Marcos is the new cool

Somewhere in our popular culture, when you’re different, you’re ‘cool,’ because being too ‘in’ makes you look ‘baduy.’ For example, we no longer see wearing a Never-Give-Up shirts cool, because this shirt was used by almost 90% of the Filipino population. As if it was the national clothing.

         Sicat’s biography of the Marcos finance manager Cesar Virata. Source: uppress.wordpress.com

          The same happens in politics. During the reign of Ferdinand Marcos, being ‘pro-Aquino’ was ‘cool’ since almost everyone in those days is pro-Marcos, to the point that it was a trend among women to wear clothes like Imelda Marcos; Imeldific as they called it.

          Suddenly, people became dissatisfied to the Marcoses and everyone turned out to be pro-Aquinos.

          Today, we now see the Marcoses as devil motherfuckers and see the Aquinos as a family of heroes, saints, and opinionadas, making us look like, as Rigoberto Tiglao coined, a Yellow Cult.

          But this cult was being challenged by the so-called Neo-pro-Marcoses (I just invented this term). These Neo-pro-Marcoses see contemporary politics the other way around. They see the Marcos reign as an era of economic progress despite the harsh dictatorship, and see the intervention of the Aquinos as the ultimate end of an economic golden age. And they are everywhere on social media. They even share pro-Marcos videos, pictures and articles with comments like “nung panahon ni Marcos, lahat may disiplina dahil may stict na curfew…nung panahon ni Marcos may tiger economy ang Pilipinas…” And then you will see it was liked by a poser account of the former president Marcos with matching reply, “please, support Bongbong Marcos.” These Neo-pro-Marcoses are mostly adolescents that are virtually ignorant about the Marcos reign. And since they were adolescents, they tend to support what was ‘cool’ these days; since almost everyone is a supporter of the Aquinos, being pro-Marcos is the new cool.

          One of the reasons why the pro-Marcos thought was getting revived was because some former Marcos officials don’t want to burn in hell yet. They are still on earth, spreading the words of Satan to the Filipino people. One of them was the kurakot na sikat na sikat, Gerardo Sicat.

          Gerardo Sicat, a Marcos technocrat, just launched a book last August 22. The book was a biography of the Marcos finance manager and Prime Minister Cesar Virata and a history of the Marcos reign deodorized with a cheap sachet of Rexona.

          Sicat intentionally used Virata’s life, instead of Marco’s, in writing an account of the Marcos reign, to avoid the mentioning of the tortures and persecutions during those times. And since Virata was Marcos’s finance manager, Sikat could brag about what he called ‘economic progresses’ during the Marcos era.

          In the book, entitled ‘Cesar Virata: Life and Times through four decades of Philippine economic history,’ Lucifer, I mean Sicat, wrote:

          “Economic reforms suddenly became possible under martial law. The powerful opponents of reform were silenced and the organized opposition was also quilted. In the past it took enormous wrangling and preliminary stage-managing of political forces before a piece of economic reform legislation could even pass through congress. Now it was possible to have the needed changes undertaken through presidential decree. Marcos wanted to deliver major changes in an economic policy that the government had tried to propose earlier.”

          But Sicat and his book is bullshit. Pure bullshit. 100%. The Manila Times columnist Rigoberto Tiglao pointed out that since Sicat’s book is pro-Marcos, the Marcos technocrat did not mention the debt crisis of 1983 and in those days, Sicat himself headed the National Economic and Development Authority.

          Sicat even proudly said that he was unbothered with Marcos’s corruption since, as he said, such leaders need financial assistance “for the purpose of advancing political motives.” Well, congratulations for being a true and proud follower of Satan!

          Sicat’s history reminds me of George Orwell’s dystopic society in the novel 1984 where history was revised to make it suit to Big Brother’s political propaganda.

          These are just some of the facts that the ignorant pro-Marcoses did not know. They didn’t know that being pro-Marcos is actually not cool.

This article is also available in The Philwomenian, the official student publication of The Philippine Women’s University.