Return of the comeback

BONGBONG Marcos for President, anyone?

An MSN news actually headlined a news “Marcos matriarch 85, and son plot to reclaim Philippine presidency”. It doesn’t get any sinister than this. A plot to regain the presidency they lost when they hightailed it out of Malacañang in 1986.

But reading the signs of the time, the Filipino people might have forgotten—conveniently at that—all the supposed sins this once most powerful political clan have committed. The collective amnesia about martial law, human rights violations, looting the national treasury, stashing billions of dollars in offshore account—which to this day remains unaccounted for—and the general profligacy that marked that administration may have been brought about by the advent of social media.

Facebook users are all about adding friends and sharing whatever they think is cute or funny—not minding if these are really true or just hogwash. One can even upload a heavily edited YouTube video that virtually extols a person’s love for the downtrodden; when in fact it is not even close to anything it portrays.

This may be where the problem of the current national amnesia syndrome today lies. Our national history is being altered by Facebook posts and YouTube videos. Instead of the hardships and abuses of martial law, it is now being glorified as the best part of our history. Instead of all the excesses of a 20-year dictatorship, it is now being portrayed as the golden age of the Philippines.

“Progress, far from consisting in change, depends on retentiveness. When change is absolute there remains no being to improve and no direction is set for possible improvement: and when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” George Santayana said.

Edmund Burke has the same message: “Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it.”

The time may be ripe—all the sins attributed to the Marcoses are now being slowly—but surely—scrubbed. They need not even apologize for all the abuses and excesses—standing forth instead in the supposed righteousness of all their patriarch’s actions.

But Bongbong Marcos for President? Really?

This may be asking for too much.

His track record as an elected official is comparable to Noynoy Aquino—nothing spectacular, nothing remarkable and really nothing at all. Mr. Marcos ran for a Senate seat trumpeting his accomplishments as Ilocos Norte governor when in fact he was out of the province more often than he was around. He posed in front of the Bangui windmills that was supposed to have alleviated the power burden of Ilocanos here but the fact of the matter is these giant electric fans are nothing but a tourist attraction as the power they generate does not power even a single bulb in the province.

In his whole nine-year term, development and progress was unknown to Ilocos Norte. There were projects, true, but none of them really served the Ilocano people. Some of them even became white elephants as what the flue curing barn and feed mill have become.

But the unkindest cut of all is happening today.

The progress and development that was nowhere near in 1998-2007 are all arriving in droves today. Malls, giant supermarkets and other big retail businesses are now dotting the provincial landscape. Wind farms and solar farms are being established one after the other. Tourist arrivals are all in record highs. An honest-to-goodness development plan is being implemented as it is also being perfected.

If the Marcoses really want to return to Malacañang, it may serve them better—and the Filipino peoples as well—to look instead to the one who is responsible for all the positive changes and colossal leaps that the province has made towards progress. For after all, if there ever was one Marcos who was really born to lead and serve, it is Imee Marcos.