Never again
Never again
Updated 11:47pm (Mla time) Sept 19, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the September 20, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
I'M glad that there seems to be renewed interest in what happened 32 years ago. Several networks called me up asking to interview me for something they were doing on martial law, whose anniversary falls tomorrow.
I worry, however, about a question I've heard a couple of times, which apparently many people, particularly the generation that went through martial law, are asking today. Namely, whether we were not better off then than now. Marcos at least built roads and bridges, they say, which has not happened to any comparable extent since. And prices were stable throughout the 1970s, if not the early 1980s, which has happened even less afterward. Then, wages went a long way toward putting food on the table.
Well, you can't blame people entirely for thinking this way. These are hard times, and hard times are always an invitation to looking at the past with rose-tinted glasses. But it's also a most dangerous way of doing so, the next step being to pine for iron-fisted rule which presumed to accomplish things democracy cannot. The latter I have heard intermittently since 1986, people wondering-not least Fidel Ramos and his cabal of ex and not-so- ex-generals-if authoritarian government, with a Lee Kuan Yew rather than a Ferdinand Marcos at the helm, were not the cure to our plight.
Nothing is more delusional. True enough, prices were stable throughout the 1970s. The price of rice, balut and beer did not stray much from one another. I'm not so sure now how much a case of beer went then. I do know it didn't go up by much before the 1980s. As well as most goods. But there was a time bomb ticking underneath this.
That time bomb was the debts Marcos incurred throughout this time. The early part of the 1970s was the period when the Western banks groaned with petrodollars, which were the deposits the oil producing countries were dumping on them. The banks in turn dumped the petrodollars on the Third World countries-many of which were ruled by tyrants, courtesy of America's support for them-which guaranteed that the loans would be paid whatever happened to them or their countries. To this day, we continue to reel from that guarantee in the form of "automatic appropriation," the sum automatically deducted from our national budget-even if the poor have no food on their tables-to pay for our debts.
The roads and bridges Marcos built may look impressive when you compare them to those put up by his successors, but they are pathetic when you compare them to the resources he had and to the infrastructure put up by the other Southeast Asian leaders from their own loans. I get depressed every time I leave the country and am greeted by the stark contrast between the Ninoy Aquino International Airport and the airports of other Southeast Asian countries. Transparency International lists Marcos as the second most corrupt tyrant in the world, next only to Suharto; he stole some $15 billion-compared to Suharto's $35 billion-which we are paying for to this day. And though Suharto was the bigger crook, he was at least the more patriotic one. Unlike Marcos, he did not stash his loot outside but plunked it in various businesses in Indonesia. That is a
monumental difference.
The point is simple: It is simply not true that Marcos supplied bread in lieu of freedom. He supplied neither. The seeming economic stability of the 1970s was just that, seeming. It was a surface placidity that rested on roiling waters. Or for those who do not like metaphors, it was a temporary stability bought at the price of a great catastrophe in the future. The future came in the early 1980s when the banks began to collect and cronies like Dewey Dee ran off with their own loot to pleasure capitals of the world.
Someone asked me why we continue to blame Marcos for our woes today. My answer is: Why the hell shouldn't we? Of course, subsequent leaders have made a mess of things, but why shouldn't we blame the fellow who made the worst mess of all? Marcos' tyranny ran deep and continues to ravage the country to this day. It's my same answer to the question why we continue to blame colonialism for our servile mentality today. Of course, we've messed up our minds, too, but why shouldn't we blame those who messed them up most of all? Colonial tyranny ran even deeper and continues to ravage our thinking to this day. Look at President
Macapagal-Arroyo.
None of this includes the horrors martial law wreaked on the nation-the loss of freedom was the more patent. What Marcos did to Julio Nalundasan, his father's bitter enemy, decades earlier-which was to fell him with a sniper's bullet while he brushed his teeth- Marcos did to Philippine democracy decades after-which was to waylay it with dictatorship while it slumbered. The deaths are too plentiful to recount, most of them buried in the not very shallow graves of national forgetfulness. Particularly decimated was the youth, many of them the best and brightest in the country.
Someone asked me if Marcos did not at least replace freedom with discipline during martial law. Well, he did have all those slogans on TV that said, "Sa ikauunlad ng bayan, disiplina ang kailangan (To achieve progress, a nation has to have discipline)." And in later years, we had Asyong Aksaya to teach the public by negative example to shun the ways of profligacy. The problem though was that Marcos wanted only the public, and not himself and his cronies, to practice discipline and austerity. The best teacher, of course, is example: Asyong Aksaya can no more teach frugality to others than Asyong Pasista can teach responsibility to them.
One is tempted to say "Never again" to all these things. But some, if not all, of them are happening even as we speak. And few are raising their voices to stop it.
