By Diego Morra
Presidential Communications Office (PCO) Undersecretary Claire Castro has shown her fangs early, defending her boss for not declaring Feb. 25, 2025 as a special holiday to commemorate the 39th anniversary of the EDSA civilian-military uprising that kicked out the Marcos martial law dictatorship. Resorting to legalisms, the lawyer in Castro asserted that it is the President’s prerogative to declare Feb. 25 as a holiday or not. No one questions that.
Of course, no one would expect Castro to say that declaring the day of the Marcos family’s ouster from Malacanang a holiday would be like sticking needles in the eyes of Ferdinand Marcos Jr., Imee Marcos, Irene Marcos, Aimee Marcos and the members of the entire entourage that flew to Hawaii. It would rekindle the bitterness and recall the utmost bitterness of the patriarch who had to flee posthaste in the autumn of his misrule. People would not begrudge Castro some praise if she talked turkey and said the Marcoses, to be frank about it, are engaged in rehabilitating the patriarch’s legacy by naming parks, hospitals, bridges, highways and other megaliths in honor of Marcos Sr.
Until now, the Marcoses have refused to admit that Mariano Marcos, Marcos Sr.’s father, was tried by a guerrilla court organized by Ilocano fighters for collaborating with the Japanese fascists during World War II and sentenced to death in Sapilang, Bacnotan, La Union on March 8, 2045. The trial was recorded by American military officers under the command of Maj. Robert Lapham and the documents are in the US National Archives. The Marcoses maintain that Mariano Marcos was a hero and was executed by the Japanese, contrary to eyewitness accounts. For this “heroism,” the town of Marcos in Ilocos Norte was carved up as a separate town from Dingras, Ilocos Norte. Two public universities in the Ilocos Region were likewise named in his honor.
The propaganda business at the PCO technically does not require its practitioners to abide by the rule on inverted pyramid and professional ethics, and Castro need not concern herself with the who, what, where and how of every story that the agency churns out. Its main preoccupation is to answer the why. Why should they write articles that are truthful when lies would make the same items interesting, even sexy, to merit the attention of vloggers, bloggers, trolls and crones who would replicate the propaganda line and make the principal pleased no end. In effect, PCO journalism is a remote version of what journalism should be. Sometimes, Palace operatives insert themselves into the narrative, as in what Tom Wolfe described as “new” journalism, only to dismantle the barrier between truth and fiction a la Hunter S. Thompson’s gonzo journalism.
Nobility of purpose has always been absent at the PCO inasmuch as the work does not demand getting the news from north, east, west and south and condensing the same into manageable, digestible bits of information for anyone who reads, listens and watches. The audience of this department is actually one: The Chief Executive. Two in case there is some power behind the desk. Thus, it is not required that the brain trust be sharp, cunning and quick-to-the-draw. They are like the unremarkable courtiers of European courts during the time of Erasmus (1466-1536): “The less talent they have, the more pride, vanity and conceit they have. But all these fools find other fools who applaud them.”
Castro also told reporters that the Palace under Marcos Jr. never prohibited people from celebrating Feb. 25 since 2023. In short, the PCO undersecretary equates the “special working day” tag as “encouragement to people to celebrate.” Yet, a huge chasm separates a “special holiday” from a “special working day.” Creatively, those bureaucrats who didn’t wish to offend the Palace labeled Feb. 25 as an “day of alternative learning“ as what University of the Philippines (UP) President Angelo Jimenez did. The alternative learning here might mean an alternative to the mass of studies on martial law, the collection of reports about the Marcos dictatorship in the UP Main Library, the UP Archives and the research undertaken by the UP Third World Studies Program.
History is history, Castro declared, and you cannot erase it. Very well, but the mavens of pseudo-historiography may just produce tons of historical work using palimpsests so they can efface the original work, leaving traces of it in the process. Even the dreaded Sara Zimmerman Duterte Carpio tried her hand at erasing the past by rewriting historical textbooks to tackle the “dictatorship” without Marcos Sr. and miseducate children that the scourge called martial was a nameless villain. Is that what UP President Jijil Jimenez had in mind? The Marcos Jr. administration also segued into recrafting the despised “Bagong Lipunan” of martial law into “Bagong Pilipinas,” a paradise where political bickering is taboo and where civic culture is more civilized, but the Team Unity that cracked up rendered it opaque, vacuous and inscrutable on its way to the heart of darkness. “Bagoong Pilipinas” would be a better brand of the national fish paste.
Why can’t the Marcoses come to grips with the truth that martial law was a horrible, bloody chapter in the nation’s history? Or that their patriarch amassed between $5-billion and $10-billion during his 21-year misrule? Or that they lost $683-million in bank deposits when Swiss courts determined that the money were truly ill-gotten. Nothing was ever adduced on Marcos Sr.’s behalf to disprove the 15% commissions he had received from Japanese contractors, which raised a ruckus in Tokyo. As defendants, the Marcoses failed to produce evidence to smother charges lodged against them, or to adduce affirmative defenses. Many of the Marcos ill-gotten wealth cases have been dismissed since Marcos Jr. took power. How do you expect prosecutors to win under the circumstances? It’s heads, I win; tails, you lose. #
