What's The Use Of Celebrating The Downfall Of Marcos Since The Nation DIDN'T PROGRESS After His Downfall?

The EDSA Revolution has had its milestones and narration. 2016 marked the anniversary of the downfall of the dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos Sr.'s regime. Now, we're hitting the 35th year since February 23, 1986, when the revolution started. The same question needs to be asked again, "WHERE IS THE PROMISED CHANGE AFTER EDSA?" I'm not saying that overthrowing Marcos isn't a good thing. The Marcos regime was characterized with rampant human rights violations. What's annoying is that there are critics of Marcos is that some of them still want to retain protectionist policies and/or remain in a presidential sytem. Some of them don't even bother to realize that the human rights abuses during the Marcos years were caused by economic protectionism. Marcos protected the interests of HIS CRONIES from foreign competition, still enforcing the Filipino First Policy by Carlos P. Garcia. Eventually, both Marcos and Garcia are rightfully buried next to each other at the Libingan Ng Mga Bayani. Those who want Marcos' remains exhumed should also demand Garcia's remains to be exhumed for that same reason.

It's often the narrative of people of what if the Marcos Years never happened. It's always like even after decades of the FALL OF MARCOS -- the same narrative is all about that the Philippine economy is still poor because of Marcos. I'm not going to deny that Marcos' ill-gotten wealth is existent. The big problem is when people would rather wait for Marcos' ill-gotten wealth to be returned than to enforce economic policies. The Marcos wealth issue is becoming older and older by the millisecond. Who knows how much value it has already considering the Marcoses tend to live rather lavishly. Who could remember Imelda Romualdez-Marcos' legendary shoe collection? Who could remember the lavish lifestyle that Bobong Marcos lived while he was the "Crown Prince" of the Marcos Years? I don't want to deny that the Marcos Regime did plunder the income. However, the Marcos Regime's damages and still whining about it are crying over SPILLED MILK. I'm not saying it's wrong for JC Punongbayad to ask what if it never happened. What's wrong is that Punongbayad isn't providing economic alternatives to pull people out of that damage.

Filipino First Policy still helps the Philippines to FAIL even without Marcos in power. A lot of dictatorships end up in poor economic conditions because of poor economics. Why did Nazi Germany fail during World War 2? It wasn't just because Adolf Hitler was a genocidal maniac. It was also because Hitler's regime was also characterized by rampant economic protectionism. Hitler's massacre of the Jews had his regime confiscate their wealth which was later mismanaged. Mao Zedong's Communist regime also failed because of protectionism. Mao's drive for the Great Leap Forward became the Great Leap Forward towards disaster because of protectionism. The rise of Germany from the ashes didn't involve Germans who whined about what if Hitler never rose to power. Instead, Germany decided to create a federal-parliamentary republic with free trade. I bet Hitler stole more than Marcos did yet Germany is progressive. The Chinese didn't keep whining about what if Mao never rose to power. Deng Xiaoping saw a China in even worse shape than the Philippines when Marcos left. Rather than whine, Deng decided that the best way to make Communist China wealthy was through massive economic reforms. Deng himself opened Communist China to business and introduced his new socialism where he said, "To be rich is glorious." 

Changing the economic policies caused both Germany and China to recover from disasters worse than the Marcos Years. Those two much bigger dictatorships (Hitler and Mao) make Marcos' dictatorial regime no longer a valid excuse as to why the Philippines still hasn't recovered. Legislators can pass new laws to ban the Marcoses from returning to power. We can even make a law to make sure no descendant of the dictator sits in power. Call it the anti-Marcos law if you want to. We can even (hypothetically) recover Marcos' ill-gotten wealth and put it back in the national treasury. However, it can still be misspent even by other officials. Who can be sure that the absence of the Marcoses will guarantee a clean government? The big issue now is to really focus on socio-economic and political reforms that will prevent ANOTHER MARCOS-TYPE DICTATORSHIP than to cry over spilled milk over the after-effects of the Marcos Years.