VICE President Maria Leonor G. Robredo on Monday urged Filipinos to reject attempts to revise history as the country commemorated the 48th year since the late dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos declared martial law.
In a statement, Ms. Robredo stated murder of dissenters and activists and rampant corruption did happen during the period.
“These truths know no political color, but come starkly in the black and white of our lived experience as a nation,” said the vice president, who joined the resistance against the Marcos dictatorship in the 1970s.
Ms. Robredo, who defeated the dictator’s son Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. in the 2016 vice-presidential race by a hair, urged Filipinos to resist political moves aimed at revising history and burying accounts of abuses under the strongman’s rule.
“Our task is to push back against these lies at every instant. To tell the stories of Martial Law and dictatorship over and over so that this generation, and the ones that come after, may be bound tighter through remembering,” she said.
“Hold firm to the truth of this painful chapter of our history, and through this, forge the determination to never again let our people fall into such despair,” Ms. Robredo said. “We must do this because, ultimately, our national aspirations can only be as strong as our national memory.”
Some quarters have been pushing for a revision of Philippine textbooks in favor of the dictatorial rule’s side of history.
Earlier this month Congress passed a measure declaring every Sept. 11th as “President Ferdinand Edralin Marcos Day” in Ilocos Norte, the home province of the Marcos clan.
Opposition leaders and martial law victims said this was an insult to history. — Kyle Aristophere T. Atienza