How to teach millennials about martial law?

Eric Garuncho's article today posed an important question--he thinks that the reason why millennial don't understand martial law is "how can we remember something which we never really experienced?"

Social memory--that's what we lack, according to the article. A professor of Ateneo, Tirol, blames the "Filipino" for having a "nasty habit of forgetting the tragedies of our history and preferring to move on, to the detriment of justice and the reluctant naivety of younger generations about what really happened..."

It might look that way, Professor Tirol, but it isn't. I think deep down, Filipinos hate the very notion of martial law. But since people have this tendency of viewing the past in "rose-colored" glasses, according to a Carnegie Mellon study, they still think that it is better than the present.

Filipinos believe martial law is better than most historical eras because the sorry present forces people to get nostalgic of the past because they expected that the present should have been better than before.  People refused to believe that the past is worse than the present because they simply don’t know why the present looks pretty dismal.

Traffic for one. It is worst now than before because of many factors like there are more people willing  to risk their monies now and buy more cars. Population growth is one reason. Rural to urban migration is another. These are all natural progression of things.

What people don't know is the true reason why traffic is worse now than before: our government lacks the foresight and the funds. The funds that we are supposed to spend for roads development and other infrastructure projects are all gone. And where did these funds go? It is the consequence of martial law, the era when we allowed a family and their associates to rule us and had free rein to use and spend our hard earned taxes whenever they please.

What forces people to shift blame from the Marcoses to our present and post-Marcos era leaders is the fact that corruption is still here, and worst, it is not only a rambunctious group of tax-thirsty bureaucrats but only a handful of witless, uneducated idiots who are all occupying sensitive posts in government as stooges and proxies of bigger personalities who operate behind the scene.

Forty years had past and promises upon promises every three and six years were given to the people by leaders who rode on the crest of Change. Since the system was never changed by those who reportedly knew better than Marcos, the systemic ills worsened.

That revolt in 1986 was not just about Marcos—it is about what he represented. People are not stupid. They went to EDSA to fight the evils of Filipino society. They went there because they realized that the Marcoses were stealing their monies and spending it so lavishly among themselves.  Those stolen gold bars and companies and billions of cash are just a fraction of the systemic thievery that happened during martial law. Filipinos believe that this monumental raid of the public coffers was not just a mere robbery, but a systemic one with numerous cronies involved and it lasted throughout the entire 14 year old of the Marcoses during formal martial rule.

Marcos, in the minds of Filipinos, represented a different kind of monster, a monster who used his intelligence for self-aggrandizement. Yes, Marcos was a war-time hero, a bar top notcher and a charismatic leader. He was one of a kind.

Ninoy Aquino’s opposition allies were no different. The Dioknos, the Tanadas, the Salongas, the Roceses of the age were honest and equally intelligent like Marcos.  They survived Marcos and for the first ten years of post-EDSA rule, took part in events which were supposed to re-structure society.

What happened when they ascended the rungs of power? Because Cory Aquino did nothing to change our system, and instead brought it back to the pre-Martial era, the very era which necessitated the implementation of martial law in the first place, those intelligent people who were supposed to change this society were unable to do so.  The system which Aquino created prevented these change agents from substantially changing the post-Marcos environment. And why so?

Because Aquino and her bunch of advisers thought that the system was not the problem—it was those who occupied posts in government who were to blame for the mess. Those who led the anti-Marcos movement did so out of personal spite against the Marcoses. They did’nt campaign for substantive, systems-wide and societal deep changes, no.

How then can millennials believe that martial law is worse than the present when cronies of Marcos are now occupying highly revered positions in the corporate and political spheres. Instead of dealing with one tax-hungry family, the nation is now dealing with a bunch of families all using legal and illicit means of getting monies from hard working Filipino families.

What happened to all those controversies which led to the downfall of the Marcoses? Let’s just focus on three issues: first, the coconut levy fund. Second, the crony issue and lastly, the stolen public funds. The Supreme Court did its part of determining complicity behind the stolen funds but did it lead to jailtime for those responsible for the thievery? No. The fact is, the funds were even “recycled” and now it is legally under ownership of several people who orchestrated it in the first place.

How about the widespread call for cronies to suffer the penalties of their explicit cooperation with the Marcos for that grand robbery of public funds? I can name ten cronies still alive and having a grand time of their lives spending funds which belonged to the Filipino people but are now legally theirs. Worse, these cronies continue to enjoy their entitlements and even behave like it’s still the happy days are here again times. One crony refuses to pay the right taxes. Another crony uses his links to sifhon off stolen monies from politicians. And another even had the gall of taking part in governmental contracts and again, profitting from the taxes and loans entered into by government.

Lastly, our Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) admitted that they were only able to recover the smallest fraction of the Marcos loot. And that already amounted to billions. Imee Marcos reportedly wants to return most of the gold bars in exchange for criminal prosecution, as if to say, that yes, we stole your monies, but it’s for your own good, and therefore, we refused to get the penalty for the stealing. And yes, our family continues to rob you of your taxes but we are entitled to these. Kapal (sorry, no other English word compares to this Tagalog term).

How then can we teach millennials that martial law is the worst historical era when the present reflects the worse period of the entire length of martial law. Most Filipinos hate corruption, but they always think these present leaders are the worst kind than Marcos because at least, Marcos spent some of his loot in constructing those iconic buildings and better paved roads. While this present set of leaders directly give Napoles types their stolen funds to “spend” in ghost projects.

Look at narratives being shared right now by those who detest martial law—these are all personal accounts of physical abuses. Of course millennials will never ever get it.

What if we shift the argument to the thievery, the grand conspiracy to rob the people of now trillions of their parent’s monies? What if we explain to these millennials the link between the constant breakdown of MRT operations to martial rule, or why they are poor right now?

More than these tips though, why not urge millennials to join the change movement and together, change the very system which allowed this culture of impunity in the first place?