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NO ONE WANTS ANOTHER MARCOS – ALVAREZ
January 16, 2004
THE thousands of victims of Martial Law would cry from their unmarked graves if another strongman-dictator is, indeed, in the making, former Senator Heherson T. Alvarez, unwavering critic of the Marcos dictatorship said today.
Alvarez was commenting a statement by a stalwart of the Koalisyon ng Nagkakaisang Pilipino (KNP) who virtually rubbed salt on festering Martial Law wounds when he declared that its presidential candidate, movie actor Fernando Poe Jr .”might just be the new Marcos.”
“The 20-year rule of the dictatorship brought the nation to the brink of economic and moral and spiritual collapse,’ he said. “It was a very dark chapter of our nationhood and our leaders must make sure this will never happen again.”
Alvarez, founder of the overseas opposition movement Ninoy Aquino Movement (NAM), is himself a human rights victim.
While in exile in the United States lobbying to cut economic and military aid to the dictatorship, his younger brother, Marsman, was tortured and killed — skull cracked open, eyes gouged and tongue plucked out. The brutal death in the family was too much for their father who suffered a heart attack and died a few days later.
Alvarez said the wounds of Martial Law remained fresh to its victims and this “arrogant declaration by an unrepentant apologist of Marcos who has since become a pillar of FPJ’s party is totally unacceptable.”
“Unless, of course, this principal architect of the brutal regime is, in fact, a Trojan horse in the KNP and his remarks were really meant to sabotage the chances of Poe,” Alvarez said. “In which case, who is he secretly working for?”
Alvarez said the statement was probably meant to rally Ilocano voters behind Poe. But the “Marcos hatchet man” appears to have conveniently forgotten the excesses of the regime he helped sustain for many years, he said.
“We should never allow the scoundrels who flourished and prospered during the Marcos regime with the sweat and blood of their impoverished countrymen to pull the wool over our eyes.
“We should never allow any common politician to numb our senses to the bitter memories of Martial Law, the shame, the plunder that plunged us into even deeper poverty,” Alvarez said.
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