Never again to martial law? Wake up!    

Just three weeks after Jose Mari Chan happily takes an expectant peek around that ubiquitous streetcorner, a band of restless souls descends on the country without fail, singing not "Christmas In Our Hearts" but chanting "No martial law, no martial law, never again to martial law" with unflinching rancor in their hearts. As Neil Young is wont to sing, "In the fields of opportunity, it's plowing time again."

Counted predominantly among these people are the presumably learned plus those only pretending to be. Their numbers have significantly dwindled over time but what they now lack in warm bodies they more than make up with ferocity and decibels. The noise notwithstanding, their message has lost both validity and sting, the inevitable victim of unthinking insistence and mindless repetitiveness.

It is clear that the ascendancy of another Marcos has given them new impetus to try and beat life back into a dead horse. But even they know that is not going to happen. That they are still at it is because the massage it gives to a bruise that will not go away is invaluable. If the masseur has gone to pasture, self-help is perfectly in order. The show must go on.

I am not saying martial law did not happen. It did. I am not saying there were no atrocities committed. There were. I will not contest that. Those are incontestable facts. But I will resist to the very end the assertion that martial law was bad for everybody, was bad for the country. At the time martial law was declared, there were already more than 50 million Filipinos. Only a fraction of that actually suffered.

Of course that suffering was a terrible cost to pay and should not be forgotten. What must not be similarly forgotten is the fact that the terrible cost was not unavoidable. Victims of martial were not as innocent as they are claimed to be. The great majority willfully took up arms to try and overthrow a legitimate democratic government. They were casualties of a war they knowingly chose to wage.

The others were motivated politically and had agendas they found propitious to latch on to the ensuing mayhem. Of course there were those genuinely fighting for their rights but they picked the wrong time to antagonize an embattled government. Quite naturally, as with any human situation, there are bound to be mistakes, and conflict is one hell of a time to realistically expect, even demand, that the lines remain distinct.

I find myself deeply saddened by those who continue to pick up the chant "never again to martial law." If they are so learned about 1972, where did all the brains go in 1987? That year, the heroine of the martial law syndrome caused to be cobbled what was to become our present constitution, the 1987 Cory Constitution. Never again to martial law? Try reading its Article VII, Section 18. Google it! I challenge you!

Martial law is a necessary power vested in a democratic, republican government. If the anti-Marcos forces feel so revolted by martial law that they cannot countenance its existence, why did they not raise a peep when their heroine in 1987 was having her constitution drafted? Why did they not raise hell when it was ratified? Never again to martial law? Where were they in 2017 when Duterte used it? Scared of the old man?

If Ferdinand Edralin Marcos Sr. had not declared martial law in 1972, it is entirely possible that our leader up to this day, given his tenacity and longevity, would still have been Jose Ma. Sison. No Cory, no Fidel, no Erap, no Gloria, no Noynoy, no Digong. Just Joma in a perpetual state of martial law under a communist regime, his face in every workplace, church, classroom. Jose Mari Chan won't have reason to come every 8/3.