Writing the wrong epitaph
Even Ferdinand Marcos would have thought it unlikely. A decade after his death, the dictator turned wonder of modern taxidermy continues to cause trouble in his homeland, where a plot awaits him in the Heroes Cemetery. In the history books that he liked, Mr. Marcos appears eminently qualified to fill the vacancy. They say he was a war hero.
For the record, the books have it that the young Marcos distinguished himself during World War Two as the leader of an army unit in the resistance to the Japanese. On his capture, he was incarcerated in the Bataan prison camp, which was as notorious as such establishments are reputed to be, and he went on to launch himself into politics. Some say he was brave and selfless, others (say) that accounts of his wartime exploits are tripe, the products of an acrobatic imagination.
Our purpose here is not to presume to pass judgment on his war record nor to speak ill of the chemically immortalized Ferdinand Edralin Marcos. What counts is what Mr. Marcos went on to do when he installed himself as president of the Republic of the Philippines, and hero is not a word that springs immediately to mind. He started out well, aiming to bring industrial development to the Philippines but then found self-enrichment and continuation in power more pressing priorities.
In a career in public office that began in 1949, Mr. Marcos, his family and cronies amassed outrageous wealth, stripped the national reserves and removed many of the liberties enjoyed by the people he claimed to have liberated. The Philippines today is in remarkably good shape considering Marcos et al brought to the country the same sort of economic devastation that the rest of Southeast Asia is experiencing today.
The final act of Mr. Marcos on home turf in 1986 was none too heroic either.
In seeking to inter Mr. Marcos in the Heroes Cemetery, Joseph Estrada, who assumes the presidency on Tuesday, has made himself the champion of a strange and untenable cause. Mr. Estrada may have liked Mr. Marcos personally but is likely to sacrifice any claim to the moral high ground by putting the old rogue six feet under in the resting place of the great and the good.
-- The Bangkok Post