[Rappler’s Best] Holidays and the business of forgetting 

I hope that you still know the fact that it was on August 21 — not 23 — 1983 when Ninoy Aquino was felled by a Marcos government bullet at the airport now named after him, rousing a long-suffering people who, three years after, ousted the dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos in a bloodless revolt.

“It’s as if I never slept in three years,” recalled Rappler editor-at-large Marites Vitug in an interview last year with Rappler reporter Iya Gozum to commemorate Ninoy’s assassination. “Were it not for that [incident], I wouldn’t have been a political reporter,” she added.

Yet, Gozum wrote, “the children of 1983 were slowly realizing they live in a nation condemned to a thousand political killings…and a constantly forgetful memory.” 

• On August 21, 2022, the first year in office of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., hardly any government agency commemorated Ninoy’s death. Worse, some even red-tagged him! 
• A year prior, during the Duterte administration, social media was replete with false narratives about Ninoy being a supposed founder of the communist underground, amplified and parroted by Duterte acolytes in the payroll of an anti-communist task force funded by taxpayers’ money.
• In 2023, Ninoy’s eldest daughter Ballsy Aquino-Cruz fought back tears as she thanked Filipinos who remembered. “To you, our fellow Filipinos, who joined us when being seen with the Aquinos is not exactly in fashion during this time, thank you for being one with us today in remembering Ninoy Aquino,” she said during a Mass in memory of her father on his 40th death anniversary. Watch Ninoy and Cory’s grandson Kiko Aquino Dee talk about the journey of remembrance and the struggle against forgetting. 

In a world swimming in lies and ruled by leaders who bury history to get elected, there’s nothing more jarring than for a state to mess with this generation’s heads and move killing dates for the sake of “holiday economics.” Especially if it comes as a mere afterthought. The Marcos administration moved the coming observance of the August 21 holiday to August 23 only last Thursday, August 15, just six days before its original commemoration. Imagine the mad scramble of the few privileged Filipinos who could afford to book flights or take long drives for a quick getaway.

True, this so-called holiday economics that allows presidents to move certain holidays to the nearest Monday to make long weekends has basis in law (Republic Act 9492), crafted and issued under former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in 2007 to boost domestic tourism. Why Arroyo and our brilliant lawmakers would craft such a law about something as seasonal as domestic tourism just proves how they got their priorities wrong. This law had been rendered useless by presidents after her.

• The late president Benigno Aquino III scrapped it altogether.
• In 2021, former president Rodrigo Duterte, invoking COVID-19 “economics,” turned three holidays into working days to…help reopen a post-lockdown economy. Then-vice president Leni Robredo blasted him for this, pointing out that there were more concrete ways of lifting the economy than making workers work for three days.
• Of course, now it’s President Marcos’ turn to move this and that holiday. The first time Marcos declared the holidays and special non-working days of 2023, the anniversary of the February 25, 1986, People Power Revolution that ousted his father and family from the Philippines was included in the list as a “special non-working day.” But he moved it last-minute to February 24 instead, which coincided with a local festival in their home province of Ilocos Norte. This surfaced the rumored feud between Marcos and his sister Senator Imee Marcos, who boycotted the festival that she herself initiated as a governor, because it was held “on a date that I can never stomach celebrating.”

The point is, the Marcoses were forced to flee the country on February 25, not 24 — in case this holiday economics has succeeded in obliterating from your memory the nation’s sweet revenge against a kleptocratic regime. (For good measure, check the rules on holiday pay here.)

How quickly does a country forget in these times? Look beyond our shores. In Thailand, its former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, ousted in a 2006 military coup, has been pardoned. Not only that, his daughter Paetongtarn Shinawatra just became Thailand’s youngest prime minister at 37.

But who else needs reminding in this forgetful land? Ah, Senator Robinhood Padilla. What a pain to watch, this bemustached, garrulous senator who pretends to know his stuff and his mandate as a lawmaker. (Watch him here.)

• In an August 15 hearing held to discuss TV networks’ policies in handling cases of sexual abuse, Padilla asked whether a spouse saying no to sex actually might not mean no, adding that the wife must serve her husband because men naturally have a different kind of urge (in his lingo: “may iba talagang urge”).
• Consent is non-negotiable, various groups reminded Padilla.
• For your education, Senator, read this piece.
• And don’t get Sylvia Claudio upset by your “urge.” Because now she wants to counter with this: “May urge akong batuhin ng tsinelas si Senator Robin Padilla.” (An English translation will do no justice to this sentence.) Read more about Sylvia’s “urge” here.

– Rappler.com

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