True, Bongbong Marcos cannot be made to account for his father’s sins. He is just the son. He was a kid when his father imposed a corrupt and brutal dictatorship over the country. It is not his fault to be the son of Ferdinand and Imelda and to have grown up so used to the trappings of absolute power and shielded from the realities of ordinary Filipino lives.
But he is accountable for many other things. Let me count the ways:
- Agreeing to and taking part in his father’s corruption, human rights atrocities and other abuses when his family was in power.
- His continuing cover-up of his family’s ill-gotten wealth and complicity in various schemes to rob the Filipino people.
- His continued enjoyment of such wealth and its use to keep his family in power.
- His continued denial, despite facts, historical accounts and official documents, of the atrocities of his parent’s conjugal dictatorship.
- His insistence that his father’s decision to impose martial law and one-man rule was correct and that the Philippines never had it so good during this period.
- His lying about his Oxford degree.
Miriam Defensor Santiago might be ready to forget all these and move on. Eh di wow.
But not me. And hopefully, not the millions of Filipinos who don’t want another Marcos dictatorship.