1976

I was born in 1976. Four years after Martial Law was declared. The year Muhammad Ali entertained the whole country when he defeated Joe Frazier in that "Thrilla in Manila". A time when a strong earthquake shook Cotabato City almost to its knees. It was the year of the Dragon in the Chinese calendar. Disco was just beginning to hit the airwaves and went full blast two years after. And I am, with no approved therapeutic claims, a Martial Law baby.

It was also a time when Ferdinand Marcos passed the decade mark as the president of the country. A time when the heights of martial rule was at its peak. That almost all of its detractors were either imprisoned, banished, or "salvaged" for the better part of it. That its dictatorship has reached its apex, laying the predicate for a much better society, so they say, a "Bagong Lipunan" that would usher in a new phase of conjugal imperative. And that it was also a time when the nation had experienced a concocted progress by pampering the theater and the films as Imelda and Imee, both connoisseurs of the finer things in life, lead the charge as self-imposed patrons of the arts.

The same deities who, until now, are still lording it over, along with Bongbong, in the higher echelons of our government as representatives, senators and governors. And that after years of treating them as "anathemas", the Marcoses are now back in business. Suffice it to say that it only takes a few more years before the beatitudes of that conjugality can come to pass where, in the words of Imelda herself, Filipinos could become angels, given the chance to flourish under their regime.

It seemed like a long time ago after we ousted a dictator to take a breather from the asphyxiation of a repressive government. An act suggesting that much of the scuffle involved in that extended dictatorship had taken a toll on the tenants with no other option but to forcibly evict their landlord. And now that the owners of that old aristocracy are slowly gaining ground again after years of consolidating vestiges of its old glory, we are again confronted with the same nagging question that dates back to even after democracy was restored in Edsa, thus we ask, how much of our idea of accountability can be of any use as far as our own perception of progress is concerned?

In my previous articles, I have tried to laid out the lessons of the past as a launching pad on which progress, or even development for that matter, can unearth something valuable leading to options for our government and the populace. This argument is intent on strengthening any form of accountability not really in some distorted sense of paying dues, which can be potentially corrupting, but in also trying to desensitize us from images of the past with the sole purpose of burying it along with its negative implications. And the Marcoses, despite having won in the last elections, could not but feel awkward (if indeed they do) about being on spotlight again since trading their kingdom for a chopper.

Those who have been born in 1976, recipients of that experimental segment of our society, could only watch how time can actually become a regulator of idealism. The presence of the Marcoses back in politics only undermines our struggle, past and present, in securing a more stable legal system, inept in mitigating a sustained decision in controlling an extension of failed politics such as what the then Strongman, including his family, tried to perpetuate. It only shows that the Filipino people, regardless of their emotionality in ousting a potentially corrupt leader, is still shortsighted in its vision of the future in relation to history.

If irony is the final polish of the shoe, then its expression is precisely the reason why the resurgence of the Marcoses sends curious waves since it came at an intersection of an Aquino administration. Of course, the logical reaction would be that PNoy, up to a certain extent, would conjure a retaliatory mode on the Marcoses in lieu of their tacit unfinished businesses. And this same reaction also would be crucial in assessing how well PNoy valued what was once the compendium that made his parents the stuff of legends.

I think that if PNoy falls short, as he did since riding in a bus all the way to the Palace, in keeping the Marcoses to the sidelines, the Revolution we all knew as peaceful and messianic would just be a travesty unlike anything since the ascension of his presidential predecessor. I would prefer that the Marcoses would hold their own until the next administration, but definitely not in PNoy's time, because that would taint the very fabric of Edsa as a mere hiatus for a family intent at reclaiming its prestige, its politics, its pomposity, its power.

If the spirit of '76 still resonates any proclamation in our political system which has a form of peacefulness but lacking the justice thereof, PNoy's administration, as I have often argued in my past articles, would be pressured to the neck and cool off from any claims the Marcoses still have at their disposal, with the objective perhaps of keeping them at bay under his government, and especially under his name.

PNoy may be the president of the country, but combining the offices of the Marcoses in our contemporary politics with Bongbong at the Senate, Imelda at the Lower House and Imee at the Provincial level, it wouldn't be unlikely that the Marcoses are enjoying, even taking advantage of their position, influence and power like that of Noynoy's, but with the glaring difference that while Noynoy still has to prove his mettle as far as wielding his own politics is concerned, this Marcosian Trinity, in contrast, has only to reinstate their hold in politics to reclaim their lost lot, and possibly get even with it.

I don't know if 1976 was a special time for the Marcoses in as much as Imelda's victory still haunts those who tried to bury her indefinitely, but 1976, by some stroke of political fate, was a time of relative peace and quiet (this according to the first couple, of course), with all of its low intensity conflicts being relegated to the sidelines, a state of being that could give PNoy enough appraisal that the recent exploits of the Marcoses in politics isn't exactly a conciliation that would merit partnership. The Aquino administration still has to postulate a critical eye on them, not because they bear a relatively reprehensible name, but because they still has to answer a lot of questions.

It isn't exactly cool being a Martial Law baby, it only means either you were born under a bad sign or you will be looked upon as a survivor of a massive conspiracy, one that has been given a new lease on life in the local government, in Congress, and in the Senate, simply because we were too young to remember that conspiracy.