Celebrating failure

The “brightest” Philippine president, as far as the incumbent is concerned, was Ferdinand Marcos. Unfortunately, President Duterte told The STAR when he met with us at Malacañang, Marcos’ record was ruined among others by his wife: “In hindsight, pinaka-bright talaga dito si Marcos. Sinira lang ng asawa…”

Obviously President Duterte’s admiration does not extend to Marcos’ widow. Apart from the admiration for the late strongman, it means a lot to the Chief Executive that the only provincial governor who supported his presidential bid was Marcos’ eldest daughter Imee of Ilocos Norte.

The so-called Solid North went for Duterte also with the help of Imee’s only brother and the strongman’s namesake. The buzz is that Bongbong Marcos would have been candidate Rody’s running mate, but Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano brought to the Duterte campaign a much bigger party, the Nacionalista, and its financial heft through its billionaire head Manny Villar.

So on top of his admiration for the departed dictator, President Rody owes the Marcoses a political debt. And as we are seeing in his recent appointments, the President knows how to express gratitude.

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Addressing soldiers last Thursday night, the President, after apologizing to Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno for his “unintended” harsh words, spent time defending his decision to allow Marcos’ burial in what, if we are to go by its name, is a cemetery for heroes.

He would be breaking the law, the President explained, if he refused to allow the burial. Critics have countered that apart from the fact that Dirty Rody, with his vicious war on drugs, is hardly a model of strict adherence to legal niceties, all his predecessors had not allowed the burial – and no one ever faced charges for breaking any law.

And now former interior secretary Raffy Alunan is saying that among the conditions for the return to the country of Marcos’ remains from Hawaii was that he would be buried in his home province of Ilocos Norte. Alunan, who was tasked by then president Fidel Ramos in 1992 to discuss with the Marcos family the burial arrangements, said the agreement remains binding.

Not to the current President, it seems.

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During the campaign, candidate Duterte – at the time denigrated as a small-town mayor – consistently said, when asked for comment, that he would allow the burial of the late dictator at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. So he’s just being consistent and delivering on another campaign promise.

On the other hand, he may want to consider the impact of the burial and its potential for dragging down public support for his administration. When it comes to public approval ratings, it’s prudent for any president to consider it a rule of thumb that what goes up must come down. And when it does, politicians smell blood and executive policies and actions become much harder to carry out.

The President may shrug it off and say he’s not engaged in a popularity contest and he can quit any time. But if he wants to achieve anything significant in his term other than a trail of blood, it’s easier to work when he has public and political support.

Dirty Rody’s approval ratings aren’t going to stay dizzyingly high forever. With his 92 percent approval rating, including a stunning 97 percent in Mindanao, he can achieve a lot for the greater good.

He has so many controversial moves being implemented or pursued. He wants emergency powers for traffic, Charter change for a shift to federalism and economic reforms, the restoration of capital punishment, support for peace processes with Islamic secessionists and communists, and of course sustained support for his brutal war on drugs.

That’s already a massive pile on his plate, and he wants everything done in a hurry. For this he must invest political capital judiciously. The controversy over the Marcos burial calls for an inordinate amount of that capital. Is it worth it?

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The President may also want to tell his legal counsel Salvador Panelo to shut up already, especially about martial law. The guy rubs a lot of people the wrong way, and Dirty Rody does that well enough on his own. People have not yet forgotten Panelo for lawyering for the Ampatuans in the Maguindanao massacre case. There are reports going around that Panelo flashed his butt – with polka-dotted shorts on – to the judge after his other infamous client, Calauan mayor Antonio Sanchez, was convicted of double murder and gang rape.

I don’t know what former prosecutor Duterte thinks about the issue. But from this layman’s point of view, if the Constitution specifies the instances that justify the declaration of martial law or suspension of the writ of habeas corpus – “in case of invasion or rebellion, when the public safety requires it” – the instances cannot be expanded by the president. “Lawless violence,” under which the drug menace may fall, only warrants calling in the armed forces to suppress.

Extrajudicial killings, a warning on martial law, and now a hero’s burial for Marcos – that’s a lot to impose on a nation where the wounds of dictatorship have not yet healed. This is the problem when justice is not rendered and a nation fails to achieve closure on a dark period in its history.

President Duterte is correct in pointing out that Marcos was not convicted of any crime (unlike another former president) and by law can therefore be buried at the Libingan, being a former president.

But the lawyer in him should also wonder why the state is paying reparation to human rights victims of the Marcos regime. He should wonder who owns the millions of dollars in bank deposits returned to the Philippine government by Swiss authorities, plus all those pieces of prime real estate and jewelry seized from the Marcoses.

We have evidence of world-class corruption, but it’s a crime without a criminal. We have thousands of victims of torture and rape, with many others forcibly disappeared forever – more crimes without a criminal. Ninoy Aquino was assassinated, and we still have not established who ordered the hit – another crime without the principal criminal.

It’s a failure of the justice system, which is not the fault but the great luck of the Marcoses. Giving the dictator a hero’s burial celebrates the failure and encourages impunity.