MANILA, Philippines - President Aquino has asked Vice President Jejomar Binay to decide on the request of Sen. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos II to have his late father and namesake buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
“I’ve talked to the vice president and I asked him if he could be the one to decide on the case. Dahil sabi nga kahit ano pa ang desisyon ko, sasabihin na me bias agad ako (As they say, whatever decision I make, they would readily conclude that I am biased). I talked to him before he went to China,” Aquino said.
“He will give it a fair hearing and he will tell me the result of the study,” he told Palace reporters in a chance interview at the Rizal High School in Pasig City.
He explained that while Binay also has “strong opinion about the matter,” his decision is less likely to draw criticism.
The President, only son of the martyred senator with the late President Corazon Aquino, said his personal stand of not allowing a hero’s burial at the Libingan for the late dictator has not changed.
“Many quarters have voiced opposition to it., but I don’t want to speak because it will be viewed as a personal thing. Even before I became president, you already knew my opinion, and that has not changed,” Aquino explained in Filipino. “Anything I say will be biased.”
Aquino’s assassination in 1983 – believed to be on Marcos’ orders – triggered massive rallies that culminated in a military-backed people power uprising in February 1986 that toppled the strongman. Marcos and his family fled to Hawaii where he died in 1989. The country celebrates tomorrow the 25th anniversary of the EDSA people power revolution.
Sen. Marcos renewed his call for a hero’s burial for his father after former Armed Forces chief Angelo Reyes was buried at the Libingan despite being hounded by corruption charges, which forced him to commit suicide.
“Will it be a recognition of his (Marcos) being a soldier during World War II? Should it be because he was former commander-in-chief? Should it be because he was a former president?” Aquino asked.
“It’s very clear that he should have been buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. It brings home the point that this is a purely political decision and should the President decide what is in fact his right to give him, his right to be buried in the Libingan ng mga Bayani, that he can easily do with a pronouncement and a stroke of his pen,” Marcos earlier said.
The President and the Marcos children have not openly displayed animosity at each other. Marcos’ eldest daughter Imee, who is now Ilocos Norte governor, was a colleague of Aquino in the House minority bloc. Aquino then was congressman of Tarlac. – With Ding Cervantes and Rainier Allan Ronda