LuisTeodoro.com

The country marked the 30th anniversary of the declaration of martial law on
September 21. Except for a few, among them Vice President Teofisto Guingona
Jr., the politicians, whether identified with the opposition or with the administration, were conspicuously silent.

It’s easy enough to see why. Some—still too many—of the politicians now in the executive department and the legislature were part of the martial-law regime themselves, or were part of its apparatus of repression.

Those Filipinos who survived the imprisonment and torture of the period know who they are. Still in power in some way or another—this one directing the country’s foreign relations, that other one a senator charged with crafting the Republic’s laws—September’s a month they would rather forget, marking the double infamy of the onset of martial law (the 21st) as well as the birth of its architect (the 11th).

Still other politicians, however, look at that period through a haze of misconception and ignorance, believing it to be one man’s—Ferdinand Marcos’s—particular failing or accomplishment, depending upon their
sympathies. Filipino politicians are, after all, noted neither for their sense of
history nor for their sense. Some do suspect that martial law was a logical
consequence of a mindset for authoritarianism that’s never left the
political class, and to which it would resort if conditions permitted it.

But they themselves would support authoritarian rule if it meant keeping
their perks and staying in power, but would rather not talk about it, at least not publicly. Political correctness in this country so far still dictates the usual lip service to democracy and the Bill of Rights despite
the “Strong Republic” hype. Only someone like Imee Marcos can dare to publicly argue that martial law had its merits.

Among the country’s politicians what this virtual conspiracy of silence amounts to is a tendency toward precisely the kind of forgetting that makes the repetition of the past so possible.

However, it’s worse among the citizenry itself, in whose ranks only the militant groups took note of the event with symposiums, public discussions and marches.

Among professionals, the generation that’s now of age whose members were
babies and toddlers when Ferdinand Marcos placed the entire country under
martial rule on September 21, 1972, few remember little of that period. They
see it as part of ancient history and of no relevance to their lives. They’d rather get on with planning their careers, whether here, or, preferably, in another country. Forget about social awareness and a sense of history . They’re too busy looking out for number one, meaning themselves and their families.

Normally a loquacious lot, the business community was as silent this year as
it has been in the past. Martial law was after all good for business for some time. It made strikes a thing of the past and, among others, provided the law-and-order environment that’s so great for profits.

Martial law palled a bit when it became evident that Marcos had his favorites in the business community and was also predisposed to taking certain companies over. But the idea that democratic rule isn’t good for business, especially Asian business, has never really died in certain business circles, among which the only thing wrong with authoritarian rule is when someone else’s boy is in charge.

No one heard from the Church either, whose leading lights for once had nothing to say about an event that 30 years ago plunged the country into 14 years of terror, world-class corruption and economic decline.

A “critical collaborator” of the Marcos regime up to its last month in power, the institutional Catholic Church’s position nowadays is as compromisingly vague as it was from 1972 to 1985, when tens of thousands of its flock were being jailed, tortured, massacred and abducted by the Marcos regime.

There were no announcements or pastoral letters from the country’s pulpits this time about the significance of the 21st, no dire predictions from Church spokesmen about the results of the current government’s focus on 2004, although in 1972 his desire to remain in power beyond 1973 drove
Marcos to declare martial rule.

The irony in this silence is that it’s taking place in a context in which the possibility of authoritarian rule in some form or another has never been has pronounced.

Certainly, the global environment favors domestic repression. The state of
human rights observance from all over the globe suggests a reversal of the
trend toward liberalization evident before September 11, 2001. Before that
date—whose significance we are only beginning to witness—there had
been a slow but nevertheless significant tendency toward the repeal of
repressive laws and the erosion of dictatorial rule. All this changed after
September 11, 2001, when, in the name of antiterrorism, one state after
another adopted laws restricting free expression, the free press, and the
right to peaceable assembly, and severely limiting the rights of suspects to
counsel.

Both September 11 and the United States’ Patriot Act have become the excuses for repression in many states from the Central Asian republics to the African states. In most countries repression is right now being justified in the name of antiterrorism—and because the United States is doing it.

Their being patterned on the US Antiterrorism Act of 2001 is evident in the
texts of the versions of the antiterrorism bills that have been proposed before Congress. There is a strong possibility that one of these bills, notably that introduced by Rep. Imee Marcos of Ilocos Norte, will pass Congress, and usher in a new era of repression. The Marcos bill allows the
interception of communication whether via ordinary mail, e-mail, cell phones or fax. It defines a terrorist act not only as specific acts, but also as “acts of omission.” Like two other bills, one submitted to the House and another to the Senate, it penalizes “terrorist acts” with death, and defines
terrorism so broadly as to make a workers’ strike or any disruption of public utilities forms of terrorism.

Besides the Marcos bill’s obvious derivation from the US act, however, there
are other factors that strongly suggest the possibility of creeping authoritarianism. The Arroyo government’s emphasis on police and military empowerment as the primary element of the “Strong Republic” is only one of them, although this alone is critical enough, among its results being the
increasing number of human rights violations, including incidents of “salvaging,” in city and countryside.

A factor as crucial is the renewed dependence of the Philippines on the
United States, and this country’s return to its former role as the foremost US client state in Asia. As Vice President Guingona has noted, authoritarianism in whatever form can only flourish with US support, as
martial law did in the crucial decade of the seventies.

Above all this, however, is the even more critical factor of mass amnesia and indifference to the lessons of the past. Remembrance, it has been said often enough, is the one sure antidote to the repetition of the terrors of the past. It is that one factor above all that can make the difference between a people’s acquiescing in something it has already experienced, or rejecting it without qualification.

It is an article of faith in the Philippines that martial law can never
again be declared, despite the economic, political, social and ideological factors that favor it at home, and a changed environment abroad. That may indeed be true. But authoritarianism can flourish even in avowedly democratic regimes and, worse, without the benefit of any declaration. That is the greater peril in the Philippines today, as—racked by crisis,
poverty-stricken, besieged by social unrest, and led by a President as focused on staying in power as Marcos was in 1972—it makes its uncertain way toward 2004.

(ABS-CBNNEWS.COM/TODAY, September 24, 2002)