But he skipped the wreath-laying ceremony held at the Edsa People Power Monument in Quezon City, Saturday, Feb. 25, 2023, to commemorate the four-day peaceful revolution that ended the 20-year regime of his father, then President Ferdinand Marcos Sr.
Pro-democracy protesters, however, marked the anniversary of the 1986 army-backed “people power” revolt in the Philippines.
About 1,400 demonstrators, some waving Philippine flags and holding placards that read “Never forget,” gathered at a democracy shrine along the main Edsa highway in the Manila metropolis on Saturday. An equal number of left-wing activists, carrying an effigy that depicted Marcos Jr. as a pest, protested separately at a nearby pro-democracy monument.
Millions of Filipinos converged in February 1986 at the usually traffic-choked thoroughfare to shield top military and defense officials who defected from the administration of then-President Ferdinand Marcos and braced for battle in two adjacent camps.
The ailing president, who imposed martial rule from 1972 to 1981, was driven with his family and cronies into US exile, where he died three years later.
The uprising awed the world and became a harbinger of change in authoritarian regimes.
The Marcoses returned to the Philippines in 1991 and gradually rose back to political power despite the plunder and widespread human rights atrocities that forced the family patriarch from power to global infamy.
Mind-blowing
In May last year, Marcos’s son and namesake won the presidential race in a landslide victory in one of history’s most dramatic political comebacks.
“It’s mind-blowing in one sense, isn’t it? How did this happen? You remember those who sacrificed their lives and you feel so sad for those who were tortured, those who lost loved ones,” Judy Taguiwalo, a longtime former political detainee and torture survivor under the dictatorship, told The Associated Press.
Now 73 and ailing, Taguiwalo said her generation of activists who fought the dictatorship was slowly fading and many have died, but she remained optimistic and defiant.
“There’s a new generation of fighters,” she said. “Tyranny can return but there’s no forever in tyranny so long as we don’t stop resisting even if it’s an uphill battle or we get sidetracked by disinformation.”
Marcos Jr.’s supporters called his massive victory a political vindication, but opponents said he climbed back to the top post through well-funded social media propaganda that whitewashed the family history in a country regarded as one of the top users of the internet and social media, including Facebook and TikTok.
He had steadfastly rejected calls by anti-Marcos groups for him to apologize for the atrocities and plunder under his father’s rule and said in a TV interview at the presidential place in Manila in September that labeling his father a dictator was wrong.
Reconciliation
Faced with the awkward situation of issuing a statement to mark the 1986 revolt that toppled his father, Marcos Jr. called for reconciliation without any reference to the event as a democratic milestone as his predecessors did.
“I once again offer my hand of reconciliation to those with different political persuasions to come together as one in forging a better society — one that will pursue progress and peace and a better life for all Filipinos,” Marcos Jr. said in a two-paragraph statement he posted on Facebook.
“As we look back to a time in our history that divided the Filipino people, I am one with the nation in remembering those times of tribulation and how we came out of them united and stronger as a nation,” he said.
Renato Reyes of the left-wing alliance Bayan said the President’s offer was a “good sound bite but lacks sincerity and substance” given Marcos Jr.’s refusal to acknowledge abuses under his father’s rule.
The ousted elder Marcos died in exile in Hawaii three years after being overthrown without admitting any wrongdoing, including accusations that he and his family amassed an estimated $5 billion to $10 billion while he was in power.
A Hawaii court later found him liable for human rights violations and awarded $2 billion from his estate to compensate more than 9,000 Filipinos who filed a lawsuit against him for torture, incarceration, extrajudicial killings and disappearances.
Cebu City
In Cebu City, a wreath-laying ceremony was held at Freedom Park on Saturday morning to mark the 37th anniversary of the Edsa Revolution.
A researcher who attended the event said the spirit of the People Power Revolution would always be alive today and in the years to come.
Edrine Durante, a 23-year-old science researcher and former chairperson of the University of the Philippines Ecological Society, said remembering history is a vital responsibility for Filipinos.
“It has been rooted to our history, and reliving and relearning history is an important aspect of our lives,” said Durante, “especially now that someone who is sitting is linked to why Edsa happened.”
Durante said the youth should be more engaged, especially in the country’s current political economy.
Aside from Durante, other members of youth groups joined the wreath-laying ceremony.
Alexa Opone, 17, a senior high school student from Barangay Apas, helped prepare the event as part of an on-the-job training.
Opone saw her involvement in the event as a way to pay respects to those who fought for freedom in the 1970s up to the end of Marcos Sr.’s regime in 1986.
“Members of the current generation need to open their minds so they’ll know what the Edsa Revolution is really all about, so they’ll know what our ancestors had to do to achieve freedom,” she said in Cebuano.
Cebu City Vice Mayor Raymond Alvin Garcia, chairman of the Cultural and Historical Affairs Commission, said it is important to remember the significance of the revolution regardless of political views.
He pointed out that the country gained international recognition and inspired other countries to hold peaceful revolutions.
Garcia and City Councilor Donaldo Hontiveros led the ceremony. They were joined by employees of the Cebu City Government. (AP, KJF, CTL)