“Bongbong conveniently ignored the fact that from the 1986 to 1987, the economy was starting to show signs of takeoff, experiencing genuine expansion from the years of painful contraction during his father’s last legs in office.
That momentum was only lost when so-called reformist soldiers staged a series of coup attempts against President Cory. Those same self-styled guardians of the people had done the dirty work of physically eliminating opposition to the dictatorship—that is, until they and their political patron lost out in the political infighting within the Marcos regime...

I had seriously considered adding Ferdinand Marcos Jr.—a.k.a. Bongbong—to my list of preferred senatorial candidates.

I have heard of what he has done as governor of Ilocos Norte and was particularly impressed with his Northwind project. I thought, here is a visionary—at least on the environmental front.

I also appreciated his and his sisters’ gracious gesture of visiting the wake for President Cory Aquino at the Manila Cathedral. I had hoped that he and other members of the Marcos family had finally gotten over their resentment for the inglorious fall of their tyrant-patriarch in 1986.

I was even willing to absolve them of liability for the ordeal that I and tens of thousands of other Filipinos underwent during the dark days of martial law. After all, why should the sins of parents be visited on their offspring?

Last Monday, however, it became clear that Bongbong continues to look back at the 14-year dictatorship of his father with the fondness of a principal beneficiary, if not an enthusiastic conspirator. Contrite, he wasn’t—and still isn’t.

While the rest of the country was commemorating the 24th anniversary of the EDSA uprising, Bongbong was shooting his mouth off, castigating the millions of Filipinos who made that relatively bloodless transition possible.

He also heaped scorn on the government that the people installed after sending the Marcoses and their closest cronies fleeing to the safety and comfort of Honolulu.

In published reports, Bongbong declared that “poverty worsened and the government was unable to clean up the bureaucracy” after EDSA 1.

He evidently forgot that it was precisely because the economy was on a tailspin after the assassination of Benigno Aquino Jr.—the political rival his father most dreaded—and the exposés on scandalously crooked deals—like the billion-dollar nuclear power plant in Morong, Bataan—that fueled unrest.

Bongbong conveniently ignored the fact that from the 1986 to 1987, the economy was starting to show signs of takeoff, experiencing genuine expansion from the years of painful contraction during his father’s last legs in office.

That momentum was only lost when so-called reformist soldiers staged a series of coup attempts against President Cory. Those same self-styled guardians of the people had done the dirty work of physically eliminating opposition to the dictatorship—that is, until they and their political patron lost out in the political infighting within the Marcos regime.

Nevertheless, the democratic institutions that the people—and not just Cory—erected in the aftermath of EDSA 1 proved resilient enough. Those institutions, although flawed, are precisely what allowed Bongbong and his ilk to begin their climb back to power.

And now, he has the nerve to dismiss the achievements of EDSA 1 as worthless, as meaningless? What gall.

Bongbong is a senatorial candidate under Manny Villar’s Nacionalista Party. Villar’s closest rival is Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino 3rd whose popularity—the NP standard bearer insists—flows entirely from the heroism of his parents.

This is probably why the NP is dead set on discrediting the apogee of Ninoy and Cory’s contributions to democracy, EDSA 1—and on attempting to reconfigure the disgraceful historical imprint of the dictator Marcos.

Villar has even gone on to say, “I don’t see a problem” with the long pending, but controversial, proposal to inter the dictator’s remains—currently refrigerated in a crypt in his hometown—in the hallowed ground of the Libingan ng mga Bayani.

Villar, along with Bongbong, must have figured that the public indignation over the excesses of the Marcos dictatorship has died down finally.

After all, many of the Filipinos who participated in EDSA 1 as well as in much earlier movements that opposed one-man rule are either dead or too old to make a difference in the upcoming general elections.

The time is ripe to engage in historical revisionism, Villar, Bongbong and the rest of the NP slate—including a couple of leftist congressmen—must have reckoned.

To be honest, far too many Filipinos of my age have not done enough to remind the younger generations of what life was like under martial law. Many of us, too, harbor ambivalent feelings toward EDSA 1.

I, for one, did not have the privilege of taking part in the 1986 uprising, which at first I found silly. This, despite the fact that I had become involved in the First Quarter Storm of 1970 and the underground resistance that struggled, as best it could, against the Marcos juggernaut during martial law.

When Juan Ponce Enrile and his RAMboys staged their mutiny on February 22, 1986, my initial reaction was dismiss it as the climax of the long-simmering conflict among the Marcos camp followers.

When Butz Aquino and Jaime Cardinal Sin urged the people to rally around the mutinous troops later that evening, I thought them to be both naïve.

But when the people seized the chance to show their strength in numbers and began inundating the periphery of Camps Aguinaldo and Crame, I became convinced that something much bigger than all the actors on the ground was at work.

Fortunately for Bongbong and the rest of his family, it was not a revolutionary government of extremists that took power after the Marcoses were sent packing to Hawaii on February 25, 1986.

Had it turned out some other way, Bongbong, the other Marcoses and their associates might have suffered the fate of, say, Benito Mussolini and his mistress.

And yet here he is now, heaping scorn on the event that eventually allowed his family to recover a measure of the power, which they let slip their clutches 24 years ago.

Thank you, Bongbong, for revealing yourself this early to be an unrepentant enemy of democracy. You have just lost one vote—and, I suspect, many others.

What fools we must have been to think, even briefly, that a leopard could change its spots. BY DAN MARIANO