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Administration ally Senator Francis ‘Chiz’ Escudero said on Monday that the late President Ferdinand Marcos should be allowed to be buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, adding that “now is the time to heal the wounds of the past.”

Escudero put forward his suggestion despite presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda’s statement that President Benigno Aquino has not wavered on his stand not to allow Marcos’ burial at the Libingan Ng Mga Bayani during his term since this would be the ‘height of injustice’ to the former strongman’s Martial Law victims.

Lacierda said the issue of Marcos’ burial had never been discussed by the president and his officials.

In 2001, however, Aquino asked Binay to study and review the matter due to a mounting clamor at that time.

Binay had suggested a hero’s state burial with  military honors in his hometown in Ilocos, but this was also rejected by the president.

Escudero said, however, that it was his personal belief that it is time to put an end to all open wounds in our history so the nation can move forward faster.


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After the Aug. 21, 1971 Plaza Miranda bombing, President Ferdinand Marcos suspended the writ of habeas corpus. Proclamation No. 889, which allowed the police to make arrests without warrants and to detain the arrested without charges, took effect immediately but was announced to the public only after a few days. It seems clear now that the tactic was a dress rehearsal for the full-scale imposition of martial law the following year.


Marcos, entering the second half of his second and last term, was anxious about how the Supreme Court would rule on the constitutionality of the suspension of the writ, which had been immediately challenged. So he did what came naturally to him: He subverted yet another democratic institution.
Soon after hearings on the case started, he invited his first appointee to the Supreme Court, Associate Justice Fred Ruiz Castro, for a consultation. The following extended passage from “Diary of a Dictator” by the journalist William Rempel (whose name I had mistakenly pluralized—Rempels—in an earlier column) makes for disturbing reading.


“On Tuesday night, September 16, 1971, Justice Castro was a special guest at the presidential palace for a private session that reeked of legal and ethical conflicts. Over a late evening dinner, the judge described how the case was playing to his colleagues on the bench. He handicapped the current leanings and likely votes of each justice. It was the judge’s first act as a spy for the Marcos legal team.


“The president, in turn, lobbied the jurist. Spared any cross examination or challenges to accuracy, Marcos made arguments and shared classified documents supporting his widely disputed claims of a Communist insurgency and the purely specious allegations that Senator [Ninoy] Aquino was in league with the New People’s Army.
“The mere fact that the jurist met secretly with one side violated a raft of legal principles from basic rules of fairness and due process to the separation of powers. And Justice Castro offered Marcos what sounded to the president like a magic trick. If Marcos immediately lifted the suspension in some regions of the country, Castro believed that he could persuade the court to uphold the president’s previous proclamation unanimously.



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The martial law regime of Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos was built on a foundation of lies, wrapped in a scaffolding of deceit, surrounded by the barbed wire of half-truths. The official date which the dictatorship itself considered the start of the so-called New Society was, for instance, fabricated out of Marcos’ obsession with numerology. Because of his fascination with the number seven and its multiples, the sorry, sordid history of martial law began, deliberately, with a lie.
Martial law did not take effect on Sept. 21, 1972. Rather, it was late in the evening of the following day, a Friday, when the ambush of Juan Ponce Enrile, then Marcos’ defense secretary, was faked; when the actual order to execute Proclamation No. 1081 was issued; and when the first arrests, beginning with that of opposition leader Sen. Ninoy Aquino at a Senate committee meeting, were made.

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MANILA, Philippines—The Land Transportation Franchising and Regulatory Board (LTFRB) on Friday ordered the six-month suspension of bus operator GV Florida, which operated the unit that fell into a ravine in Bontoc town in Mt. Province last month, killing 15 people and injuring dozens of others.
The LTFRB said the suspension covered 28 certificates of public convenience (CPCs) with 188 authorized units. An LTFRB spokesperson, citing documents submitted by the Philippine National Police, said the accident was caused by faulty brakes.
The board also cancelled and revoked the CPCs of 10 buses of Mt. Province Cable Tours, the other bus company involved in the accident, which are also now owned by GV Florida.
LTFRB chair Winston Gines said that while the board recognized the business impact of the suspension to the bus company and welfare of its employees, it had to penalize GV Florida by stopping its operation for the next six months.
No automatic lifting
The order took effect on March 11, the day that the 30-day preventive suspension order issued by the board lapsed.
Gines said there is no concrete assurance that the suspension will be lifted after six months to allow the bus company to resume its operations.
The road accident on Feb. 7 had cost the province a bus franchise that ferried residents direct to Metro Manila, prompting the Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) to study an improved mass transport plan for the Cordillera region.
Mt. Province Gov. Leonard Mayaen said transport officials must also find a way to restore a franchise for a direct route that would service his constituents and visitors who travel to Metro Manila and back.
Tourist towns like Sagada benefited from the direct route.

