Martial law is about keeping the peace while they raid public coffers

Why is it that dictators and even those pseudo ones want nothing more than peace and order? Simple--they don't want anybody to howl while they quietly raid our treasury of gold bars and remittance dollars.

Martial law is not about preserving the state for some real threat. Threats are always imagined ones. When Marcos declared martial law in 1972, he portrayed the ragtag gang of Jose Maria Sison bigger and stronger than what it truly was back then. Reason? Marcos was a U.S. stooge and one of the United States' State Department allies during the Cold War. For his plan to work, Marcos had to appease his imperialist masters and calm the frayed nerves of the international community.

Martial law is not about the future--it is always about the present. Marcos never really cared if, by declaring martial law, he ran the economy aground. He never cared if the military caused untold suffering to the rural folks even in Ilocandia. Surely, he did not care if an entire generation lost their illustrious members and deprive the people of the intelligence of its sons and daughters. No. It was about consolidation of power, of the Marcos' family becoming the most powerful and the wealthiest family in all of Filipino-landia.

Imelda Marcos harbored ill-feelings for the Manila-based socialites who looked at her as a probinsyana (provincial). She was always jealous of their riches, of their mores, and of their education. When martial law was declared, Imelda immediately became the prime dona, the center of gravity and the host of lavish parties all funded by the people's hard-earned monies.

Ever wondered why Imelda had those 10,000 pairs of shoes, those expensive Rembrandts and Manansalas, those sparkling jewels, that big carbon rock and those authentic animal furs? She always told people that she had to dress up for foreigners not to look down upon Filipinos. Well, madame, foreigners would praise you to high heavens if they saw all Filipinos, well-dressed, well-mannered and well fed, which, unfortunately, even at the height of Marcos' glory during Martial law, did not happen.

Martial law is not about anti-criminality--it is always about the monopoly of crimes. Under a dictatorship, nothing happens without the knowledge and approval of the ruling Power. Wonder why addiction persisted and even grew to astronomical heights despite the military occupying nightclubs, bars and even homes? Don't tell me heinous crimes such as murders, rapes, kidnappings, bank robberies stopped for a long time while we were under martial law? The fact was---it even grew. How about smuggling? Pre-martial law days, it was the monopoly of a few Chinos. Enter martial law and another player entered into the picture---military men.

I remember one of my friends, the son of the head of the Binondo central bank sharing with me how their family grew in wealth during martial law. Because Marcos controlled even the flow of foreign currencies, particularly the dollar, businessmen had to rely on his father to supply them with much needed dollars from Hongkong. Biyaheras who were beautiful Chinoys recruited from Binondo frequented Hongkong with their luggages full of worthless pesos, exchanged in dollars somewhere at Hongkong central and then quietly brought to the Philippines for sale to exporters and importers.

Martial law is not about true peace--it is about complicit silence. Marcos wanted everybody to keep their silence while he, along with his family and their cronies, slit the throats of dissenters, open the bank accounts of their enemies, raid the private vaults of businessmen, and steal those gold bars from the Treasury with a note left saying " This is for safekeeping."

Martial law is not about truth--- it is about forced acceptance. Martial law changed our values. Before, Filipinos had "hiya", which is very difficult to transliterate in English. We, Filipinos, respect individual rights, to property, life and liberty. We sacrificed so much for our freedoms only to see it crumble under the crucible of tyranny.

These memories are forty five years old. However, some people, including our President is salivating for its return, not because he wants to curb drug addiction--he is wiser now and accepts the fact that he can't really solve an institutional problem by systematically killing everybody. Of course, Duterte realizes now that the ills of Filipino society cannot just be wished away by a magician's wand or a stroke of a pen. And surely, Duterte is wishing for his immortalization in our history books as the second man to plunge this country into darkness and chaos, which he is already doing, without even writing a Proclamation.

Duterte, despite his old age, wants more power. He enjoyed the sweet smell of power and he wants to sniff more. When he says that he does not want the presidency and anytime he's willing to back down and leave, don't believe a single word! Power is Duterte's nicotine. Look at how Duterte's face shine whenever he hears someone killed by cops or when he sees destruction, the likes he saw in Marawi. For 23 years, Duterte satisfied himself with killing small fries, and ordering the massacre of families and barangays. As President, Duterte realizes how powerful the position is. He always says he owns the military and the police. Duterte sometimes attack oligarchs because he loves reading how scared these oligarchs are in his favorite newspapers, even the Inquirer. He has billions of pesos at his disposal, cavalierly giving those to cops who kill even innocents just to be at par with others, enriched by Duterte's blood monies.

Duterte does not care if forty five years and billions spent for the de-militarization of the police organization. Duterte does not give a damn if innocents fall by the wayside, who are, for him, unfortunate casualties in an imagined war. Duterte loves wars. He finds satisfaction, like an LSD addict, whenever a bomb explodes in Marawi, whenever news about thousands of evacuees fill the headlines and whenever a police team barges in someone's home and mows everybody down including the owner's dog.

Duterte hates addicts. He wants to kill them. Yeah, right.