Lost worlds

Those who are against the election of another ignorant actor as president should not condemn Juan Ponce-Enrile for his candid remarks. I think they should be grateful for saying it exactly the way it is – that Poe will be like Marcos, not because he was comparing the two but rather because the same people with Marcos are now with Poe. He has since clarified his statement. He claims what he said was "in 1956 we have a Ferdinand fighting a Macapagal (the president’s father) and now we have Fernando fighting another Macapagal. He insists he never said it’s possible for FPJ to be as good or even better than Marcos." I am not surprised if Enrile became tongue-twisted – it is difficult to court the "Solid North’ vote without praising Marcos and FPJ in the same breath. He was playing to an audience which wanted to hear him say what they wanted. If he was a true son of the north, he should instead question the idea of a solid north. Solid for whom and for what? Are Ilocanos uniformly stupid they do not have minds of their own even on so simple as the difference between FPJ and Marcos? I know of some Ilocanos who would be insulted with the comparison and that is no offence to either, only a question of intelligence.

Enrile’s difficulty is a personal one. He finds it hard to accept that the Marcos world of superpower and superprivilege to which he had once belonged is gone, finished. It is a lost world but I don’t blame him for hankering for that past. Power and privilege can be intoxicating, it stays with you like a hang-over long after the drinking spree. I suspect he is like the rest of Marcos cronies who want a return to those "good" old days. What better way than to use a popular but ignorant actor as the vehicle for that return. That dictatorship is over but if it is any consolation to him, he was part of putting it to an end.

When some American and Japanese producers asked me for interviews to revive Imelda’s image, I declined. The point is not whether there are good things that can be said about Imelda’s role in the Marcos regime but whether it would help Filipinos understand the massive corruption that took place then. We have never been able to recover from the amoral atmosphere which changed an entire nation’s perspective. Despite the untimitigated greed, it is not the hidden millions that have been identified and returned to the Philippines. More insidious is the idea that public office can be used for private gain with impunity. That idea had been difficult to expunge from politics to this day. Like Enrile, the producers were into complex acrobatics that would blunt the evil that was done to Filipinos for the sake of an insatiable ambition. According to one producer, Imelda herself rebuts critics with "insight into her (likely deluded) self-image" as a misunderstood altruist. She says that the film is a look "beyond the shoes" as if we did not know that already. It might help to understand that the documentary maker in fact got Imelda’s full cooperation and interviewed her for months. Both friends and foes were invited for this revival while pretending it was impartial research. The answer to any attempt to change Imelda’s image will have to wait for history.

Since the producer wrote me a letter saying she would be using my book she does so without my permission, I warn her and her producers that she will be violating copyright. It may be after the dictator’s overthrow several books were published using both the material and the theme of the Untold Story of Imelda Marcos without my permission but at the time I was still abroad and was unable to pursue the matter legally.

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Inadvertently, Ricardo Manapat may have become a casualty of that revival. Manapat was the courageous author of Some are Smarter than Others a book that documents the extent of the massive money and business activities of Marcos and cronies, some of whom he had to face at the Senate trial. Eccentric he may be, Ricardo Manapat drew our attention to the excesses not only of the late dictator and but also of his friends most of whom have gone unpunished and continue to people our politics. I am sure that the book is not without defects but the act of putting down the stories in a book had its punitive value. The shameful acts were now in black and white. Our justice system may have failed us in bringing the perpetrators of that period to justice but Manapat’s book will be a testimonial for generations to come.

In the absence of a truth commission, the Manapat book acted as a documentation of the the excesses of the Marcos regime.That is a single contribution that must not be taken away from him regardless of how the episode on FPJ’s citizenship turns out. If I were he, I would reprint Some are Smarter than Others. It helped us move forward as a people and won the admiration of the world for our peaceful people power revolution, even if in the end we lost the struggle for good governance. Now comes FPJ for president, a vehicle through which Marcos and cronies will return into "the good old days". To me, it is not the citizenship of FPJ that should be questioned, but how to choose leaders so to be able to feed and clothe its millions and compete in the world community. The leadership of this country will require knowledge, sensivity and ability to lead the Philippines in a globalized world. FPJ does not have it. Please note: the emperor has no clothes.

The Senate hearing gives a clue of a future under a well-meaning ignoramus for president even if a movie idol. FPJ is not qualified to run this country not because of his citizenship but because he just does not have the qualities necessary to lead. What cannot be argued is he will be useful as a vehicle through which discredited politicians of the Marcos regime will return to power. As [email protected] wrote:"The investigation conducted at the Senate in aid of legislation (oops election) was a good example of mob rule. The irony may have escaped many others but when Manapat was asked about his thesis for a master’s degree in history he answered "The Spanish Inquisition" , not "El Filibusterismo" as the accusers thought. The writer finds it odd that all three employees who had been sued by Manapat three months ago should now be regarded as credible witnesses.They seemed to be following a script. It would have been more convincing if one or two employees of the National Archive testified that Manapat falsified the documents given to Atty. Fornier. Moreover it was strange that all the employees of the National Archives came to gang up on their boss. This was an overkill." The writer adds this was not an investigation in-aid-of legislation but a "mutiny" aided by the Senate!

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