Updated 11:47pm (Mla time) Sept 19, 2004
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the September 20, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
I'M glad that there seems to be renewed interest in what happened 32 years ago. Several networks called me up asking to interview me for something they were doing on martial law, whose anniversary falls tomorrow.
I worry, however, about a question I've heard a couple of times, which apparently many people, particularly the generation that went through martial law, are asking today. Namely, whether we were not better off then than now. Marcos at least built roads and bridges, they say, which has not happened to any comparable extent since. And prices were stable throughout the 1970s, if not the early 1980s, which has happened even less afterward. Then, wages went a long way toward putting food on the table.
Well, you can't blame people entirely for thinking this way. These are hard times, and hard times are always an invitation to looking at the past with rose-tinted glasses. But it's also a most dangerous way of doing so, the next step being to pine for iron-fisted rule which presumed to accomplish things democracy cannot. The latter I have heard intermittently since 1986, people wondering-not least Fidel Ramos and his cabal of ex and not-so- ex-generals-if authoritarian government, with a Lee Kuan Yew rather than a Ferdinand Marcos at the helm, were not the cure to our plight.
Nothing is more delusional. True enough, prices were stable throughout the 1970s. The price of rice, balut and beer did not stray much from one another. I'm not so sure now how much a case of beer went then. I do know it didn't go up by much before the 1980s. As well as most goods. But there was a time bomb ticking underneath this.
That time bomb was the debts Marcos incurred throughout this time. The early part of the 1970s was the period when the Western banks groaned with petrodollars, which were the deposits the oil producing countries were dumping on them. The banks in turn dumped the petrodollars on the Third World countries-many of which were ruled by tyrants, courtesy of America's support for them-which guaranteed that the loans would be paid whatever happened to them or their countries. To this day, we continue to reel from that guarantee in the form of "automatic appropriation," the sum automatically deducted from our national budget-even if the poor have no food on their tables-to pay for our debts.
The roads and bridges Marcos built may look impressive when you compare them to those put up by his successors, but they are pathetic when you compare them to the resources he had and to the infrastructure put up by the other Southeast Asian leaders from their own loans. I get depressed every time I leave the country and am greeted by the stark contrast between the Ninoy Aquino International Airport and the airports of other Southeast Asian countries. Transparency International lists Marcos as the second most corrupt tyrant in the world, next only to Suharto; he stole some $15 billion-compared to Suharto's $35 billion-which we are paying for to this day. And though Suharto was the bigger crook, he was at least the more patriotic one. Unlike Marcos, he did not stash his loot outside but plunked it in various businesses in Indonesia. That is a
monumental difference.
The point is simple: It is simply not true that Marcos supplied bread in lieu of freedom. He supplied neither. The seeming economic stability of the 1970s was just that, seeming. It was a surface placidity that rested on roiling waters. Or for those who do not like metaphors, it was a temporary stability bought at the price of a great catastrophe in the future. The future came in the early 1980s when the banks began to collect and cronies like Dewey Dee ran off with their own loot to pleasure capitals of the world.
Someone asked me why we continue to blame Marcos for our woes today. My answer is: Why the hell shouldn't we? Of course, subsequent leaders have made a mess of things, but why shouldn't we blame the fellow who made the worst mess of all? Marcos' tyranny ran deep and continues to ravage the country to this day. It's my same answer to the question why we continue to blame colonialism for our servile mentality today. Of course, we've messed up our minds, too, but why shouldn't we blame those who messed them up most of all? Colonial tyranny ran even deeper and continues to ravage our thinking to this day. Look at President
Macapagal-Arroyo.
None of this includes the horrors martial law wreaked on the nation-the loss of freedom was the more patent. What Marcos did to Julio Nalundasan, his father's bitter enemy, decades earlier-which was to fell him with a sniper's bullet while he brushed his teeth- Marcos did to Philippine democracy decades after-which was to waylay it with dictatorship while it slumbered. The deaths are too plentiful to recount, most of them buried in the not very shallow graves of national forgetfulness. Particularly decimated was the youth, many of them the best and brightest in the country.
Someone asked me if Marcos did not at least replace freedom with discipline during martial law. Well, he did have all those slogans on TV that said, "Sa ikauunlad ng bayan, disiplina ang kailangan (To achieve progress, a nation has to have discipline)." And in later years, we had Asyong Aksaya to teach the public by negative example to shun the ways of profligacy. The problem though was that Marcos wanted only the public, and not himself and his cronies, to practice discipline and austerity. The best teacher, of course, is example: Asyong Aksaya can no more teach frugality to others than Asyong Pasista can teach responsibility to them.
One is tempted to say "Never again" to all these things. But some, if not all, of them are happening even as we speak. And few are raising their voices to stop it.
posted by Dante at 12:00 AM
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