The great war hero, Winston Churchill, posited that history
is told by the victors. Well, the said
quote is attributed to Churchill but a quick look at the internet will yield
that the said phrase is also credited to
Walter Benjamin and George Orwell. Notwithstanding, Dan Brown shared the
same view in his “Da Vinci Code” when he wrote, “History is always written by
the winners.” He explained further that, “When two cultures clash, the loser is
obliterated, and the winner writes the history books-books which glorify their
own cause and disparage the conquered foe.”
If we go by the logic that history is told from the point of
view of the winners, then does it not follow that history can be rewritten in a
manner contrary to its present form when the former losers, by some stroke of
luck, come to power and be the new winners? Such may be what we are experiencing now.
In 1986, throngs upon throngs of people went out to the
streets of EDSA to topple the dictator that was Ferdinand E. Marcos, who at that time, was the most hated
man as much as the dictators Duvalier and Idi Amin were detested in their
respective countries. We were angered by
his wife’s incessant lust for luxury and scandalized with the discovery of her
uncountable shoes and golden faucets and other amenities in the palace while
the people lived in abject poverty. Truly,
Filipinos were fed up with a president who, albeit being a brilliant lawyer and
an eloquent speaker, had used these same qualities to amass great wealth at the
expense of the Filipino people. We were
fed up and clamored for change that would prove to be useless. That until, Ted
Koppel, in a live interview with Marcos on national television, dared him to
hold an election to prove to the world that he still has the mandate of the
Filipino people. Marcos took the bait
and declared that there shall be a snap election. With all the power resting on
his hands, he cheated and won, defeating his nemesis’ wife, Cory, by a huge
margin. He would have continued his reign until Enrile, fearing for his life,
went to Camp Crame seeking refuge there and ultimately joined by Gen. Ramos. There, he talked to the Filipino people saying
how Marcos had cheated in his bid for re-election in the 60’s and the latest
snap elections. He also exposed the
other “sins” of the dictator. Cardinal Sin, supporting the two, called on the
people to march the streets of EDSA and the rest, as they say, is history.
The immense number of people who flocked the streets were
the true victors at the time. Stories of
their experiences abound and Filipinos were glorified with the true democratic
exercise of ousting a strongman who had ruled the country for such a long
time. We saw a new hero in the person of
Ninoy Aquino who opposed the wishes of a dictator which caused him his life on
the tarmac that ill-fated day of August.
History could have been written from this vantage point. However, the Aquinos, after having two
presidents from the family, (wife and son, his namesake), and a number of
senators and other government officials from among their blood relations,
failed to secure that Ferdinand Marcos shall always be the villain in our
history. They had been complacent that
the thousands upon thousands of Filipinos who gathered in EDSA, dubbed as
People’s Power, was secured in the annals of our story as a nation that did not
bother to write the events in history books taught in school.
Thirty years later, basically from the gross inefficiency of
the inheritors of EDSA and whose governance were plagued with corruption and
wanton negligence, now President Duterte won the hearts of the masses. While he
swore, among his favorite expletives, that he wouldn’t succumb to patronage
politics, his appointees to government positions would show otherwise. He unabashedly declares his indebtedness to
the Marcoses for having helped him during his campaign for the Presidency.
Allowing Marcos to be buried in the Libingan ng Mga Bayani, is a proof that
history is about to be rewritten. This is a reality specially in this age of
paid trolls lurking in every nook and cranny of our very homes invading the Internet
via Facebook, Twitter and other social media.