It was easy: The family just had to bet on the right horse. If that guy from Negros had won, he would’ve listened to a small number of people who have trouble moving on.
Now you will be transferred from our mansion to the Heroes’ Cemetery, an act that freezes you, in the public’s mind, in the time you were a soldier, when you were patriotic, and pure.
We’re lucky many people – among them the Majestic Nine who’ve rewritten Philippine history recently (yey) – don’t need much convincing to look past your infractions and see only your accomplishments.
The Cultural Centers of the Philippines, the Lung Centers, the Coconut Palaces you had built (using people’s taxes, of course). The discipline you enforced on our people, who don’t like rules. The communists you ordered rounded up and punished.
All this made your foibles – the debt you buried this country in, the $10 billion you stole, the 3,257 lives you had ended – a work of implausible fiction in the eyes of your fans.
What about our countrymen who do know about and probably used to hate that Martial Law thingy? Their ability to forgive and forget leaves me near tears. Can you believe it? We’ve just been repeating the word ‘healing’ in the place of a sincere apology, et voila we’re off the hook.
Now the Libingan, tomorrow Malacanang. Yes, Daddy, it won’t be too long now before we return to the palace whose shoe closets Mom misses. We lost in 2016, no thanks to that tsinelas-wearing, bus-hopping, poor-loving lawyer from Bicol.
Winning the #2 post in the land would’ve been our ticket to the next election cycle. But come 2022, with a friendly incumbent, maybe we can leapfrog to # 1 and rule over this pusong-mamon, amnesiac nation #OnceMore. Winning will prove that your dictatorship was not an embarrassing and terrifying chapter in our history.
Wherever you are, pray for our successful comeback, Daddy. I can’t wait for the blasted hashtag #NeverAgain to stop trending.
Becky in Manila 