Thousands of Filipino youth gathered at the Luneta on Friday, Nov 25, 2016 to protest Marcos burial at the Libingan Ng Mga Bayani cemetery. Photo: REUTERS/Romeo Ranoco/GMA News Online

s Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and the Marcos family are now realizing, a burial at the Libingan Ng Mga Bayani cemetery will not make former dictator Ferdinand Marcos a hero in the eyes of the tens of millions of Filipinos who lived through his brutal Martial Law regime. Instead, his internment on the 18th of November at the country’s hero’s cemetery (which was kept secret from the public), has only served to galvanize opposition against the Marcoses as well as Duterte.

What Marcos, his henchmen, and his cronies did to the country during the almost two decades he was in power has been well documented both in the Philippines and abroad. It would be extremely difficult to put a different spin to his authoritarian rule today or even a hundred years in the future.

As we noted in a previous editorial on the subject, LINK “we Filipinos seem to want to sweep our unpleasantries under the rug. We don’t want to talk about them or remember them.” But even we have been surprised by the reaction from the thousands who have been demonstrating in opposition to his Libingan burial. Filipinos from all walks of life (even the youth who luckily, were not yet around to experience, first hand, the brutality of his regime) have taken to the streets in protest.

As many have noted, Malacañang’s call for Filipinos to “move on” should be addressed instead to the Marcos family and their supporters. It is they who should move on and stop trying to rewrite history. The Marcoses should accept the fact that Ferdinand was a corrupt and brutal tyrant who ended up doing a lot more harm to the country than any good, if at all, that came out of his nineteen-year rule.

The Filipino people will never forget, the world will never forget, so why insist on a fantasy that has no basis in reality. The Marcoses appear to be operating on the same premise as Hitler’s propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, who once pointed out that “a lie told once remains a lie but a lie told a thousand times becomes the truth.” What the Marcoses do not realize is that such deception, will never last forever. Goebbels himself acknowledged this fact when he wrote just days before he committed suicide: “There will come a day, when all the lies will collapse under their own weight, and truth will again triumph.” Deep down, the Marcoses know the truth. They should stop trying to change it and move on. Published 11/25/2016