No direct line
“The people of Mt. Province who go to Manila and those coming to our province are already experiencing difficulties and they want the direct line to Manila to resume as soon as possible,” said Mayaen.
“We have also observed a decline in tourist arrivals, local and foreign, because there is no more bus [traveling direct] from Manila to Bontoc,” he said.
Celina Claver, DOTC Cordillera regional director, acknowledged the vacuum that the Florida bus suspension has created for upland towns.
She said the DOTC has been studying road and highway maps supplied by the Department of Public Works and Highways to calculate how much more public transport franchises need to be opened to serve the Cordillera market.
More jeepneys and buses would also discourage “top load” commuting, a reference to passengers who ride on the rooftops of vehicles, which public utility drivers accommodate because of the shortage of public vehicles serving remote areas in the region.
But the Cordillera is hampered by a franchise moratorium covering the country, Claver said.
“We will only be able to issue another franchise for the Bontoc-Manila route as replacement if the GV Florida franchise is canceled,” Claver said.
Students most affected
Senior Supt. Oliver Enmodias, Mt. Province police director, said students who come home to Mt. Province and return to Metro Manila regularly are the ones most affected by the franchise’s cancellation.
Most travelers go to Baguio City to catch scheduled trips to Mt. Province and Kalinga while some choose to hop on buses that would take them to Ifugao and Mt. Province via the Cagayan Valley region.
The GV Florida unit involved in the accident, with license plate TXT 827, was originally issued to a minibus with engine number LX-004564 and chassis number KN2EAM912PK004452 under the name of Norberto Cue Sr. of Bontoc, Mt. Province.
The CPC was granted under LTFRB Case No. 2007-0407, with the authorized route Sagada-Bontoc-Manila via Banaue, Ifugao.
The actual stencil taken by LTO-Bontoc personnel on the fallen bus indicated that the motor/engine numbers DE12T-601104BD and chassis number KTP1011611C were entirely different from the engine and chassis of the bus unit with license plate TXT 827.
As a condition for the lifting of the suspension order, the bus company must require all their authorized drivers to secure the National Competency III from Technical Education and Skills Development Authority. With a report from Vincent Cabreza, Inquirer Northern Luzon


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BAGUIO CITY, Philippines—The Commission on Human Rights (CHR) on Friday asked the Philippine Military Academy (PMA) to reinstate Cadet First Class Aldrin Jeff Cudia to the PMA Corps of Cadets, saying he had not been accorded due process when he was dismissed from the PMA in February.
CHR Commissioners Ma. Victoria Cardona and Norberto de la Cruz also asked the PMA to allow Cudia to join the commencement exercises of the PMA Siklab Diwa Class of 2014 on Sunday, and to restore the dismissed cadet’s salary and benefits.
Cudia, who was running for third honors, was dismissed from the PMA on Feb. 10, for allegedly lying to justify his being late to a class. Lying is considered a major violation of the PMA’s Honor Code.
Harold Kub-aron, CHR Cordillera director, said the agency has yet to decide whether it would pursue a lawsuit against the PMA.
Manipulated
He said the CHR had been asked to address the complaint of Cudia’s father, Renato, who claimed that the hearing had been manipulated to secure a unanimous guilty verdict, a requirement before a cadet breaking the honor code can be dismissed from the academy.
The Cudia family presented on March 12 an affidavit by Commander Junjie Tabuada, head of the PMA Department of Naval Warfare, who claimed that a certain Cadet First Class Lagura, a member of the honor committee, had told him he had been pressured to change his original “not guilty” ruling.
But Col. Rozzano Briguez, the commandant of cadets, said that Lagura had executed his own affidavit and “had categorically” denied making the statement.

Unanimous or 8 to1?
Last week, the PMA’s Cadet Review and Appeals Board (Crab) examined the process taken to expel Cudia and upheld the honor committee ruling, which the new PMA superintendent, Maj. Gen. Oscar Lopez, had endorsed to the Armed Forces of the Philippines leadership on March 10.
Kub-aron said initial evidence had confirmed that the original vote cast by the honor court involved eight “guilty” votes and one “not guilty” vote, which the PMA should heed, instead of the second vote that unanimously ruled Cudia guilty of lying.
The CHR and the Crab held separate hearings on Cudia’s appeal this week, with Cardona and Dela Cruz holding closed-door sessions on Wednesday and Thursday to secure testimonies from the cadets, members of the PMA Corps of Professors and the academy’s staff.
Cudia was present in the sessions but without a lawyer, Kub-aron said.


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