Kindness of history?

WAS Ferdinand Marcos the best president we've ever had in recent history?

Seems so, based on Pulse Asia's July 2005 "Ulat ng Bayan" [Report of the Nation] national survey which asked people to rate recent presidents. Marcos romped away with a median rating of 7, compared to 6 for Corazon Aquino, Fidel Ramos and Joseph Estrada. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo took a 4.

I wish I had more information on the research instruments themselves, such as the questions used, and how people actually rated the presidents on each of several criteria. Nevertheless, the findings were enough to get me alarmed.

Marcos era

Time, we are told, is like a medicinal balm that heals wounds. Put another way, history tends to be kind. And yes, it's been almost 20 years since Marcos was stormed out of Malacañang. But that still seems a terribly short time to forget the thousands of political prisoners, the tortured, the disappeared and the way the nation's coffers were plundered.

Maybe the mass media's focus has been banal -- Imelda's shoes and parties, for example -- so that now we tend to be more benign as we look back. Maybe, too, we're in collective denial about the Marcos era.

We tend to refer to that era simply as "martial law," yet our problems started when Marcos first came to office in 1965. Conrado de Quiros' "Dead Aim" is the best chronicle yet of the Marcos era, pointing out how Marcos was driven by ambition, and a cunning ability to read the public's pulse ... even without public opinion surveys.

He capitalized on our aspirations and our fears to keep himself in power, using democratic institutions and constitutional processes to his advantage. We forget that only nine years of the Marcos era (1972 to 1981) was technically under martial law. Much of his rule was "constitutional": from 1965 to 1972 as a duly elected president, and from 1981 to 1986 after he "lifted" martial law. Ever conscious of how history might judge him, he was always trying to legitimize himself with constitutional conventions, elections, the imposition and lifting of martial law.

We have to remember all his machinations, including the invoking of "due process," if we are to understand the dangers of complacency that come about today, where democratic institutions, however fragile, still prevail.

Totalitarian temptation

Marcos won Filipinos' hearts with promises of firm leadership. People were willing to give him a chance when he declared martial law and, although that experiment was disastrous, we tend to blame the failure on Imelda, or his cronies.

These days, we are again being seduced by offers of strong leadership. Ms Arroyo tried with her "strong republic" rhetoric but the rhetoric lingers only on "Matatag na Republika" [Strong Republic] emblazoned on our license plates (a parody, when you think of how our motor vehicles so represent the disdain Filipinos have for the laws and law enforcers of that "strong republic").

The Pulse Asia surveys show Ping Lacson leading in the National Capital Region among those who Filipinos think should replace Ms Arroyo. Nationwide, he was third, after Noli de Castro and Joseph Estrada. We know Lacson's appeal: If he ever became president, the Department of Public Works and Highways would spend most of its time building more jails, than schools, hospitals or highways.

But therein lies the paradox of totalitarianism, one that Marcos was well aware of: precisely because people yearn so much for democracy, we often end up believing democracy is best served through authoritarianism. As democratic institutions falter, as noise levels of discontent and dissent rise, we complain about "democrazy" and yearn for the fictitious peace and order that comes with kings (or in our case, datus and sultans) and dictators.

Bodies politic

As the country's body politic is slowly being torn apart, it is not surprising that Ms Arroyo's advisers have seen another political opportunity, this time in a literal body, to "heal" the nation. Perhaps reading the Pulse Asia findings and the high ratings for Marcos, Ms Arroyo is now courting the Marcos family (currently identified with the anti-Arroyo forces) by offering to have Ferdinand Marcos' remains transferred to the Libingan ng Mga Bayani [Cemetery of Heroes]. It's a battle the Marcos family has been fighting for years, with Joseph Estrada almost acceding, except that there was a massive public outcry protesting the proposal.

This time around, there's not just silence from protesters but more voices saying let bygones be bygones. Yet, I would argue this is an even worse time to have him buried there. If we feel uneasy about the Marcoses and Marcos cronies surrounding Susan Roces and the opposition, we should be even more concerned about the unholiest of unholiest alliances that could be built up via Ms Arroyo and the Marcoses as they feed into each other's delusions of grandeur.

In recent weeks, we've seen how totally clueless Ms Arroyo is when it comes to public relations. Her speeches, her press conferences have to be scripted and pre-taped and despite all precautions, she still falls flat. Her advisers know this all too well and how a grand Marcos burial would serve her well. But if that ever comes about, the Libingan ceremonies would be doubly blasphemous, not just a canonization of Marcos as national hero but also his ghost resurrected to anoint Ms Arroyo as his spiritual successor.

In all these events, I wonder if we are seeing the kindness of history, or the kindness of historians. Are our historians perhaps remiss in chronicling the past? Should it be surprising that we then suffer national amnesia, and are therefore unable to see through the replays of history, the deceptions of politicians, the quagmire of authoritarianism?

Historical memories aren't built by historians alone. I've mentioned "Dead Aim" as an important source book for building our historical memory. I'd recommend, too, a conference report published by the Ateneo de Manila University, "Memory, Truth-telling and the Pursuit of Justice," which brought together scholars from different disciplines to look back at the dictatorship.

But books are books, and in a country that reads so little, the burden of memory-keeping and truth-telling falls the on mass media, and on families and schools. Let us not forget most of our students today were born after the Marcos era.

De Quiros' book is subtitled "How Marcos Ambushed Philippine Democracy." With little or no historical memory, my nightmare is that perhaps we are walking right into another ambush. Mind you, I have a strong suspicion that Ms Arroyo isn't doing the ambushing, or even directing it. I'm afraid that, overwhelmed by desperate pride, she is walking right into it as well, taking the nation with her. That will be another story for historians to tell, and to judge.