Just as the Marcos Jr. regime unleashed its latest attempt at historical revisionism, reality has snuck up to bite it in the ass.
The Mariano Marcos State University embarked on a myth-making lecture series on September 10, 2024, the eve of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s 107th birth anniversary. Promotional posters for the “President FEM Lecture Series 2024” harped on the myth of a so-called golden age under martial rule, and claimed that Marcos Sr. was a visionary whose views have had a “lasting influence on [the course] of national progress.”
One lecture even pondered ways to explain Marcos Sr. to the Gen-Z, who were born more than a generation after the martial law declaration in 1972 and Marcos Sr.’s downfall in 1986, and therefore thought to be more impressionable and susceptible to historical lies.
Almost simultaneously, however, the Supreme Court issued a ruling declaring as ill-gotten a 57-hectare property in Paoay, Ilocos Norte long held by the Marcoses. The ruling is significant as it is the first of its kind under the Marcos Jr. presidency.
The decision on the Paoay property was powerfully myth-busting, as it revived images of the Marcoses as thieves and plunderers. The next recollections were of numbers that Marcos Jr. would have us forget—that 70,000 were imprisoned, 34,000 tortured and 3,240 killed under his father’s murderous regime.
As expected, Marcos Jr. has already begun deflecting public attention from the serious implications of the Paoay property ruling. But the people are not distracted and see through his myths and other falsities. They continue to demand truth, justice and accountability from the Marcoses, for their sins from the martial law era to the present.