By Philip M. Lustre Jr.
WEEKS AFTER Cory Aquino assumed power in 1986, a bunch of foul-mouthed hooligans calling themselves "loyalists" of ousted dictator Ferdinand Marcos, took fancy of a young slim-built promenader at the Rizal Park and beat him to death for no apparent reason.
His fault: He was wearing a yellow t-shirt emblazoned with the message expressing his full support for the fledgling Cory Aquino government.
The young Corysta did not have a chance to defend himself, as Marcos hooligans, armed with metal pipes and wooden clubs, vented their anger on him and lynched him without mercy.
President Cory Aquino did not waste a single minute to allow this incident to go unnoticed. She issued the strongest condemnation.
Her marching order to the public was curt and straight to the point. If you have relatives, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances, who professed undying love for the toppled dictator and kept on pestering other people, the best way to handle them is to isolate them from the rest of humanity.
Never give them the pleasure to be treated as one of us, the President said in clear and unequivocal terms.
Cory Aquino's clarion call had resonated to the Filipino people.
In the 1987 senatorial elections that followed the ratification of the 1987 Constitution, or the first ever elections under the 1987 Charter, senatorial candidates perceived as Marcos loyalists languished in the cellar.
Oppositionist Homobono Adaza did not welcome the Marcos loyalists in the opposition Grand Alliance for Democracy (GAD) ticket, calling their presence a "kiss of death." It was a claim that was proven correct by subsequent events.
The Marcos loyalists were forced to run under a forgettable third party and never gave a decent fight to Cory's 24-man senatorial ticket, of which 22 won, while yielding two slots to GAD's Joseph Estrada and Juan Ponce Enrile.
The disparate groups of Marcos loyalists constitute the backward elements of Philippine society.
While they profess their undying love and admiration and unparalleled to the fallen dictator, who was toppled by the Filipino people in a near bloodless uprising in 1986, they hardly advance any reform agenda for the betterment of the people.
They have no concept of the common good.
The Marcos loyalist elements were an integral part of the series of seven unsuccessful military coups against the Cory Aquino government. Their lack of success could have indicated they did not enjoy the people's trust.
The Marcos loyalist groups (they do not constitute a movement because they are not moving any reform agenda) are notorious for their noise and lack of civility.
Yet, they are a disparate group of a few hundreds. They do not agree among themselves as each group or subgroup has its own coteries of leaders and followers.
The original Marcos loyalist groups, which came out immediately after the 1986 EDSA Revolution, declared their love and support for Marcos, but a number disliked Imelda Marcos, the other half of the Marcos conjugal dictatorship.
These loyalists, whom the late newspaper columnist Luis Beltran derided as "Marcos abandonados," who were left by their infamous hero to settle in luxurious exile in Hawaii, blamed Imelda's profligate spending and extravagant lifestyle for his downfall.
Lately, the Marcos loyalist groups, largely through the generous funding of the matriarch Imelda, have metamorphosed to become the political vehicle of the Marcos scions - Bongbong and Imee.
The matriarch, long detested by the original Marcos loyalists, is now acceptable. She is leading the most vicious attempt to revise history and deodorize the public image of the toppled dictator, whose remains is said to have been preserved in a refrigerated crypt in his home province of Ilocos Norte.
Not one in his right mind in government would allow his remains to be buried at the Libingan ng mga Bayani.
Although the Marcos have been spending a fortune for projects involving some historical revisionism to present Marcos as sort of demigod or hero, this initiative does not in any way erase the people's bitter memories of the Marcos dictatorship.
The Marcos legacy has three components: centralized corruption, where Marcos received bribe money under the table for big ticket projects; crony capitalism, where Marcos built, preserved, protected and a stable of friends, who cornered monopolies; and wanton violations of human rights, where thousands of political activists,
Church leaders, workers, peasants, and other critics were jailed without charges, tortured, summarily executed, and killed to disappear.
The Marcos loyalist groups are no different from the old National Socialist (Nazi) Party, which plunged Germany into the biggest war in world history. Although dictator Adolf Hitler committed suicide in the closing days of the last world war, the Nazi Party survived the post-war era, as its remnants continue to hold unscheduled reunions to revive memories of the Nazi-dominated Third Reich.
Just like the old Nazis, the Marcos loyalist elements continue to hold reunions to recall the good old days of the Marcos dictatorship. These reunions led to a possible comeback, where Bongbong Marcos ran unsuccessfully for vice president in the just concluded 2016 presidential elections.
The Marcos loyalist groups, whose presence could be felt in social media, are no different from the Ku Klux Klan (KKK), the white supremacy group that mistreated the black people in the United States. The Ku Klux Klan has no agenda except to continue subjugating the blacks. They share the same amount of hatred of the status quo.
The Marcos loyalist, the Nazi Party, represented by the neo-Nazis and Ku Klux Klan do not in any way stand for progress.
They personify retrogression. They are basically hate groups and hate groups because they are, they do not grow quantitatively and qualitatively.
The Marcos loyalists, the neo-Nazis and the KKK are very much around; they create noises. But they do not grow, s they exist on the fringes of mainstream society.
But we have to be wary of the Marcos loyalists. Any hate group is capable of metamorphosing to become a terrorist group.
When a hate group could not achieve its political objectives through dissemination of hate messages, they are equally capable to engage in terrorist activities to get what it wants.
Let's see if the Marcos loyalist groups are capable of terrorism. At the moment, they are limited to social media. All they could is to spew fire and venom in social networking sites.
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