The Marcos martial law according to Enrile is not what the millennials nowadays have known about. The story of martial law in the Philippines is fragmented—there is this bad side of the story and another side—the worse.
This is one side of the story. The story of martial law during the late President Ferdinand Marcos’ regime, which even now has still been dividing the whole nation into fragments of politics and ambition and greed while still in the shadow of what the former Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile called “distorted history“.
Millennials, the Generation Y, Enrile accused them of not knowing about martial law.
“I’m now 95 years old… I’ve seen history from the time of the Americans all the way to now,” Juan Ponce Enrile said to Bongbong Marcos in a one-on-one tell-all interview episode of, Enrile: A Witness to History.
The former senator of the Philippines and former Defense minister during the Marcos administration, Enrile made his bold revelation about the Liberal Party (LP) and the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) plot to establish a coalition government against Marcos administration.
The plot that contributed most to the decision of the late President Ferdinand Marcos to ask the Legislative for him to put the entire Philippines under martial law.
Of Marcos martial law according to Enrile and the distorted history
Enrile said that history was distorted to favor one group (this group might be the LP-CPP), and that talk like this is important to correct the distortion of history.
He even expressed much of his willingness to debate anybody about events and what had happened during the declaration of martial law by the late President Ferdinand Marcos.
If there would be someone competent to make heads or tails of some things about the story of martial law in the Philippines, there would be no other the most precise personality to engage in a tell-all conversation but the former Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile.
At 95, who would have thought that this man nearing his last breath still has the gall, the audacity to invent stories and distort history to his advantage? For what gains he could reap in doing so?
While it becomes clear upon the inquiry of former Sen. Bongbong Marcos to Enrile about what it was behind the decision of his father the late President Ferdinand Marcos and his government, Enrile confirms that the biggest fallacy that young people now are being fed is the claim that Marcos administration killed lots of people and that over 7,000 people arrested.
In refuting the claim, Enrile dares anybody to name a single person arrested simply because of political or religious belief during martial law. Enrile goes further,
During martial law, there were no massacres… Millennials, those born in 1980, don’t know anything. What they know is what they read or heard based on inaccurate facts.
But yes, there was this Jan. 22, 1987, Mendiola massacre during the late President Corazon Aquino’s administration.
This full episode can be watched here:
Since 2011, Regel Javines has been writing online, sharing news and analysis on a range of noteworthy and urgent social issues. He completed his bachelor’s degree in office administration at the Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP)—Taguig Campus, where he also served as editor-in-chief of the official school newspaper. See Regel’s published articles here.