Burial timing a stroke of brilliance and humility

By Alfredo c. Garvida Jr.

The Marcos family has pulled a fast one on the anti-Marcos loyalists last Friday, November 18^th, when they buried the former president in his rightful place in simple, private ceremonies attended only by his family and their friends. 

The furor now cast by the Marcos enemies all over the media outlets in consequence of this brilliant move by the late president's family, frankly, is very understandable—and I commiserate with them contras for being made to look more stupid.

But they were stupid, to begin with, because they wanted the Supreme Court to hold the burial in abeyance until they have filed their motion for reconsideration. They were stupid for waging their appeal first to the public in vicious propaganda attacks against the late strongman and his family via the news media instead of going directly, and immediately, to the highest court for relief. They were stupid for trying to make the Supreme Court stupid for upholding—by a big majority—President Rodrigo R. Duterte's right to order the late President Marcos buried in the Libingan ng mga Bayani, which by law, the late president, as a former president and soldier, was entitled to.

And they continue to be stupid for suggesting that Marcos' body be exhumed from his grave until the highest court has decided on their motion for reconsideration—which they have yet to file anyway. So these people want their personal egos to subvert the law by having the Supreme Court wait for the filing of their MR while they take their good time to formalize their documented appeal?

The Marcoses did the right thing in burying their patriarch in private and simple ceremonies at the LNMB; because they did not want the trouble threatened by their enemies to transpire if the burial arrangements were made public. And they were humble enough not to demand the burial rituals befitting a former president on the basis the preceding premise.

The funny part of all this political “Broadway” staged by the “Yellow submarines” is that they think they are the only citizens of this country, or they represent the majority, which, definitely, they do not. They claim they were hurt by the martial law regime; but how about those who benefited legitimately from it? And we are not talking here about the government scalawags and private economic predators, but those who benefited from the infrastructures and social programs made by the former president. 

Kiko Pangilinan (what's he doing again in the Philippine senate by the way?), Edcel Lagman, Etta Rosales and the other upcoming political activists are barely heard about nowadays because the political rock star, in the person of Digong Duterte, has taken over the political spectrum to "reform society" and "unite our people." And people love him for his aggressive style of governance despite some people's misgivings (this writer included at times) about his draconian style of dealing with criminals, which appears to have put a heavy dent on the incidence of criminality all over the land by the way.

And President Duterte could not have been more correct on his decision that to let President Marcos be buried at the LNMB will bring more unity to the country than having his corpse remain on public display in Batac and allow a protracted public debate about the ills and benefits of the martial law regime. 

To date, the Philippine government has recovered several billions from the so-called Marcos ill-gotten wealth, which by the way were recovered mostly from the so-called former Marcos cronies. Mr. Pangilinan at one point said that the late president stole about US$10 billion from the people—without explaining how he got his numbers. It is easy to say you stole US$10 billion, but if you can't explain how you got your numbers, that makes you stupid, isn't it?

The Marcos burial, despite its surreptitiousness, was all done in accordance with law. The Supreme court has spoken about its legality and the family did the right thing in burying him according to his right. The Marcos contras had all the time in the world to file their motion for reconsideration with the Court but all they did was do a vicious propaganda attack against the family and the justices who voted for it and assumed that the Marcos family would be stupid, like them, not to exercise their right to bury their patriarch until them contras find time to go and file with the Court their MR, if any. And now they bemoan and wail about the Marcos family's action and threaten to have the dead body exhumed? Stupid!

What is more stupid is the yellows' forewarning that the SC's burial decision could be a signal to Bongbong's winning his protest against Leni Robredo. If this is not a frontal attack on the Supreme Court Justices' dignity and competence, it must be a stupid way of telling the public that Bongbong indeed won the vice presidency on the basis of his allegations of calculated cheating done by the Liberal Party against him in the last elections. Stupid! That's what it is.