Rewriting history

He lied about the ambush that was used as the immediate pretext for the imposition of martial law in 1972 by dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

Today the guy who green-lighted the Arrest, Search and Seizure Orders – with the apt acronym ASSO – during martial law says no one was arrested or killed for their political beliefs or criticism of the government under military rule.

The kindest thing that can be said of Juan Ponce Enrile, one of the architects of Marcos’ martial law, is that he has become senile as he approaches his 100th year. If only because Enrile is showing symptoms of dementia, maybe he does deserve being freed on bail even for the normally non-bailable offense of plunder.

With the imposition of martial law, rock ’n’ roll was banned together with hardcore porn or bomba movies. Long-haired men were given haircuts by security forces and women were forced to bring down their hemlines. Other people had darker memories, of torture and rape by state forces after being apprehended on the strength of the dreaded ASSOs, which were used in lieu of a court-issued warrant to search private homes, apprehend critics and political dissidents, and detain them without formal charges.

No one was arrested or killed? Ninoy Aquino must be turning over in his grave. So must his martial law cellmate, The STAR’s late publisher Max Soliven. Plus the thousands of others who felt the bite of the ASSO and the dogs of military rule. There are many families still looking for the desaparecidos of the Marcos regime.

Thanks to Marcos-era defense chief Juan Ponce Enrile’s selective memory, the public is now reminded about the killing of Mapua student Archimedes Trajano, 21, who at a public forum in 1977 challenged Imee Marcos’ qualifications to head the Kabataang Barangay. Imee’s bodyguards reportedly dragged Trajano out of the forum venue. He was tortured for about a day and then tossed out from a second floor. In 1991, a court in Honolulu ordered Imee to compensate Trajano’s family with $4.1 million in damages. The Philippine Supreme Court barred the payment in 2006 on a technicality.

If Enrile is not suffering from dementia, then he should be tossed into a regular jail pronto. Because the only other possible explanation for his denial of the arrests and killings during the Marcos regime is that he’s a pathological liar. He admitted lying about the ambush on his convoy in 1972, and he’s still lying today.

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Some folks at Malacañang at least have a better memory and put Marcos-era human rights victim Aquilino Pimentel Jr. in front of the Palace press corps last Sept. 21, with the Malacañang seal prominently in the background, for a non-stage-managed genuine interview on the atrocities he suffered during martial law.

Enrile’s one-on-one with Ferdinand Marcos’ only son and namesake Bongbong, uploaded on social media, was clearly inspired by that recent “tete-a-tete” between President Duterte and his chief legal counsel Salvador Panelo. Such controlled “interviews” guarantee that the interviewee gets to tell only his side of a story, with no pesky journalist seeking clarifications or pointing out inaccuracies or blatant lies.

Such managed one-on-one chats can backfire, as Enrile must be realizing amid all the fact-checking now going on about his revision of history. Horror stories about martial law are re-emerging in multimedia, making Imee Marcos’ wish for the nation to “move on” harder.

She and her clan, however, must surely be ecstatic about that Pulse Asia survey on possible winners in the 2019 Senate race, although a lot can still happen until May next year. People are waiting for the results of a similar survey by the Social Weather Stations Inc. (SWS).

The pollsters’ track record in the Senate race has not been as reliable as in the contests for president and vice president. One administration aspirant during the Arroyo presidency groused that his name was excluded from the list of choices. He suspected that this was upon the request of the group that commissioned the surveys.

In this year’s second quarter surveys on President Duterte, which showed markedly divergent results in the Pulse Asia and SWS polls, critics claimed that Pulse Asia had been using a disproportionately large sampling from the pro-Duterte Davao region in its nationwide surveys. 

Pollsters rise and fall on the reliability of their results, so skewing survey outcomes can doom a survey firm. Pulse Asia naturally stands by its sampling, methodology and results. The best gauge of reliability will be the outcome of the 2019 Senate race.

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Considering how close Bongbong Marcos came to winning the vice presidency (he still hasn’t given up the fight), his elder sister’s high place in the Pulse Asia survey is not surprising. Especially since the still immensely popular President Duterte has made no secret of his fondness for Imee and her brother.

Bongbong Marcos’ strong showing in the 2016 race had to be the worst slap in the face of daang matuwid. Bongbong’s surge in the VP vote canvass followed by a suspension of the count and then his gradual slip and loss by a narrow margin in 2016 fueled speculation that he was a victim of “hocus-PCOS” (a reference to the precinct count optical scan voting machines).

Duterte didn’t rehabilitate the Marcoses in the eyes of the public, although he did grant the dictator’s desired burial in the heroes’ cemetery. The Marcoses were already well on their way to rehabilitation before Duterte came along. The state’s decades-long failure to secure the conviction of any member of the Marcos clan for human rights abuses and large-scale plunder during the dictatorship can bolster their stand that they have done nothing wrong.

Bongbong Marcos’ strong showing in a national race, when he wasn’t even Duterte’s running mate, indicated that the Marcos clan was back in the good graces of a significant segment of Filipino voters.

Even the alliance of Marcos-era opposition families such as the Pimentels with a President who extols the virtues of the Marcoses at every opportunity can make people believe that the slate has been wiped clean, all is forgiven, and maybe there wasn’t even anything to forgive in the first place.

Such people can even believe Juan Ponce Enrile’s version of history, as told to the son of Ferdinand Marcos.