Martial law activists, youth representatives, Moro and Indigenous peoples, and civil libertarians from all across the country gather today to push for the Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses in Malacanang or CARMMA. CARMMA was initially launched in Quezon City on February 4 this year. Also present in the gathering were a number of plaintiffs who filed and won the class action suit filed in a Hawaii court against the former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Sr.
Martial law activists, youth representatives, Moro and Indigenous peoples, and civil libertarians from all across the country gather today to push for the Campaign Against the Return of the Marcoses in Malacanang or CARMMA. CARMMA was initially launched in Quezon City on February 4 this year. Also present in the gathering were a number of plaintiffs who filed and won the class action suit filed in a Hawaii court against the former dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Sr.
"CARMMA aims to expose and oppose the candidacy of Bongbong Marcos on two counts: One, because it is founded on barefaced lies and deception and two, because its ultimate aim is for the Marcoses to return to Malacanang to redeem what the Filipino people had rightfully repudiated in 1986," said Bonifacio Ilagan, one of the conveners of CARMMA. Ilagan was a political prisoner during martial law. His sister Rizalina was among the thousands who disappeared during the dictatorship.
Delegates came all the way from Ilocos, Cordillera, Cagayan Valley, Central and Southern Luzon provinces, Bicol, Panay, General Santos, Davao provinces, CARAGA region, and Cotabato City.
Among the regional delegates is a survivor of the Black Saturday massacre in Ragay, Camarines Sur in April 1985, who was then a young boy. Cordillera representatives are expected to recount their struggle against the Chico mega-dam project, which threatened the life, livelihood and the culture of the indigenous peoples and had resulted to the death of a number of activists, including Kalinga pangat (leader) Macliing-Dulag. The Moro delegation brought with them stories of massacres and how the Dictatorship drove them away from their lands.
The stories of horror, terror and plunder were shared not because “we cannot move on from the past but because we want to impress on today’s generation the kind of life we had under the Marcos dictatorship,” added Ilagan. He particularly called on the youth, “to see through the ‘cool’ facade of Bongbong Marcos, executor of the ill-gotten Marcos estate.”
CARMMA opposes his vice-presidential bid not because he is a Marcos, but because he has willfully covered up the heinous crimes of the Marcos dictatorship, having been a part of it. More so, he is the key beneficiary of what his father plundered, which he now spends in his campaign. Bongbong Marcos is very much a part of the nation’s past; the youth cannot and should not entrust their future to a charlatan like him.” ###