FIVE years ago, on Nov. 18, 2016, Rodrigo Duterte fulfilled a promise he gave to the Marcoses in exchange for their support when he ran as president: the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos was stealthily and treacherously given a hero’s burial at the Libingan ng mga Bayani — sealing an alliance between the Marcos dynasty and the despotic Marcos fanboy Duterte.
Not content with this bastardization of our nation’s history and our people’s struggle for freedom and justice, Duterte has spent the past five years reviving in full the horrors of Marcosian martial law in his murderous campaigns of State terror, from his militarization of the civilian bureaucracy, the criminalization of political dissent, the killings of activists and attacks on press freedom, and his tyrannical delusions.
While Marcos Jr. faced a shameful defeat in his bid to become vice president in the 2022 elections, the Marcoses slowly worked to lay the foundations of their return to power through their machinery of historical distortions to whitewash the atrocities of the late dictator’s brutal regime — oiled no less by their ill-gotten wealth plundered from the nation’s coffers in their two decades in power.
Behind all the drama that comes with the elections, what has become clear is this: the children of these two dictators have struck an alliance, with Marcos Jr. running for president in tandem with Duterte’s daughter Sara. The scions of the two most despotic families in the country are running together to not only cement their families’ bloody legacies but to escape accountability and to completely rewrite and distort history.
Today, we come together once again to loudly proclaim that Marcos is not a hero. A dictator who plunged the nation into debt, human rights violations, and dictatorship will never be a hero — and with this diabolical tandem Marcos-Duterte tandem in the 2022 elections, we can only expect more of their lies glorifying the atrocious regimes of their fathers and continue their legacies of tyranny and undemocratic rule.
Today, we at the Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses and Martial Law join freedom-loving Filipinos in registering our collective disgust and indignation against this Marcos-Duterte tandem, as we vow to fight on to frustrate a Marcos restoration and a Duterte extension at all costs. We shall never allow our hand-won freedoms and victories to be stolen away from us.
We remember the crimes of the Marcoses and the Dutertes all too well, and we vow to never forget as we firmly stand for truth, justice, and our rights as we say “never again!” Never again to tyranny and plunder! We say never again to cronyism! We say never again to sell-out of our patrimony! Never again to dictatorship! – Campaign Against The Return Of The Marcoses And Martial Law; Prof. Judy Taguiwalo, CARMMA convenor
