon yon,” Robredo added.
In a separate interview with GMA's "Unang Hirit" that same morning, Robredo also said that Marcos should not run if he isn't willing to accept the results of the election.
"Para sa akin, karapatan naman ng kahit sinong tumakbo. Pero dapat lahat ng tatakbo, tatanggapin 'yung resulta ng eleksyon," sabi ni Robredo
"Kasi kung matatalo ka at hindi ka, eh huwag ka nang tumakbo."
(For me anyone has the right to run. But whoever runs has to accept the result of the election.)
READ: On 47th martial law anniversary, VP Robredo tells Filipinos: Fight revisionism
Earlier that week, a youth group echoed the sentiment that textbooks should be revised but not to "cleanse" Marcos of his sins.
“Marcos is obviously looking after his own skin for his future political ambitions. But he is unlike us. We seek nothing less than the objective truth to move past the lies and gimmickry peddled by the ruling elite,” said Samahan ng Progresibong Kabataan (SPARK) spokesperson John Lazaro in a statement sent to Philstar.com.
“Marcos’ sins against the people and the youth are unforgivable. Up to this day, the Education Act of 1982 which gave capitalist-educators a free-hand to raise tuition fees as they please is the sole reason for millions who dropped out of school due to their inability to pay for an education,” he added.
Tyrannical rule
The two decades that constituted Marcos' dictatorship were marked by wanton human rights violations as 34,000 were tortured and 3,240 killed, none of which have been acknowledged by the Marcos family who still insist that they were victims of historical revisionism despite a signed republic act explicitly acknowledging the mass human rights violations that occurred under the Marcos regime.
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“For Bongbong to hide behind the dismissed corruption cases before the Sandiganbayan is lame,” Lazaro pointed out.
“The dismissal of cases does not indicate innocence but the deficient preparation by the legal counsels of the government”.
NewsLab: 31 Years of Amnesia: Stories on the Myths that Made Marcos
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