An interview in quest of an
audience
By: Randy David - @inquirerdotnet
Philippine Daily Inquirer / 05:12 AM September 23, 2018
In an in-your-face attempt to promote a favorable view of the martial law regime of
Ferdinand Marcos, and to justify his own presidential ambition, the dictator’s son and
namesake Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. has turned to the 94-year-old Juan Ponce
Enrile for assistance. Agreeing to sit down with Marcos Jr. for an unusual interview on
the stage of a cavernous but empty theater, Enrile eagerly made himself useful by
painting a benign view of the martial law years.
His biggest problem remains his credibility — the same issue that dogged him when he
turned against Marcos in 1986.
Enrile was one of Marcos’ closest confidantes, probably next only to Imelda Marcos
and Gen. Fabian Ver, then Armed Forces chief. He was the regime’s martial law
administrator and defense minister until those fateful four days in February 1986. Holed
up and protected by his loyal group of young officers in Camp Aguinaldo, expecting to
be arrested, he flipped and betrayed his boss —as soon as it became clear that people
power might save him. In doing so, he metamorphosed into a heroic figure of the Edsa
Revolution.
But, Enrile’s well-known ambition to succeed the ailing Marcos was too strong to be
merely forgotten. Even as President Cory Aquino had retained him as defense minister
in her Cabinet, in recognition of his role at Edsa, his loyalty to the new adi
was always in doubt. Following one of the most violent attacks against her
administration, Cory finally fired him, conscious that if any of the coup attempts
inistration
mounted against her presidency had succeeded, the wily politician would surely have
been part of the governing junta,But, capitalizing on his image as one of Edsa’s heroes, Enrile won a Senate seat in the
first elections held under the 1987 Constitution. In the Senate, he cultivated the image
of an elder statesman above personal ambition. His wealth and power intact, he
navigated the turbulent waters of Philippine politics under a succession of post-Edsa
presidents. Throughout this period, he said nothing more about the Marcos years that
could remotely be interpreted as injurious to the Marcos myth.
It therefore comes as no surprise that he would willingly lend himself to a project to
rehabilitate Marcos in the public memory. Perhaps he thought he owed the Marcos
family something for contributing to their downfall. Without sounding as though he
regretted his participation at Edsa, it was obvious he was trying to patch up his relations
with the family by praising the regime of which, after all, he had been very much a part.
With the passage of more than four decades, many of his ontemporaries who might
convincingly contradict his recollection of events have passed on.
The nation’s mood about strongmen also appears to have changed considerably,
notwithstanding surveys showing that Filipinos continue to profess their love for
democracy. More than any other previous president, Rodrigo Duterte has shown that
Filipinos love leaders who talk tough, who curse in public, and who can intimidate their
enemies by the sheer force of their personalities. “Mood is not the opium of the
people,” writes the sociologist Heinz Bude. “Moods form a reality of their own and
cannot be understood solely as the reaction to biographical circumstances and systemic
conditions. ... [S]hifts in public mood are responsible for political shifts.”
Indeed, there probably has never been a better time than now to rehabilitate the Marcos
image. The Marcos-Enrile interview, however, fails to do that. It is so patently self
serving that one might be forgiven for paying more attention to the spectacle of the
young Marcos’ red socks than to Enrile’s ebullient recollections before an absent
audience. The man has changed his account of events so often that one is led to think
that truth is a function of politics.
The impact could have been different, however, if an interview like this were to be
conducted by a panel of respectable historians and journalists, and the principal subjects
were individuals who had been detained and tortured or stripped of their properties bythe regime but never allowed their sordid experience to cloud their view of events. I’m
not saying that their accounts would be entirely free of bias. But a good impartial
interviewer would have had greater success in teasing out the truth from personal
narratives.
This particular interview, videotaped and posted on social media to coincide with the
46th anniversary of the imposition of martial law, is barefaced propaganda aimed at
“millennials,” who, having been born long after the actual events, are presumed to
cept without question so-called eyewitness accounts of historical events. As a teacher,
I would not take it seriously. Still, propaganda like this, formatted as public affairs
material, offers important lessons on what to avoid in the teaching of history.
First, one must avoid starting with a judgment of a historical period or events. Teachers
must respect their students’ right to form their own conclusions, encouraging them to
freely ask questions and to consider alternative accounts. The teacher’s primary task is
to help form critical minds.
Second, we must not confuse memory with history. The historian Frangois Bédarida
says the two have different trajectories. “[T]he objective of memory is fidelity, whilst
the objective of history is truth.” Fidelity to cherished values or sentiments is perfectly
valid but it should not get in the way of the pursuit of truth, even if full objectivity is
never attainable. What should be resisted is the total relativization of history, in which
there are no facts, only interpretations.
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