Dictatorship and corruption

There are certain dates in our history that we wished never happened.

September 21, 1972 remains an infamous day that ushered in the authoritarian regime of Ferdinand Edralin Marcos who was later toppled by the Filipino people during the EDSA Revolution of 1986.

Allow us to tarry yet one more time this year to remind every Filipino why we need to remember not to forget this date and why we should all remember to always remain vigilant so no other dictator ever will be allowed to trample upon our rights as persons, as a people, as a nation.

How do we relay and transmit the memory of the dictatorial regime to our young who have not experienced martial law at all or to the not-so-young who experienced this regime but no longer remember this date? 

The question may also be asked: Is it necessary for them, for all Filipinos, to remember September 21, 1972 and the meaning of authoritarianism?

Allow us to dialogue with our young Filipinos who have not experienced as well as with other Filipinos who experienced but may have forgotten what life was like during the dictatorship.

Curfew is easy to understand perhaps. Imagine being required not to go out at a certain time at night, or make that every night for a prolonged period of time. Your freedom to define your time and your movement is now being dictated, controlled by a military government. How would you like to be told what to do with your time and your movement?

You want to publicly register your complaint, your protest about how government, how officials are corrupt and abusive.

Recall what happened, during this Marcos regime, to Ninoy Aquino and so many others imprisoned, killed, or closer to home, those like Fr. Rudy Romano, a Redemptorist priest abducted by armed men of the deposed Marcos Regime on July 11, 1985. Fr. Romano has been missing for 28 years now. He is one of many unaccounted for among the desaparecidos whose mothers, fathers, and families are still searching for until now.

Your freedom of time and movement, as well as speech and assembly, are not allowed. If you insist on your rights, then expect death, detention (with creative ways of torture), disappearance among the consequences of your insistence of your right to assert your rights.

No media was allowed, except those controlled by government.

Congress was closed during the dictatorship. That move deserves applause, you say? I agree. But then, there were honorable and honest people in Congress then who fought against the dictatorship. Tañada, Diokno, Aquino come to mind. These people knew their role clearly --to legislate and not to be conduits or recipients of pork barrel.

Marcos removed the pork barrel from Congress BUT Marcos and his favored cronies instead continued to abuse public funds and resources of our people and our country.

Think how much gold left our country during this regime and now still stashed in private banks abroad. Think billions of public funds still to be returned to our people, if an honest and efficient Philippine Government can succeed in retrieving the stolen money, resources, and property from the abusive and corrupt during this regime.

The Napoles exposé has angered Filipinos who learned how billions of public funds were easily, smoothly transferred to private accounts and pockets of those in Congress. There is freedom of expression now and of assembly and so, with continued vigilance, it is easier to ferret out the truth during this present PNoy administration. However, much more is needed.

Think more billions, more resources, more properties unaccounted for during the dictatorship. Napoles may pale in comparison to the abusive and corrupt in the past.

The present government has to remind our people how much else was stolen as well, not only during the recent period but in the past, especially during the Marcos regime down to the GMA administration.

It is 2013 now.

Never again should we allow any dictatorship to rob us of our rights and freedom. Never again should we allow as well corruption to proceed from here on.

As responsive and responsible Filipinos, please do your share, let us all do what we can, where we are, however we can for the vigilant fight vs. corruption and dictatorship. Now na!

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