Commencing Akbayan party-list's campaign against "undesirable candidates" in the May 2010 elections, the group staged a protest action in front of the national headquarters of Nacionalista Party senatorial candidate Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos Jr in Quezon City today asking voters to reject him in the coming polls.
Dubbed as a "rally for truth", members of the group lambasted what they said was the young Marcos' "outstanding tall tales" on how "Edsa was a failure" and how his father's government was better than the succeeding post-dictatorship administrations. The protestors carried "reality placards" highlighting the transgressions of the Marcos dictatorship, historical facts which the group says the young Marcos has tried to distort.
"How can we vote for somebody who can't even differentiate history from fiction or worse, tried to distort our history to the point of maligning Edsa 1 just to escape culpability for historic crimes his father and family has committed?" Akbayan partylist nominee no. 5 Francis "Kiko" Isaac said.
Isaac said the voting public has no need for Marcos' "unnecessary fiction." "Bongbong would like to think the country is a nation inclined to forget its own past. Well we are here to tell him that we remember," Isaac said.
It was reported that during the 24th celebration of Edsa 1, Marcos was allegedly quoted saying that his father's dictatorship "was better" and that "poverty worsened and the government was unable to clean up the bureaucracy" after EDSA 1." It was also reported that the young Marcos is lobbying for the burial of his father at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, a plan tacitly being opposed by anti-Marcos activists and human rights victims.
"While Edsa 1 has many unfulfilled promises, the ethos on which the historic event stands-democracy, freedom and people power are valid and still very relevant. Despite the fact that Edsa remains to be an ideal waiting to be fulfilled, it nevertheless strengthened our democratic institutions-institutions which were conveniently used by Bongbong and his family to run off with government seats in their pursuit to reclaim power," Isaac asserted.
Isaac's group also rebuffed Marcos' claim that the economy was better off during his father's time. "We like to remind Bongbong that it is precisely because of his father's brutal dictatorship that our economy never fully recovered. One has only to look at the country's never-ending list of illegitimate debts to see the Marcos dictatorship's footprints stamped all over it, a classic case would be the mothballed Bataan Nuclear Power Plant," Isaac said.
To further stress their point, the group mounted placards in front of Marcos' campaign headquarters. It highlighted "historical facts" concerning the deposed Marcos dictatorship such as human rights abuses, odious and illegitimate debts, cronyism, weak Economy and ill-gotten wealth. It also has a placard maintaining that Edsa 1 was not a failure.
"The sins of the parents should not be visited to their offspring. However this temperance no longer holds when an unrepentant son of a dictator not only continues to extol his father's brutal rule but worse, has mounted efforts to reclaim their 'former glory' by distorting the truth, reclaiming their ill-gotten wealth and by insulting the people with efforts to bury his father in a place fitted only for heroes," Isaac said.
"Bongbong is not worthy of our votes. We enjoin the Filipino people especially the young ones who has no memory of martial law to revisit history and use the lessons of the past as correct tools of discernment in choosing worthy candidates this coming elections," Isaac ended.
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